Friends,
I’m sorry I didn’t send an issue last week. I was traveling back from Australia and had a grand plan to write while I was on my 15-hour flight. But like many grand plans that involve long air travel, I failed to follow through and instead slept and watched movies (and perhaps had a few whiskey and sodas).
Luckily, there is plenty to cover this week!
The rectification of the PLA officer corps continues with yet another defense minister “under investigation” and a senior admiral on the Central Military Commission sacked.
This made me think that Xi might be feeling a bit sad as this is the fourth defense minister in a row that has fallen victim to the unrelenting campaign for Party purity. Since Xi came to power in late 2012, the only PRC Defense Minister who hasn’t been disciplined due to corruption is General Liang Guanglie who retired in March 2013. I suspect he could become a target for a corruption investigation… if not for the fact that died at the age of 83 earlier this month (Liang was a thug, in June 1989, he was the commander of the 20th Army and led them to Beijing to participate in the massacre of Chinese students in Tiananmen).
At some point, Xi might have to face the fact that it might not be them, the problem might just be him.
I can almost imagine Xi sitting in his home office listening wistfully on his high-end headphones to Avec Ou Sans Toi (With or Without You) by Pool:
Everything you want
Tears us apart.
With or without
I'm on my own.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Pool, it’s a group of guys from Hamburg, Germany that formed a band a decade ago and performs a sort of washed-out mixture of yacht rock synthesizer and foot-tapping pop. Exactly, the kind of music I imagine that Xi Jinping craves at the end of a long day.
Leading a vanguard party in its quest to make the world safe for Authoritarianism can take a lot out of a man.
Courtesy of ChatGPT and some screenshots of Pool’s video (with some editing).
So, what’s with all the purges?
Clearly, something is rotten in Zhongnanhai. Xi Jinping has been in power for a dozen years and has been waging an “anti-corruption” campaign the entire time. Over a million Party members have been disciplined since he came to power, yet Xi’s own hand-picked officials continue to get sacked and purged for “corruption.” Are these guys just that dumb?
Take for example the position of Minister of National Defense, a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC) which controls the PLA, and a member of the State Council, which the Party uses to administer the country. Like all senior members of the PRC military, these are Party men who owe their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party first and foremost. Xi Jinping is on his third Defense Minister in less than two years, and it appears that he just purged his latest one.
NOTE – I’m not particularly superstitious… but, if I were named the next Chinese Defense Minister, I probably wouldn’t attend the 22nd IISS Shangri La Dialogue scheduled for next June. No sense in tempting fate, right?
If we go back to General Wei Fenghe’s predecessor, General Chang Wanquan (PRC Defense Minister March 2013 to March 2018), Xi went after him for “corruption” a year after he retired in March 2018, demoting him two grades to deputy regional commander level (better treatment that Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu got, who were both striped of their ranks and expelled from the Party). Chang Wanquan punishment was due to his association with two Vice Chairmen of the CMC, General Guo Boxiong and General Xu Caihou, that Xi Jinping purged in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
One begins to suspect that it isn’t “corruption” that is the problem, as you would assume that folks would start getting the message. The problem is more likely political loyalty, though I doubt we will learn many details.
It also went public this week, that Admiral Miao Hua is under investigation for “corruption.” Miao is the PLA’s leading political commissar and has held a senior position on the Central Military Commission since at least 2017. To have kept this position for so long, one has to assume he had the trust and confidence of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Xi Jinping.
Admiral Miao shaking hands with another die-hard Leninist, Cuban leader Raul Castro, in 2019.
For the military’s leading and long-serving political commissar to be implicated in corruption suggests that just about everyone must be corrupt.
Does this constant rectification campaign against the PLA mean it is a hollow force, or does it mean that Xi is seriously pursuing an effort to make the PLA more combat ready and loyal to the Party? I suppose both could be true.
***
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope folks got to spend time with their families and reflect on what they have been thankful for over the past year.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2024
A Chinese commercial vessel that has been surrounded by European warships in international waters for a week is central to an investigation of suspected sabotage that threatens to test the limits of maritime law—and heighten tensions between Beijing and European capitals.
Investigators suspect that the crew of the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier—225 meters long, 32 meters wide and loaded with Russian fertilizer—deliberately severed two critical data cables last week as its anchor was dragged along the Baltic seabed for over 100 miles.
Their probe now centers on whether the captain of the Chinese-owned ship, which departed the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga on Nov. 15, was induced by Russian intelligence to carry out the sabotage. It would be the latest in a series of attacks on Europe’s critical infrastructure that law-enforcement and intelligence officials say have been orchestrated by Russia.
“It’s extremely unlikely that the captain would not have noticed that his ship dropped and dragged its anchor, losing speed for hours and cutting cables on the way,” said a senior European investigator involved in the case.
The ship’s Chinese owner, Ningbo Yipeng Shipping, is cooperating with the investigation and has allowed the vessel to be stopped in international waters, according to people familiar with the probe. The company declined to comment.
The damage to undersea cables occurred in Swedish waters on Nov. 17-18, prompting that country’s authorities to open a sabotage investigation. Russia has denied wrongdoing.
COMMENT – Allies are finding it very difficult to determine what they can do to respond to these kinds of attacks against critical infrastructure.
One thing seems pretty clear to me: both Beijing and Moscow are not afraid of retaliation or escalation. They feel confident, that the Europeans and Americans will “manage the competition” by looking for offramps to prevent escalation. This provides Beijing and Moscow with enormous advantages.
The most amazing part about this whole thing is that I continue to hear from European counterparts that: “clearly the Chinese didn’t intend to do this… they must have been dupped by the Russians somehow.”
I bet they are laughing hysterically in Zhongnanhai at the naïveté of European political leaders.
This reminds me of the success Moscow had with their “little green men” ruse back in 2014 when they seized Crimea. Despite mountains of evidence, European political leaders (side-eye at Angela Merkel) simply did not WANT to believe that Russia had invaded Ukraine, therefore they clung to any deceptions Moscow threw their way, like a drowning man clings to driftwood.
I suspect the same thing will unfold with this situation. The Germans, French, and Spanish, who don’t WANT to believe the Chinese are openly attacking European critical infrastructure, will miraculously convince themselves that the Chinese really didn’t do it.
They will say to themselves: “But the Chinese need us, they would be crazy to do something like this, therefore either the Russians are tricking us, or the Americans are.”
Deep in the subconsciousness of European political leaders will be the truth: the Europeans need the Chinese to deter Trump from imposing trade restrictions on Europe… so admitting the Chinese are behind this attack must be avoided at all costs. Taking action against the PRC, well that’s just impossible.
This truth is apparent in Angela Merkel’s new memoir that went on sale this week.
In her memoir, she describes her rationale for pressing forward with Nord Stream 2 after 2014. She viewed it as a geopolitical necessity to establish strong economic dependencies with Russia since she feared being dependent economically on the United States for natural gas which was available only through fracking (gasp!). The fact that Germany was already dependent on the United States for security (and Merkel’s decisions to continue Germany’s unilateral disarmament), seems to get little to no consideration.
2. TikTok CEO summoned to European Parliament over role in shock Romania election
Nicholas Vinocur and Pieter Haeck, Politico, November 26, 2024
The role of Chinese-owned TikTok is under scrutiny following the shock victory of a far-right candidate in Romania’s election.
A top EU lawmaker is demanding that TikTok's chief executive appear before the European Parliament to answer questions about the platform's role in Sunday's Romanian presidential election, as researchers warn of covert activity on thousands of fake accounts leading up to the vote.
The first-round victory of the ultranationalist and pro-Russian Călin Georgescu has triggered shockwaves about the political trajectory of the EU and NATO country, with many concerns focused on how a TikTok campaign managed to propel an unknown candidate from obscurity. A second-round will be held on Dec. 8.
"We call on the CEO of TikTok to come to speak in this house and to ensure his platform conducted to no infringement under the DSA," Valérie Hayer, head of the liberal Renew Europe group, told a press conference on Thursday, referring to the Digital Services Act, Europe's rulebook for online content.
"Romania is a warning bell: Radicalization and disinformation can happen all over Europe with harmful consequences," added Hayer, an ally of French President Emmanuel Macron.
Hayer's appeal comes only two days after Georgescu's shock victory. He had no party backing and polls had failed to pick up on his popularity — though researchers are now zeroing on a major TikTok campaign he led in the days leading up to the election.
"We believed that Tiktok was misused and was led to be misused by him and an army of fake accounts that were used for his purpose," said Bogdan Manolea, executive director of the Romanian campaign group, Association for Technology and Internet.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Tuesday said funding for Georgescu's campaign on TikTok needed to be reviewed. "It's a system, I don't know how legal it is, I understood how the system was used. The source of financing, in my opinion, is to be followed, 'follow the money.'"
There is, however, no proof at this stage of involvement by Russia or other state actors.
