Friends,
Much as Beijing did after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese Communist Party has activated its global propaganda machinery to wage an information warfare campaign on behalf of its ally in the Middle East. Rather than recognize the brutal attacks by Hamas and role played by Iran, PRC media outlets and social media platforms blame Israel (and the United States) for the violence.
Why might Beijing involve itself in this conflict, you might ask?
Both Beijing and Tehran want to sabotage a realignment taking place in the Middle East.
For the past year, Beijing has been working hand-in-glove with Tehran to dismantle the peace process between Israel and the Sunni Arab states. Under the umbrella of the Abraham Accords, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco established formal relations with Israel (joining Egypt and Jordan, who had done so decades before). Until last week, it appeared that Saudi Arabia was on the verge of joining the Accords as well (something that would have been a truly historic diplomatic feat for Riyadh, Jerusalem, and Washington).
The Abraham Accords, with Saudi participation, would completely remake the strategic calculus of the Middle East, pitting a coalition of Sunni Arab states and Israel, along with U.S. support, against Iran and its proxies, which enjoy increasing support from Beijing and Moscow since the start of the Ukraine War.
Moderate Sunni Arab states share with Israel a common threat perception about Iran. Its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as well as its aggressive use of proxy groups are designed to destabilize and overthrown moderate Sunni states and eradicate Israel.
Under this new alignment, Sunni extremist groups like Hamas would have been marginalized. As Sunni leaders established relations with Israel, there would be growing pressure on Palestinians to abandon terrorism and adopt a peace settlement. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out last week (“Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks”), Iran’s IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) spent weeks coordinating with Hamas and its Shiite proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, to mount the massive terror attack on October 7.
Preventing this Sunni Arab-Israeli coalition from forming is one of Tehran’s highest priorities and given the budding Moscow-Beijing-Tehran axis, it is a priority of Beijing as well.
Today, the PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi released details of his phone call with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud. In the call, Wang condemned Israel for “collective punishment” (without mentioning what brought about their strikes on Gaza) and positioned the PRC as a defender of the Palestinian cause. Given public support for the Palestinian cause across the Sunni Arab world, this places moderate Sunni Arab leaders, who had hoped to partner with Israel against a common Iranian foe, in an impossible position as Israel responds to the murder of more than a thousand of its citizens.
Driving a wedge in the nascent Sunni Arab-Israeli coalition should be recognized as one of the primary factors behind Hamas’ attack on October 7.
After orchestrating the normalization of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March and successfully bringing both Iran and Saudi Arabia into an expanded BRICS in August, Beijing seeks to aid Tehran in destroying the Abraham Accords. The CCP is pursuing this approach to undermine American influence in the region and aid its new ally Iran. As Saeid Golkar and Kasra Aarabi argued in an April article in Foreign Policy, Xi, Putin, and Khamenei share the common goal of facilitating “the rise of a new anti-western global order.”
Like the war in Ukraine, I don’t think Xi Jinping knew about the attack or took part in its planning. But now that it is underway, the Chinese Communist Party will seek to portray itself as a neutral moderator, while intervening heavily on behalf of the Iranians to drive a wedge between the Sunni Arab states and Israel, as well as blame the United States for the violence.
Beijing’s global media influence infrastructure is well positioned to amplify anti-Israeli and anti-American messages across the Global South, as well as within Western countries. Just as in the case of the Ukraine War, we cannot overlook the impact that a well-resourced information warfare campaign will have.
As the conflict expands and becomes more violent, Beijing (and Moscow) will use the violence to spread anti-American messages further. The narratives about Russia’s “special military operation” (that it was caused by NATO and the United States, that it is being prolonged for the benefit of American defense companies and their desire for profits) will merge with narratives about the “Israel-Palestine conflict.”
For Beijing, taking advantage of these conflicts to disparage its principal rival serves three purposes.
First, it socializes populations around the world