Manolea added TikTok should have seen the "wave of thousands of fake accounts" and that the company should be responsible for that under the DSA.
While paid political advertising isn't allowed under TikTok's terms and conditions, this time that rule was "largely ineffective," said Keith Kiely, coordinator for the Bulgarian Romanian Observatory on Digital Media.
The platform had a "significant influence" in the elections, he added.
It's not the first time that TikTok, which is owned by China's Bytedance, has come in for criticism in the EU. In 2023, Macron called TikTok "deceptively innocent" and a cause of "real addiction" among users, though the EU has yet to levy any major fines or penalties against the platform.
"These highly speculative reports about the Romanian elections are inaccurate and misleading, as most candidates have established a TikTok presence and the winners campaigned on other digital platforms beyond ours," TikTok spokesperson Paolo Ganino said.
TikTok set up an election center inside the app to provide reliable election information and partnered with a local NGO to boost digital literacy and counter disinformation.
This story has been updated with comments from TikTok.
COMMENT – Wait a second!
Is this article suggesting that a social media platform that is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and that large swaths of young adults use to get their news, is being used to interfere with and manipulate an election in Europe!?!
I’m completely shocked!!!
Who could possibly have predicted that this could happen in 2024?
3. US secures release of 3 Americans in prisoner swap with China
Jennifer Hansler, CNN, November 27, 2024
Three Americans who had been detained in China for years have been released in a prisoner swap between Washington and Beijing.
“We are pleased to announce the release of Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung from detention in the People’s Republic of China,” a US National Security Council spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday. “Soon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years.”
The Americans were released in exchange for unidentified Chinese nationals and are now in US custody, according to a US official. On Wednesday, the US also lowered its travel advisory level to Level 2: Exercise increased caution for mainland China. Politico first reported the release of the Americans.
“Thanks to this Administration’s efforts and diplomacy with the PRC, all of the wrongfully detained Americans in the PRC are home,” the spokesperson said Wednesday.
Li and Swidan had been designated as wrongfully detained by the US State Department.
Their release takes place fewer than two months before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. It follows years of quiet diplomatic efforts by the Biden administration, with President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and other US officials engaging with their counterparts on the matter.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington declined to comment for this story.
In a statement Wednesday evening, Kai Li’s son, Harrison Li, said his family “enthusiastically welcomes the news that Kai has been released from captivity after just over 3,000 days of wrongful detention.”
“We express our deepest gratitude to the many agencies, individuals, and non-governmental organizations that made this day possible,” Harrison Li wrote, expressing particular gratitude to Biden, the National Security Council and the State Department.
“Even without the pressure of a looming election, they delivered just in time for the holidays,” he said.
He thanked US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns for visiting his father three times and the US Consulate in Shanghai for “ensuring Kai’s physical and mental well-being throughout his detention.”
“We urge President Joe Biden to use the remaining days in his administration to bring home the remaining Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad,” Harrison Li said.
Another wrongfully detained American, David Lin, was freed from China in September.
COMMENT – I’m glad Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung have been released. They, and their families, have suffered enormous pain. The Chinese Communist Party used them as pawns in a decade long battle of hostage diplomacy with the United States.
But we should consider what the Biden Administration traded them for. It appears that the Administration released convicted members of the PRC Ministry of State Security. It would be great if the Administration would be transparent with the American people on this. More disturbingly, the State Department lowered it’s travel warning advisory in exchange for their release (at least it appears that way).
In 2018, the State Department raised the travel advisory level to 3, “Reconsider Travel”, and this week as these three hostages were released, the State Department lowered the level to 2, “Exercise Increased Caution”… the same level for our allies Germany, Belgium, and the United Kingdom.
The threat of arbitrary detention and exit bans in the PRC hasn’t changed at all… in fact, it is likely higher now that the Chinese Communist Party understands that it can extract concessions if it holds American citizens hostage.
My recommendation: No American citizen should travel to the PRC, Hong Kong, or Macau (which interestingly remains at Level 3, “Reconsider Travel”).
4. Volkswagen to Exit China’s Xinjiang Region After 12 Years
Keith Bradsher, New York Times, November 27, 2024
The automaker has long been criticized by human rights activists for doing business in the territory, where China has repressed Muslim ethnic groups.
Volkswagen said on Wednesday that it was disposing of its ownership stakes in facilities in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, exiting an area now known for the country’s crackdown on predominantly Muslim ethnic groups there.
Volkswagen had a joint venture assembly plant in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, as well as two test tracks in the region, maintaining the largest and most visible presence in Xinjiang of any multinational company. That drew condemnation from human rights groups. The United States and a growing number of European countries bar imports from Xinjiang because of evidence of forced labor there.
The Chinese government, which denies the accusations of forced labor, has put heavy pressure on global companies to keep doing business in Xinjiang. In September, the Ministry of Commerce began investigating whether PVH, the corporate parent of the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger clothing brands, had taken “discriminatory measures” by not buying products from Xinjiang.
BASF, the German chemicals giant, has tried for a year to obtain Chinese government permission to dispose of its stakes in two manufacturing joint ventures in Xinjiang. BASF said on Wednesday that it was in negotiations to sell both stakes, but did not identify possible buyers.
For Volkswagen, the assembly plant in Urumqi did not just become a political liability — it was also a money loser, because it was designed to make gasoline-powered cars. China has swiftly adopted electric vehicles in the last four years, and half the cars sold in China are now either battery-electric or plug-in hybrid cars.
COMMENT – Volkswagen has an abysmal record on human rights.
5. Trump camp says China is ‘attacking’ U.S. with fentanyl. A fight looms
Michael Martina and Antoni Slodkowski, Reuters, November 26, 2024
President Joe Biden‘s fentanyl diplomacy with China is under scrutiny as President-elect Donald Trump’s team seeks a harder line to stop the flow of Chinese-made chemicals powering America’s epidemic. Tariffs are just part of the discussion.
Donald Trump’s return to power portends a shakeup in the U.S. approach to addressing America’s fentanyl crisis and what counternarcotics officials say is the biggest obstacle to solving it: China.
Advisors to the Republican president-elect’s transition team are advocating a much more aggressive posture towards Beijing over fentanyl than the one adopted by Democratic incumbent Joe Biden.
Already, Trump is signaling that to stem the flow of narcotics he will resort to his weapon of choice: tariffs.
In posts on Monday on Truth Social, his social network, he promised additional 10% tariffs on goods from China, and 25% duties on merchandise from Mexico and Canada. Trump claimed these nations have not taken strong enough action to stop illicit drugs, particularly fentanyl, from entering the United States. He said his many talks with China about stopping the flow of drugs were “to no avail.”
Trump’s advisors are likewise pushing for U.S. sanctions on Chinese financial institutions allegedly linked to the fentanyl trade. Trump will be the ultimate decider.
China is the dominant source of chemical precursors used by Mexican cartels to produce fentanyl, while Chinese money launderers have become key players in the international drug trade, U.S. authorities say. The Biden administration has been negotiating with Beijing for the past year to crack down on both. Diplomacy has yielded promising but modest results so far. That has frustrated some U.S. security officials and China hawks who say the U.S. must ratchet up the pressure to get Beijing’s leadership to act.
“When you don’t do those things, then you’re a doormat,” said Steve Yates, a China expert and former national security official in the George W. Bush administration. Yates, who is not formally involved with the president-elect’s transition team, has advised Trump’s circle on fentanyl policy. Over the past decade, more than 400,000 Americans have died of synthetic opioid overdoses, including Yates’ daughter, who died last year.
Yates and others counseling the Trump team say one of the quickest and surest ways for Washington to get Beijing’s attention is to sanction Chinese banks doing business with money launderers and corrupt chemical sellers.
Foreign banks hit with U.S. sanctions can’t engage with American financial institutions or access the U.S. dollar, severely curtailing their ability to transact business internationally, according to Edward Fishman, a sanctions expert at Columbia University. He said Washington can also freeze U.S. assets held in sanctioned banks.
It’s a powerful weapon that has been wielded against financial institutions in countries of some U.S. adversaries such as Iran and Russia, but never against banks in Mexico and China tied to drug trafficking, according to David Asher, a top former U.S. anti-money laundering official who helped target the finances of the Islamic State terrorist group.
“You need to hit all the bankers. It’s sort of basic,” said Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington.
Asher formulated a preliminary plan circulating in Trump transition circles that calls for a whole-of-government task force incorporating all aspects of U.S. diplomatic, law enforcement and financial power to address the fentanyl crisis.
Parts of the plan, shared with Reuters, call for criminal indictments of major Chinese and Mexican financial institutions allegedly laundering money for the cartels; mass sanctions on Chinese companies and people implicated in the fentanyl trade; beefed-up bounties on most-wanted traffickers; cyber warfare against Mexican cartels; and a U.S. intelligence agency focus on fentanyl that’s commensurate with the war on terrorist organizations.
COMMENT – I expect we are going to hear a LOT more about the complicity of the Chinese Communist Party in the killings of hundreds of thousands of Americans over the past several years.
As I’ve written on a number of occasions, I think it is egregious that the U.S. Government has been sweeping this under the rug and refusing to hold the Party responsible for these crimes. See my April 21, 2024 post, “Beijing’s Covert Fentanyl Campaign Against the United States.”
6. China’s Surveillance State Is Selling Citizen Data as a Side Hustle
Andy Greenberg, Wired, November 21, 2024
Chinese black market operators are openly recruiting government agency insiders, paying them for access to surveillance data and then reselling it online—no questions asked.
China has long been a billion-plus-person experiment in total state surveillance, with virtually no legal checks on the government's ability to physically and digitally monitor its citizens. When so much control of citizens' private data amasses within a few government agencies, however, it doesn't stay there. Instead, that bounty of private info has also leaked onto a lively black market—one where insiders sell off their own access to any scammer or stalker willing to pay.
At the Cyberwarcon security conference in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday, researchers from the cybersecurity firm SpyCloud plan to present their findings from monitoring a collection of black market services that offer cheap and easy searches of Chinese citizens' data. The vendors in many cases obtain that sensitive information by recruiting insiders from Chinese surveillance agencies and government contractors and then reselling their access, no questions asked, to online buyers. The result is an ecosystem that operates in full public view where, for as little as a few dollars worth of cryptocurrency, anyone can query phone numbers, banking details, hotel and flight records, or even location data on target individuals.
“China has created this massive surveillance apparatus,” says Aurora Johnson, one of the two SpyCloud researchers who has tracked how surveillance data leaks to the black market. “And ordinary individuals find themselves working in a system where there's not much economic and social mobility and where they have unfettered access to these databases of information based on their jobs in government or at technology companies. So they're abusing that access, in many cases by stealing data and selling it in criminal marketplaces.”
The SpyCloud researchers focused on Chinese-language data vendors that offer their services in accounts on the messaging service Telegram, including ones called Carllnet, DogeSGK, and X-Ray. The services, each of which has tens of thousands of members in its Telegram group, describe themselves as SGKs or “shègōng kù,” which the researchers translate as “social engineering libraries”—a name that suggests the services are perhaps primarily used by scammers. All three services use a point system in which customers can make payments—usually in the cryptocurrency Tether, though in some cases the Chinese payment services WePay and Alipay are accepted—for “points,” or earn them by inviting other customers. Customers can then cash in those credits to carry out searches based on identifiers ranging from names or email addresses to phone numbers to usernames on China's QQ, WeChat, or Weibo social networks.
In response to those search queries, the services promise data and records on targets including phone numbers, call records, bank accounts, marriage records, vehicle registrations, hotel bookings, and myriad other personal information. For higher payments that range into the hundreds of dollars, the services also offer premium searches for even more sensitive information like passport images or geolocation records, the SpyCloud researchers say, though they only conducted limited experiments on those premium searches. Some of the services specifically promise detailed access to data from China's “big three” state-owned telecommunications firms: China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile.
WIRED reached out to Carllnet, DogeSGK, and X-Ray via Telegram, as well as the big three Chinese telecoms whose data they claim to have access to, but none of them responded to requests for comment.
In some cases, the services appear to draw on breached databases—collections of data that have been leaked online by hackers—as well as commercially collected data sources similar to those offered by Western data brokers, such as the location data hoovered up by many free smartphone apps. But they also appear to offer information from insiders at tech and telecom firms, banks, and China's state surveillance agencies, and even openly post ads seeking to recruit staffers of those organizations looking for an extra source of income. “Sincerely looking for public security personnel to establish cooperation,” reads one ad posted to Telegram, as translated by SpyCloud.
COMMENT – Perhaps the least surprising article of the year… a real dog bites man story.
7. VIDEO - Critical Issues in the US-China Science and Technology Relationship
Hoover Institution, November 14, 2024
Both the United States and the People’s Republic of China see sustaining leadership in science and technology as foundational to national security and economic prosperity. Policymakers on both sides of the Pacific have taken action to promote indigenous innovation, and to protect research from misappropriation and malign technology transfer. A distinguished panel of scientists and China scholars discuss these dynamics and their implications.
8. U.S. Zoos Gave a Fortune to Protect Pandas. That’s Not How China Spent It.
Mara Hvistendahl, New York Times, November 29, 2024
For decades, American zoos have raised tens of millions of dollars from donors and sent the money to China for the right to host and display pandas. Under U.S. law, those funds were required to be spent protecting pandas in the wild.
But the Chinese government instead spent millions on apartment buildings, roads, computers, museums and other expenses, records show. For years, China refused even to account for millions more.
Regulators with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the payments, have for two decades raised concerns about this with American zoo administrators and Chinese officials alike. The U.S. government, on three occasions, froze payments to China over incomplete record keeping, documents show.
Zoos, too, have known that the money was not always going toward conservation. But they worried that if Fish and Wildlife cut off the money altogether, China could demand the return of its bears. Zoos count on pandas for visitors, merchandise sales and media attention.
Ultimately, the regulators allowed the money to keep flowing and agreed not to check the spending in China so thoroughly, according to records and former officials.
“There was always pushing back and forth about how the U.S. shouldn’t ask anything,” said Kenneth Stansell, a former Fish and Wildlife official who traveled to China throughout the 2000s to discuss pandas. He said his Chinese counterparts argued that “it shouldn’t be of any concern to the U.S. government.”
None of this has been revealed to the public.
Where Did the Money Go?
Zoos in the United States pay about $1 million a year to get pairs of pandas from China, an arrangement that regulators allow under a provision of the Endangered Species Act. Animal-rights groups have sued over similar payments for elephants, rhinos and tigers, saying that regulators were distorting the spirit of the law.
Pandas have so far escaped such scrutiny.
Panda rentals have been touted as a major conservation success. But a New York Times investigation found that what the program has done best is breed more pandas for zoos. And the conservation money at the heart of the program has been spent in ways that zoos do not reveal when fund-raising.
The Times used two decades of financial reports, internal correspondence, photos and archival records to track more than $86 million from American zoos to a pair of organizations run by the Chinese government. Zoos elsewhere in the world have contributed tens of millions of dollars more. In wildlife conservation, that is a huge sum, far larger than what zoos have spent in overseas donations for any other species.
Zoos approve which projects get financed and then list them in annual reports to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Those records show that funds were allocated to build apartment buildings far from nature reserves. China also bought computers and satellite television for local government offices and built at least three museums with the money, according to the records.
And American money helped transform a panda breeding center in western China into a bustling attraction that, according to an architect’s plans, may soon welcome as many visitors as Disneyland.
Those payments represent only what was documented. Zoo administrators have at times struggled to persuade their Chinese partners to disclose the spending.
COMMENT – Doing business with entities in the PRC is likely doing business with an organized crime syndicate.
I hope the Justice Department opens investigations into individuals at American zoos and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who knew these crimes were taking place, that they were essentially paying bribes, and did nothing about it. I suspect the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act comes into play.
Shining a light on the corruption and criminality of the Chinese Communist Party and the entities that it controls is absolutely necessary.
Authoritarianism
9. China Defence Minister Dong Jun’s fate unclear as corruption probe sparks differing account
Trevor Hunnicutt, Idrees Ali and Laurie Chen, Reuters, November 28, 2024
The fate of Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun remained unclear on Wednesday, as two U.S. officials told Reuters that he was being investigated for corruption while another urged caution.
The Financial Times first reported that Dong was being investigated as part of a wide-ranging anti-corruption probe that has roiled the top ranks of the People's Liberation Army.
One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that a Chinese investigation into its strategic rocket forces had expanded to other issues in the military and procurement.
The official added that the investigation into Dong was significant because Chinese President Xi Jinping had appointed Dong himself.
But another senior U.S. official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, urged caution on reports about his investigation without offering details on whether the report was accurate.
Dong would be the third consecutive serving or former Chinese defence minister to be investigated for alleged corruption.
COMMENT - Technically, he is the fourth Chinese defense minister investigated for alleged corruption: General Chang Wanquan (demoted in 2019 after retirement for corruption); General Wei Fenghe (striped of rank earlier this year for corruption); General Li Shangfu (striped of rank earlier this year for corruption); and now Admiral Dong Jun.
Admiral Dong Jun at the Shangri La Dialogue in June 2024.
I saw Admiral Dong give his address and do a fireside chat at the Shangri La Dialogue in June and it was an uncomfortable thing to watch.
I covered my impressions in this post (“Let's stop legitimizing the CCP's threats against Taiwan”). At the time, I criticized Dr. Ng Eng Hen, the Singaporean Defense Minister, for legitimizing and rationalizing the CCP’s threats against Taiwan that were made clear in Admiral Dong’s remarks.
Forgive the self-promotion, but it is worth re-reading that post.
10. China’s defence minister placed under investigation for corruption
Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times, November 26, 2024
US officials say probe is part of wider operation to uncover graft in People’s Liberation Army.
China has put its defence minister under investigation in the latest corruption-related scandal to hit the top of the People’s Liberation Army, according to current and former US officials familiar with the situation.Admiral Dong Jun, who was named in December 2023 after his predecessor was fired for corruption, is being investigated as part of a broader probe into graft in the PLA, the US officials said.
He is the third consecutive serving or former defence minister to be investigated for alleged corruption.
Dong succeeded General Li Shangfu, who was ousted after just seven months in the job. Both men were appointed by President Xi Jinping.
The Financial Times was the first to report that US officials believed Li was under investigation for corruption. Li had succeeded Wei Fenghe, who was also placed under investigation for corruption after he retired from the role.
The US officials said Xi was conducting a wave of investigations into the PLA that had ensnared Dong. It remains unclear what kind of corruption allegations he is facing.
The news comes a week after Dong attended an Asian defence meeting in Laos, where he refused to meet US defence secretary Lloyd Austin, which Austin described as “unfortunate”. The two first met in Singapore in May at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue defence forum in the first significant minister-level engagement between the two militaries since November 2022.
China’s defence ministry blamed the US for the rebuff, saying Washington was “solely responsible” because it had recently approved a package of weapons for Taiwan, which for the first time included advanced surface-to-air missiles.
The dispute came days after US President Joe Biden and Xi met at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Peru and reiterated that their militaries should continue to hold direct communications.
China shut down military communication channels with the US in August 2022 after Nancy Pelosi became the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives to visit Taiwan in 25 years.
COMMENT – I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that if you were to investigate any PLA senior officer, you would find that almost all of them are guilty of graft and corruption… these things are endemic inside the system the Chinese Communist Party has built for itself.
Without an independent media and an independent judiciary, and a system that rejects the idea that the Party can or should be constrained by law or held accountable, it is inevitable that graft and corruption will run rampant. First and foremost, Senior Officers of the PLA (as well as the rest of the CCP) are human. When you grant humans unchecked power, they abuse it to benefit themselves and their families.
For all its rhetoric, the Party is just an aristocracy that sees the Chinese people as subjects to be ruled, rather than citizens that they serve.
Leninist political systems have this pathology at their core.
11. China Targets Senior Admiral in New Round of Defense Purges
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2024
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has purged a senior admiral who oversaw political indoctrination in the military, taking down one of his protégés and extending a broad anticorruption crackdown that has rocked Beijing’s defense establishment.
Adm. Miao Hua—a member of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, which commands the armed forces, and the director of its political-work department—has been suspended pending investigation for alleged serious disciplinary violations, a spokesman for China’s Defense Ministry said Thursday.
The spokesman, Sr. Col. Wu Qian, didn’t elaborate on the allegations against Miao when he spoke in a monthly briefing for selected media. Miao couldn’t be reached for comment.
Miao is one of the highest-ranking military officers to be purged under Xi. The admiral’s downfall added another prominent scalp to a disciplinary sweep that has ensnared more than a dozen senior People’s Liberation Army officials and defense-industry executives over the past year and a half.
The shake-up has jarred Xi’s efforts to build a modern fighting force and raised questions over the PLA’s combat readiness. Some Western defense analysts say corruption probes could lead to more scrutiny on personnel appointments and procurement, as well as intensified ideological training, potentially slowing Xi’s military modernization efforts.
The purges also underscored the depth of corruption and ideological decay in China’s military—affecting even officers closely associated with Xi—and could fuel disquiet within the party elite over the leader’s decision-making and personnel picks, said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
Admiral Miao has held the highest rank in the PLA Navy since 2015, in 2017 he joined the Central Military Commission (CMC) as the Director of the Political Work Department of the CMC and before that he was the Political Commissar of the PLA Navy for three years.
COMMENT – The downfall of Admiral Miao Hua is more embarrassing for Xi than the last three defense ministers that he has had to purge. If there was ever a position that was supposed to be “politically reliable,” you would think that the “political commissar” of the entire PLA and a long-time member of the Central Military Commission, would be it.
12. Admiral Miao Hua suspended from duty, pending investigation: Defense Spokesperson
PRC Ministry of National Defense, November 28, 2024
Admiral Miao Hua, member of China's Central Military Commission (CMC) and director of the CMC Political Work Department, is suspected of serious violation of discipline, said Chinese Defense Spokesperson Senior Colonel Wu Qian on Thursday, adding that according to the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Admiral Miao has been suspended from duty, pending investigation.
COMMENT – Both the new PRC Defense Minister and another senior member of the Central Military Commission are under investigation for “corruption” and have been removed from duty.
13. Hong Kong nat. security cases and criminal trials excluded from remote hearings under proposed bill
James Lee, Hong Kong Free Press, November 25, 2024
14. Hong Kong woman arrested over throwing red paint at gov’t headquarters
Kelly Ho, Hong Kong Free Press, November 22, 2024
15. China’s government is badgering women to have babies
The Economist, November 28, 2024
Ms Mao was making lunch one day at her home in the eastern city of Wuxi when she got the phone call. Rather than the courier’s delivery update she was expecting, she found herself subject to an intimate interrogation by a neighbourhood official: When was your last period? Are you pregnant? Do you plan to have a baby?
“It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that could happen in the 21st century,” says the 28-year-old.
COMMENT – Folks have imagined that the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale was something American women should fear… perhaps Margaret Atwood should have set her novel in the People’s Republic of China, rather than a fictional Republic of Gilead, she could title it, The Handmaid’s Tale with Chinese Characteristics.
The Economist, November 28, 2024
A series of violent attacks has shaken China in recent weeks. On November 11th, 35 people were killed and 43 injured when a man drove through a crowd in Zhuhai, a southern city. The police said he was angry at how assets had been divided after his divorce. Five days later in the eastern city of Wuxi, eight were stabbed to death at a vocational school by a former student, said to be unhappy about his pay after graduation.
Three days after that, several people were injured when a car rammed into families waiting outside a primary school in Changde, a city in Hunan, a central province.
COMMENT – So what is the CCP’s response to these attacks? Crack down harder on their subjects, conduct even more surveillance, and pretend it isn’t happening, so that the outside world doesn’t criticize Chinese leaders for their failures.
Rather than practice some introspection and reflect on whether surveillance and social control by the Party breeds this kind of discontent, I suspect the Party will become even more suspicious that “hostile foreign forces” are purposefully destabilizing Chinese society to bring about a “color revolution.”
17. Students Line Up at Facial Recognition Gate While Fleeing Fire
Samuel Wade, China Digital Times, November 23, 2024
18. Ex-Bank of China Chairman Sentenced to Death with Reprieve
Bloomberg, November 26, 2024
19. Hong Kong’s Democracy Movement Receives Its Sentence
Eliot Chen and Rachel Cheung, The Wire China, November 19, 2024
20. Soviet Lessons for China Watching
Ford Hart, CSIS, November 21, 2024
Soviet-origin governing institutions and processes exert enduring influence on the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Its substantially imported political structure arguably has at least as much practical impact on Beijing’s behavior as the ideology it also imported from Moscow. While the PRC is not a carbon copy of the USSR, Soviet lessons still have much to teach observers about Chinese governance.
PRC policy shifts over the past two decades have reinforced the relevance of these lessons, and the increased opacity of the Chinese political system makes it necessary to exploit all available tools to assess its behavior. The Soviet experience illuminates, for instance, the impact of the Leninist apparatus on PRC regime behavior, the challenges for understanding China, and the future of its political system. Key insights include the following:
· The Leninist system’s functional requirements substantially account for China’s conservative departure in recent years.
· The PRC system is opaque by design, with information deployed solely to advance the party-state’s current goals.
· China will ultimately transition from Leninist rule but under unpredictable circumstances and probably only after many more years.
The Soviet model is not China’s destiny; it is only one of several factors that have shaped PRC history and will continue to influence its future. Nonetheless, understanding it is indispensable to making sense of China’s behavior and prospects for change.
The Leninist System
The CCP embraces a Leninist apparatus that exhibits strong continuity with the party-state transferred to Beijing by the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union between the early 1920s and 1950s. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin pioneered its operating norms before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and led the system’s improvisational build-out during its early years in power. Other Soviet leaders, especially Joseph Stalin, contributed to its development.
Leninist regimes—especially the surviving communist states (China, North Korea, Laos, Vietnam, and Cuba) and the two former European ones established principally through indigenous struggle (the USSR and Yugoslavia)—represent a category of authoritarianism with characteristic institutions and processes that manifest recurring patterns of behavior. (The Leninist regimes of other East European communist states were largely external creations that ended with the USSR’s demise.) All authoritarian regimes are repressive, and some practices of Leninist regimes are common among them, but most of them are not Leninist.
A Leninist system features an authoritarian regime in which the ruling elite monopolizes political power in the name of a revolutionary ideology through a highly articulated party structure that parallels, penetrates, and dominates the state at all levels and extends to workplaces, residential areas, and local institutions. Party members are subject to strict discipline and ideological indoctrination, regardless of whether they work in the party apparatus or, like most, outside it.
In its struggle to seize and then hold power, the Bolshevik Party pioneered hallmark institutions long familiar to outside observers: a Central Committee, a secretariat with specialized departments (e.g., propaganda, personnel, and internal discipline), and a supreme leadership body at the very center commonly known as the Politburo—all mirrored at subordinate levels.
From the capital to the most distant locality, a Leninist party controls leadership appointments and transfers not merely within itself and the state but also among the military and security forces, the economy, academia, the media, the arts, religious institutions, social organizations, and beyond. Classic Soviet operational practices—such as centralization, mobilization, united front operations, and cadre self-criticism—endure in China. A ruling Leninist regime always seeks to maintain robustly coercive security services that are loyal, first and foremost, to the party itself. It also exhibits high levels of intervention in the economy, ranging widely from state capitalism to command economics. Control of the economy is as important to party dominance as it is to overall national strength or the popular welfare.
The foundations of CCP ideology also came from Moscow. This body of thought combined a Marxist, class-based economic interpretation of history progressing inexorably toward utopia, Lenin’s own theoretical revisions to Marxism, and, crucial to governance, his advocacy of an elite revolutionary party’s unique role in leading the masses. To a ruling communist party, Marxism-Leninism’s single greatest ideological value may well be in granting the secular equivalent of divine right rule through its role as the sole interpreter of “laws” of history.
Karl Marx’s thoughts on social and economic justice remained enormously appealing, but it was Lenin’s ruthless pragmatism that enabled communist regimes to seize and hold onto power. Chinese communists learned from Moscow that although the content of the ideology could vary substantially, its mere existence was functionally vital to the party’s survival. It is telling that while communist regimes around the world have extensively revised their ideologies, they have been less liberal in modifying core structures, norms, and processes.
It is telling that while communist regimes around the world have extensively revised their ideologies, they have been less liberal in modifying core structures, norms, and processes.
The leadership’s ability to require all party members to embrace its shifting interpretations of reality was and remains an indispensable component of rule. Among the tools at the top leader’s disposal, command of the ideology is a brass ring of power, enabling him not only to legitimize shifting priorities but also suppress opposition and impose unity. Pity the poor Chinese communist who, over a long membership, has been expected to accept unconditionally the “scientific” need for, variously, a Soviet command economy, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, “reform and opening,” and now a New Era of economic statism and intensified political control.
No notion of limited government constrains a Leninist party. Like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), CCP official doctrine explicitly extols the concentration of power in its hands and rejects external restraints. Through the party’s penetration of the state, society, and the economy, it can mobilize markedly disparate powers to advance its goals. Its core ruling institutions tend to be very durable: The Central Committee is now over a century old, and the CCP itself has governed all of China for over 75 years. Central Party officials operate within longstanding administrative norms, draw on time-tested doctrine, and have the luxury of long-term planning horizons.
Unfettered by legal or normative limits to the regime’s reach into society or abroad, expedience in the service of the party is the North Star of decisionmaking at all levels. Political interests and vulnerabilities are always front and center in internal deliberations, reflecting the CCP’s origin story—it understands subversion all too well—and the internal surveillance system’s daily reminders of threats great and small.
Therefore, a ruling Leninist party like China’s is permanently on alert to threats to its power. It is paranoid by design. This is in part ideological (e.g., the assumed hostility of “counterrevolutionary” forces at home and capitalist countries abroad) but is more a habit of rule in a system that brooks no challenge. Like most Leninist party-states, the CCP eschews an independent civil society and seeks to dominate all institutions. A Leninist party seeks not merely its survival but its unbroken monopoly on power.
Like all political systems, Leninist regimes can adapt to changing circumstances to a considerable extent without losing their essential characteristics. Yugoslavia, driven by existential threat, managed to sustain significant economic and social liberalization. Understanding tensions and tendencies within the Leninist model nonetheless helps explain why China has experienced a historic conservative shift over the past 20 years toward reinforced centralization, sweeping internal discipline campaigns, ideological orthodoxy, and suppression of civil society.
Observers naturally contrast these policies with those of the preceding “reform and opening” period, which Deng Xiaoping launched in 1978. Deng was, in fact, no less committed to Leninist rule, as he demonstrated brutally on June 4, 1989. Amid the rubble of the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s, however, desperation to save the party-state drove him and his peers to radical experimentation: agricultural decollectivization, the gradual introduction of market forces, and a retreat of the party from the average citizen’s daily life. While democracy was never on offer, the changes at the time were remarkable and exhibited a surprising tolerance for risk to Leninist prerogatives.
While reform and opening delivered on growth and revitalization, it also diluted the system’s controls, reduced discipline, and unleashed pressures for liberalization. The Tiananmen Square crackdown put a halt to official consideration of political change, but continued economic reform and attendant societal developments in the 1990s and 2000s further undermined the Leninist system.
Once reform and opening propelled China to a certain level of wealth and power, however, the arguments for further gambling with party equities were bound to encounter increasing opposition. The principal forces behind this counterreformation were internal to the CCP, organic, and flowed from longstanding discomfort with the political effects of reform and perceptions of a shifting cost-benefit ratio. This resistance began to coalesce well before Xi Jinping’s 2012 ascent to power. As Professor Susan Shirk argues in her important volume Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise, the process likely began in earnest no later than the mid-2000s.
For governments that represent themselves as innately progressive, communist regimes are, in practice, notably conservative and intolerant. The CPSU’s Leninist threat perceptions extended far beyond the conventional political sphere, so it was logical that the Kremlin would reject not merely explicit opposition but also unsanctioned manifestations of ethnic identity, religious faith, women’s and other human rights, sexual identity, artistic creativity, intellectual exploration, and economic activity.
China’s reform and opening period affirmed that some liberalization in all these areas was possible under a Leninist system. Nonetheless, limits always remained in place; the control apparatus never disappeared, and the party elite ultimately united against a growing threat to the system’s very existence. Conservatism and intolerance in today’s China reflect not merely Xi Jinping’s whim but the same logic that drove Soviet behavior.
Recognizing the PRC party-state as a familiar political model, in fact, helps deepen understanding of Xi Jinping himself. Xi is the ultimate company man. However much his tumultuous youth informs his views, his professional life has been one of a decades-long ascent through a complex, established institution. Xi is the product and beneficiary of a distinct bureaucratic culture. His comparators are not revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, or Deng Xiaoping but leaders who came of age under ruling Leninist orders—say, Leonid Brezhnev or Jiang Zemin. The former were innovators: often visionary, necessarily iconoclastic. The latter were creatures of established bureaucracies in which institutional interests and preservation of the system were paramount. While not necessarily the gray apparatchiks of Western fancy, neither were these bureaucratic autocrats likely to challenge the fundamentals of a system that defined their very perceptions of threat.
National power, wealth, and popular welfare are important to Leninist leaders, but internal dominance—not mere survival—ultimately takes precedence. No liberal democracies and comparatively few authoritarian systems judge policy by such a broad scope of aspirations for regime control. China’s affirmation of a statist economy at the July 2024 Third Central Committee Plenum makes sense in this context, and it is unlikely that Beijing’s subsequent stimulus measures will represent a fundamental change to this course.
Indeed, it is entirely reasonable that the CCP today willingly takes a pass on the higher growth rates genuine market reforms could yield, correctly recognizing them as intrinsically dangerous politically. A systemic rebalancing of the economy to favor consumption is off the table for the same reason. If Beijing doubles down on state control, technology, and officially sanctioned innovation as economic drivers, it is largely because the regime’s political imperatives rule out structural alternatives.
Meanwhile, Beijing’s leftist shift has deepened the conformism typical of Leninist systems. From 1978, reform and opening gradually introduced greater willingness among leaders at all levels to take risks to promote growth, then their primary goal. Party members today operate in a climate of sharply reduced risk tolerance and appreciate that everything is political again—or could be at any time.
Xi’s perpetual anti-corruption campaign has raised the stakes for all leaders and penalizes not merely malfeasance but also failure to perceive and implement the Center’s will—itself harder to divine than before, with security in myriad forms having been prioritized to the same extent as economic development. At the very time subordinate officials are under pressure to obey and please, economic malaise robs them of tools to satisfy their political masters and increases the chances that poor local performance will invite punishment.
COMMENT – For too long, the community of China Watchers has ignored the Leninist DNA within 21st Century China. For many, they accepted the claims by Chinese leadership that the PRC’s political culture was sui generis, as opposed to being largely imported from the Soviet Union.
Given the efforts by Xi Jinping and his leading cadres, we should go back and dust off books like Philip Selznick’s The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics, if we want to understand the rival we are facing (here is the pdf of the 1952 version of Selznick’s RAND report).
21. China’s Police Are Preying on Small Firms in Search of Cash
Li Yuan, New York Times, November 26, 2024
22. Chinese censors delete fried rice gags linked to death of Mao’s son
Radio Free Asia, November 26, 2024
23. Mandarin speech contests in Tibet are attempts to erase native language, experts say
Radio Free Asia, November 13, 2024
24. EU Proposes to Sanction Chinese Firms Aiding Russia’s War
Alberto Nardelli, Bloomberg, November 25, 2024
25. EU To Target Chinese Firms with Asset Freezes, Visa Bans for Aiding Russia in Ukraine
Reid Standish, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, November 25, 2024
Environmental Harms
26. China Slowdown Pushes Top Polluter Towards Emissions Peak
Dan Murtaugh and Shadab Nazmi, Bloomberg, November 22, 2024
Foreign Interference and Coercion
27. Will Denmark Expose Chinese-Russian Sabotage in the Baltic?
Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy, November 20, 2024
28. Shattering the Mirage: China’s Actual Influence in the Middle East and North Africa
Dale Aluf, SIGNAL Group, November 21, 2024
29. Manila and Beijing Clarify Select South China Sea Claims
Harrison Prétat and Gregory B. Poling, CSIS, November 21, 2024
30. Chinese hi-tech staff and students on study tours targeted by foreign governments: MSS
Vanessa Cai, South China Morning Post, November 26, 2024
31. Chinese Ship’s Crew Suspected of Deliberately Dragging Anchor for 100 Miles to Cut Baltic Cables
Bojan Pancevski, Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2024
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
32. Overseas Chinese activists mark two years since White Paper protests
William Yang, VOA, November 25, 2024
33. Is China headed for new White Paper protests?
Yuchen Li, DW, November 25, 2024
Massimo Introvigne, Bitter Winter, November 28, 2024
Ten years ago, in 2014, what will become one of the most famous “cult crimes” of the century was perpetrated in a McDonald’s diner in China. A young woman was killed by missionaries of a religious movement she had refused to listen to. Immediately, Chinese propaganda attributed the crime to the largest and most persecuted Christian new religious movement in China, The Church of Almighty God (CAG). This version of the facts was uncritically repeated by some Western correspondents in Beijing, which caused enormous problems and suffering for the CAG members, not only in China but throughout the world. Ten years thereafter, we know it was one of the largest Chinese fake news operations. The CAG was not responsible for the murder. The crime really happened, but had been perpetrated by a different new religious movement.
To this very day, some Western sources credit Emily Dunn, an Australian scholar who wrote the first pioneer scholarly book on the CAG, or me for having clarified that the McDonald’s murder was perpetrated by a group different from the CAG. In fact, this is not true. The homework making Dunn’s and my own research possible was done and published in 2014 by “Beijing News,” a daily newspaper with a certain reputation of independence whose publisher is the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Well before me or Dunn, Beijing News had published both a full story of the group responsible for the murder, based on the investigative work of its journalists Xiao Hui and Zhang Yongsheng, and the key part of the trial’s transcripts. Based on their investigation and the transcripts, Xiao and Hui explained to their readers that actually the perpetrators of the crime claimed that, unlike their group, the CAG “was a cult,” and applauded the government’s repression of it.
Well before the expression “fake news” became fashionable, scholars of religion noticed how rumors were spread against “bad” religions and made credible by both their reiteration and their endorsement by supposedly authoritative sources. As early as 1960, the later American historian David Brion Davis studied how what we would today call fake news was spread in the nineteenth century against Catholicism and other minority religions in the United States. The same phenomenon was noticed with respect to “cults” during the 20th-century “cult wars,” when scholars of new religious movements crossed swords with militant opponents of the “cults.”
In all these cases, however, the fake news about religions labeled “heresies” or “cults” was spread by private entrepreneurs: secular antireligious activists or anti-cultists, or rival religionists. In recent years we have witnessed the spread of fake news about religious movements organized, in a much more systematic way, not by private but by public actors. In 2017, for example, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were “liquidated” and banned in Russia. The Putin administration was obviously annoyed by the almost unanimous condemnation of this move by international organizations, Western states, academics, and leading NGOs in Russia and abroad. One of the results of this situation was a flourishing of blogs, groups, and social network pages accusing the Jehovah’s Witnesses of a great variety of wrongdoings, most of them ostensibly managed by people presenting themselves as former Witnesses. No doubt, several of these websites were genuine expressions of the anger of disgruntled former members. However, their simultaneous appearances in different countries in the weeks after the Russian liquidation decision may not have been entirely coincidental.
China has deployed a similarly massive action to justify its persecution of movements on its lists of xie jiao (“movements spreading heterodox teachings,” sometimes less correctly translated as “evil cults”). In recent years, Chinese propaganda supporting the anti-xie-jiao campaigns has focused on the CAG. In June 2017, for example, the CAG leaked to a number of scholars (including the present author) a document allegedly transcribing the content of a teleconference of June 16, 2014, wherein officers of the Chinese Central Office for the Prevention and Handling of Cults (also referred to as Central Office 610) discussed the CAG. They recommended, “Firmly grasp the typical case of ‘May 28 McDonald’s Murder’ in one hand to expose the reactionary nature, deceptive tricks and serious threats of the cult . . . [and] vigorously promote foreign projects [of propaganda].” A crime committed in 2014 by a religious group different from the CAG was transformed by Chinese propaganda into a CAG crime through a massive operation of fake news spread both at home and internationally.
35. Reconstructing Political Spaces: The Transformation and Resistance of Halloween Celebrations
Human Rights in China, November 25, 2024
36. U.S. Adds Nearly 30 Chinese Companies to Forced-Labor Blacklist
Richard Vanderford, Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2024
37. Tibetan environmentalist released after serving nearly 15 years in prison
Choegyi and Yangdon, Radio Free Asia, November 20, 2024
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
38. How China Became the World’s Largest Car Exporter
Agnes Chang and Keith Bradsher, New York Times, November 29, 2024
39. Assessing US-China tech competition in the Global South
Hanna Dohmen, Atlantic Council, November 20, 2024
40. Nepal PM heads to China ahead of India, breaking tradition
Deepak Adhikari, Nikkei Asia, November 26, 2024
41. China slowdown-hit companies diversify into family office services
Echo Wong and Peggy Ye, Nikkei Asia, November 25, 2024
42. How America’s War on Chinese Tech Backfired
Scott Kennedy, Foreign Affairs, November 26, 2024
43. The surprising stagnation of Asia’s middle classes
The Economist, November 21, 2024
44. The True Impact of Allied Export Controls on the U.S. and Chinese Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Industries
Gregory C. Allen, CSIS, November 26, 2024
45. How Shanghai’s ambition to be the ‘future of finance’ fell apart
Thomas Hale and Cheng Leng, Financial Times, November 25, 2024
46. Chamber of Commerce sees new US export crackdown on China, email says
Alexandra Alper, Reuters, November 22, 2024
47. Backlash Against Chinese Steel Gives Preview of Trump Trade Tensions
Jacky Wong, Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2024
48. How Trump’s Tariffs on China Changed U.S. Trade, in Charts
Inti Pacheco, Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2024
49. To Challenge China, India Needs to Get Out of the Way of Its Factory Owners
Shan Li and Megha Mandavia, Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2024
50. China Is Building 30,000 Miles of High-Speed Rail—That It Might Not Need
Brian Spegele, Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2024
51. Trump’s Trade Agenda Could Benefit Friends and Punish Rivals
Ana Swanson, New York Times, November 23, 2024
52. Russia’s ‘economic isolation’ seen benefiting China amid fresh US sanctions
Kandy Wong, South China Morning Post, November 25, 2024
53. China’s border with Central Asia deemed concern amid demographic decline
Luna Sun, South China Morning Post, November 24, 2024
54. Mexico Gets Cold Feet Over New Chinese EV Plant After Trump Win
Santiago Pérez and Raffaele Huang, South China Morning Post, November 26, 2024
55. Scots stand firm on Chinese wind turbine factory despite ‘hostile state’ fears
Rachel Millard and Simeon Kerr, Financial Times, November 25, 2024
56. After Trump’s Tariff Threat, Is a China Currency War Next?
Keith Bradsher, New York Times, November 26, 2024
57. China Is Bombarding Tech Talent with Job Offers. The West Is Freaking Out.
Bertrand Benoit, Liza Lin, Heather Somerville, and Kim Mackrael, Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2024
58. Is China a ‘Developing’ Country? That’s the Trillion-Dollar Question at U.N. Climate Talks
Matthew Dalton, Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2024
Cyber & Information Technology
59. Nvidia Boss Urges Global Cooperation During Hong Kong Trip
Annabelle Droulers and Lauren Faith Lau, Bloomberg, November 22, 2024
60. India banned a Chinese app four years ago. Government agencies are still using it
Ananya Bhattacharya, Rest of World, November 26, 2024
61. China’s New Effort to Achieve Cyber Sovereignty
Open Technology Fund, November 12, 2024
62. S. Africa's MTN Teams up With China Telecom, Huawei on 5G, AI
Reuters, U.S. News & World Report, November 26, 2024
63. This Battery Startup Raised $15 Billion. Then It Went Bust.
Kim Mackrael, Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2024
64. Exclusive: Huawei aims to mass-produce newest AI chip in early 2025, despite US curbs
Fanny Potkin, Reuters, November 20, 2024
65. Huawei to launch phone with own software in sign of China-US splintering
Ryan McMorrow and Nian Liu, Financial Times, November 24, 2024
66. China sets deadline for Big Tech to clear algorithm issues, close ‘echo chambers’
Hayley Wong, South China Morning Post, November 24, 2024
67. China’s Huawei Takes Aim at Apple with Latest Smartphone
Meaghan Tobin and John Liu, New York Times, November 26, 2024
Military and Security Threats
68. Chinese ships gather near island disputed with Philippines, satellite images show
Greg Torode, Reuters, November 28, 2024
69. China could launch military drills near Taiwan over president's Pacific visit
Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard, Reuters, November 27, 2024
China is likely to launch military drills in the coming days near Taiwan, using President Lai Ching-te's upcoming trip to the Pacific and scheduled U.S. transit as a pretext, according to assessments by Taiwan and regional security officials.
Lai will start a visit to Taipei's three diplomatic allies in the Pacific on Saturday, and sources told Reuters he was planning stops in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam in a sensitive trip coming shortly after the U.S. election.
70. Ahead of Taiwan president's Hawaii trip, China says it will defeat secessionism
Laurie Chen and Yimou Lee, Reuters, November 28, 2024
China's military on Thursday vowed to defeat all attempts at secessionism and urged the United States not to send the wrong signals on Taiwan independence, ahead of a trip by Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te to Hawaii as part of a Pacific tour.
China claims democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory and says Lai is a "separatist". Lai says only Taiwan's people can decide their future and has repeatedly offered talks with Beijing that have been rebuffed.
71. G-7 Poised to Boost Pressure on China Over Russian Support
Donato Paolo Mancini, Bloomberg, November 25, 2024
72. Chinese man jailed for 20 months in US over plot targeting Falun Gong
AFP, Hong Kong Free Press, November 20, 2024
73. Russia says it will respond if U.S. places missiles in Japan
Reuters, November 27, 2024
Russia said on Wednesday that if the United States stationed missiles in Japan, this would threaten Russian security and prompt Moscow to retaliate.
Japan's Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday that Japan and the U.S. aim to compile a joint military plan for a possible Taiwan emergency that includes deploying missiles.
It cited unnamed U.S. and Japanese sources as saying that under the plan, the U.S. would deploy missile units to the Nansei Islands of Japan's southwestern Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures, and to the Philippines.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Japan of escalating the situation around Taiwan to justify the expansion of military ties with Washington.
"We have repeatedly warned the Japanese side that if, as a result of such cooperation, American medium-range missiles appear on its territory, this will pose a real threat to the security of our country and we will be forced to take the necessary, adequate steps to strengthen our own defense capability," she said.
Zakharova said Tokyo could get an idea of what such steps would entail by reading Russia's updated nuclear doctrine, published last week, which expanded the list of scenarios under which it would consider using nuclear weapons.
On Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia would consider deploying short- and intermediate-range missiles in Asia if the United States deployed such missiles to the continent.
Asked about that statement, Zakharova declined to discuss where Russia might site such weapons, but noted that half its territory is in Asia so any Russian missiles potentially deployed east of the Urals would be in that region.
She said Moscow had sent a clear signal to the United States and its "satellites" that Russia would respond decisively and in symmetrical fashion to the placing of land-based medium and shorter-range missiles in various parts of the world.
COMMENT – Each and every day it appears that Beijing and Moscow are acting as a military alliance against the United States, Japan, and Europe. I wish we were taking this more seriously.
74. Trump Cabinet Signals Escalating US-China Tensions
Antonio Graceffo, Geopolitical Monitor, November 18, 2024
75. Safeguarding Texas: Abbott Directs State Funds Away from China
Brandon Waltens, Texas Scorecard, November 21, 2024
76. Chinese hackers preparing for conflict with US, cyber official says
Reuters, VOA, November 22, 2024
77. How To Save Taiwan from Chinese Aggression
Michael Rosen, The Federalist, November 21, 2024
78. Fentanyl Rises Again, This Time as Trump’s Diplomatic Weapon Against China
David Pierson, New York Times, November 26, 2024
79. Chinese hackers preparing for conflict, US cyber official says
Reuters, November 22, 2024
One Belt, One Road Strategy
80. China advances economic security with plan to revive modern Silk Road
Yuri Momoi, Nikkei Asia, November 26, 2024
Opinion Pieces
81. Trump Trade War Took China by Surprise, But Xi Is Ready This Time
Hal Brands, American Enterprise Institute, November 21, 2024
The US is in the midst of its presidential transition, but the world isn’t waiting patiently for Jan. 20 to arrive. Russia’s Vladimir Putin is pressing his advantage in Ukraine. Israel is devastating Hezbollah and Hamas. The Houthis of Yemen are intensifying their Red Sea attacks. And even as Chinese leader Xi Jinping met with President Joe Biden one final time last weekend, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, China is bracing for trouble with President-elect Donald Trump.
For Biden, the valedictory meeting was a chance to show off his administration’s record of competing with China on the one hand, while trying to stabilize the relationship on the other. Washington and Beijing announced an agreement not to give artificial intelligence control over the use of nuclear weapons (not that either side was planning to do so, anyway), even as the Biden team keeps tightening the technological and financial controls it has placed on China.
For Xi, however, the meeting served a different purpose. Yes, the Chinese leader touted his and Biden’s “joint stewardship” and voiced the usual platitudes about the virtues of cooperation and the dangers of rivalry. But Xi, like every other leader on the planet, is already looking past Biden, to Trump.
Some Chinese analysts see opportunity in Trump’s presidency, given his propensity to alienate US allies and the likelihood that he will sow conflict and division within America itself. Others may hope that Elon Musk, the Trump whisperer with massive business interests in China, will assure Beijing a sympathetic ear.
But any long-term opportunity that comes from an erosion of US global leadership must be weighed against pressing near-term dangers. Most probable among these are the risks that Trump and some of the key China hawks around him will launch an intensified trade and tech war, suspend recently restored diplomatic and military dialogues, and increase US support for Taiwan. The coming years could be tumultuous, from Beijing’s perspective. So Xi is signaling that he’s ready for the storm.
For one thing, the location of last week’s meeting provided a chance for the Chinese to flex their muscles. Xi presided (virtually) over the ribbon-cutting of a huge, Chinese-built deep-water port near Lima, part of a profusion of infrastructure investments, trade deals and expanding political and security relationships across Latin America. The US may be arraying its allies against Chinese coercion in East Asia. But Beijing is building up its presence in America’s backyard.
Xi also issued some blunt warnings to Washington. Chinese outlets have stressed four key “red lines that cannot be challenged”: On Taiwan, on “democracy and human rights” (that is, on China’s thoroughly repressive political system), on Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, and on the “right to development” (a reference to Beijing’s view that US economic and technological controls are unjustified). If Trump pushes on these issues, China is warning, he should expect to get pushed right back.
Meanwhile, China has been strengthening its own tools of economic warfare. Beijing recently announced new export controls targeting key metals — including graphite, aluminum alloys and magnesium — that are critical to the world economy. China has a dominant position in many of these areas: It accounts for around 80% of global production of magnesium, which is used in everything from smartphones to airplanes.
82. Odd Arne Westad on the Decade that Shaped China’s Modern Destiny
Andrew Peaple, The Wire China, November 24, 2024
83. Acknowledging the New Paradigm of America’s China Policy
Miles Maochun Yu, Hoover Institution, November 26, 2024
As the world awaits the beginning of a second Trump administration, it is crucial to acknowledge a monumental transformation in U.S.-China relations during the first Trump administration—a shift that marked an end to a half-century engagement without progress; and that established a strategic vision that treats the Chinese Communist Party as an existential threat to both American interests and global stability.
84. The Trump Administration’s China Challenge
Rush Doshi, Foreign Affairs, November 29, 2024
Predicting the incoming Trump administration’s China policy—and China’s likely response—is a guessing game. In his first term as president, Donald Trump’s transactional approach often differed from his team’s competitive approach. Those contrasting impulses will define his second term. But despite the uncertainty surrounding the Trump administration’s approach, the central challenge it faces is clear: positioning the United States to outcompete China as a critical window in the competition begins to close.
Early in the Biden administration, senior officials got together, read the intelligence, and concluded that the 2020s would be the decisive decade in U.S. competition with China. Without corrective action, the United States faced a growing risk of being surpassed by China technologically, dependent on it economically, and defeated militarily in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait.
The new Trump team will take the United States through the second half of the decisive decade. There is much to be done. Trump’s national security picks, particularly Mike Waltz as national security adviser, Marco Rubio as secretary of state, and Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations, understand the task ahead and have views consistent with a growing bipartisan consensus on the need to outcompete China. Their most significant obstacle in carrying out a competitive approach may be Trump’s own penchant for dealmaking, transactionalism, and flattery toward President Xi Jinping, which sometimes undercut his staff’s more hard-line approaches, including the expansion of export controls and a vocal defense of human rights, among other measures, the first time around.
If Trump’s new team can overcome that challenge, they will have an opportunity to improve America’s competitive position. Closing the gap during the decisive decade may call for building on the work of President Joe Biden, just as the Biden team built on the work of the Trump administration. The Biden administration focused on rebuilding American strength by focusing on its foundations at home and its relationships with partners abroad, an approach summed up in its “invest, align, compete” tagline. That formula can also serve as a way to fulfill the Trump administration’s vision of “peace through strength.” But rebuilding American power will require the Trump administration to undertake new efforts, too, that depend on bipartisan congressional support and the buy-in of the American public.
STRENGTH STARTS AT HOME
Some of the most urgent questions about U.S. China policy turn on questions about domestic policy, which provides the basis for American strength. But the foundations of that strength have atrophied, especially since the end of the Cold War. The administration will need to undertake significant structural reforms to remedy these weaknesses.
The United States needs to fix its defense industrial base to rapidly deter China and, if necessary, defeat it in a potential conflict. At present, the United States would expend all its munitions within a week of sustained fighting and would struggle to rebuild surface vessels after they were sunk, with a national shipbuilding capacity less than that of one of China’s larger shipyards. The Trump administration must focus on making progress on two timelines: the two-year problem of fielding more uncrewed systems and cruise and ballistic missiles in the Indo-Pacific, as well as the five-to-ten-year problem of revitalizing the United States’ shipbuilding industry, which has been declining for decades without an adequate commercial sector to keep it viable.
Washington also needs to protect its critical infrastructure from cyberattack. China has compromised U.S. critical infrastructure on which millions of Americans rely, including water and gas, transportation, and telecommunications systems, with the aim of inciting chaos, sowing panic, and reducing U.S. will in a conflict scenario. As it invests in offensive capabilities, the Trump administration will also need to bolster American defenses through a combination of regulatory measures, new legislation holding companies accountable for lackluster cyberdefenses, and novel technical efforts that can complicate the abilities of bad actors to penetrate U.S. networks.
COMMENT – As I’ve written before, the Biden Administration was anything but aligned on the challenge posed by the PRC. Its officials gave some good speeches and wrote a few good documents, but when it came to action and implementation, there was much to be desired.
The Administration’s penchant for de-escalation (aka appeasement), its constant mixed messages, its desire to only move as fast as the most intransigent European, and a refusal to fund the Defense Department for the “decisive decade” has left the United States (and our allies) incredibly vulnerable.
[NOTE: Between 2021 and 2024, only four NATO members REDUCED their defense spending as a percentage of real GDP… Croatia, Greece, Italy, and the United States]
[SECOND NOTE: the chart above is truly an amazing historical artifact. Created by the Atlantic Council and published days before the NATO Summit in Washington DC in July 2024, it was supposed to be a celebration of just how many NATO members were meeting their 2% GDP targets… what goes unsaid is that the 2% target was devised in 2006. Nearly two decades later, NATO members still have not adjusted the 2% target, which the majority of NATO members just barely meet and multiple NATO countries still refuse to meet… side-eye at you Canada. One might obviously observe that if 2% was sufficient in 2006, with a largely benign international environment (this was BEFORE Putin’s infamous 2007 Munich Security Conference speech), it may not be sufficient for a much, much more dangerous world.]
Instead of using the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and the PRC’s alliance with Russia that was obvious from the start) as a rallying cry to rebuild the U.S. defense industrial base, the Biden Administration pursued a legislative agenda that was divorced from reality. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 focused $1.9 trillion on a climate agenda and the energy transition (which stands to make the PRC even more prosperous given its industrial policies). The whole obsession with climate and the energy transition as war raged in Europe suggested that few in the Biden Administration took national security seriously.
Strategy is about making real trade-offs and prioritizing the absolutely critical over the nice to have. President Biden refused to do this.
Despite the rhetoric about the “decisive decade,” when adjusted for inflation (yes, that was a “thing” for the last few years), the Biden Administration submitted essentially the same DoD budget request each year… hardly the actions of an administration that took the threats posed by Beijing and Moscow seriously.
Biden Administration DoD Budget Submissions (inflation adjusted using the CPI inflation calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in constant May 2024 dollars)
DoD Budget for FY 2022 - $829 billion (submitted May 28, 2021)
DoD Budget for FY 2023 - $839 billion (submitted March 28, 2022)
DoD Budget for FY 2024 - $871 billion (submitted March 13, 2023)
DoD Budget for FY 2024 - $849 billion (submitted March 11, 2024)
While some members of the Biden Administration understood these challenges, most in the Administration and across the Democratic Party remained delusional. Treasury Secretary Yellen developed her own, alternative China Strategy that sought to prioritize a mutually beneficial economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic. Her efforts to restart the Strategic Economic Dialogue with four financial working groups, did much to undercut the tougher efforts by folks on the National Security Council staff. Progressives within the Democratic Party (and their partners in the Democratic Socialists of America) criticized Biden’s national security advisors of instigating a “new cold war,” which forced the Administration into being rhetorical contortionists, as they sought to explain that the PRC was the only power that had both the capability and intent to challenge the United States AND at the same time insist that America was NOT in a new cold war.
The Biden Administration pursued the Goldilocks strategy: just enough to convince Beijing (and Moscow) that the United States took them seriously as a threat, but not enough to actually deter them or place the United States on a pathway to have sufficient military power to address threats from them both. On technology, the Administration initiated important actions, but pulled its punches every time. And on the informational front, it just left Americans, our allies, and potential partners, confused: was the PRC an adversary or was the PRC a partner? Had Beijing and Moscow formed a military alliance, or could they be split apart? Was this challenge by Beijing (and Moscow) a generational effort, as the rhetoric of a “decisive decade” implied, or was this a transitory crisis to be managed? Folks from across the Administration answered these questions in different ways and Joe Biden never bothered to tell the American people himself.
Phillips Payson O’Brien, the professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, described this dynamic of a Goldilocks strategy best in his essay on Saturday in The Atlantic about the Ukraine war, “[i]n practice, the Biden administration has treated the Ukraine conflict like a crisis to be managed, not a war to be won.” I would say the exact same thing about its treatment of the “China challenge.”
When an Administration views its challenges as transitory crises to be managed, it invariably does too little, too late.
This is not the fault of the handful of officials in the Biden Administration who “get it,” it is a failure of political leadership and the broader Democratic Party that seems more interested in protecting the status quo, than anything else.
Given these manifest failures, the Trump Administration is going to be forced to make difficult trade-offs (just as it did after eight years of “leading from behind” by the Obama-Biden Administration).
I hope for all our sakes, the new Administration is up to the task.
85. Apple Should Have Learned a Chinese Lesson on EVs
David Fickling, Bloomberg, November 24, 2024
86. Washington Is Getting Economic Security Wrong
Brad Glosserman, Foreign Policy, November 25, 2024
87. Did the Opioid Epidemic Fuel Donald Trump’s Return to the White House?
Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, November 26, 2024
88. Beyond TikTok — the National Security Risks of Chinese Agricultural Drones
Claris Diaz and Emilian Kavalski, War on the Rocks, November 25, 2024
89. How Mexico Missed the Nearshoring Boom
Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal, November 24, 2024
90. Roots of the Present Crises: Embracing Communist China was U.S.’ Greatest Strategic Failure
James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer, RealClearPolitics, November 21, 2024
The U.S. faces a dire strategic crisis, driven by two key mistakes: underestimating China's threat and failing to counter it. Business interests and political elites promoted China’s rise, while China's long-term strategy deflected U.S. attention. Now, the U.S. risks losing global dominance to a China aligned with Russia and Iran. To reverse this, Washington must recognize China as a strategic adversary, educate future leaders, and rebuild military preparedness, especially naval power.
91. China is laying the legal groundwork to seize Taiwan
Peter A. Dutton and Bonnie S. Glaser, The Hill, November 22, 2024
92. How the West can navigate Sino-Russian cooperation in the Arctic
Nong Hong, South China Morning Post, November 26, 2024
93. Why Trump Really Should ‘Buy’ Greenland
Alexander B. Gray, Wall Street Journal, November 25, 2024
94. The U.S. Is Losing the Ability to Deter War with China
Seth G. Jones, Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2024
95. Taiwan Is Ready to Defend Democracy. Is Trump with Us?
Vickie Wang, New York Times, November 24, 2024
96. Starbucks has been outclassed by local rivals in China
Financial Times, November 25, 2024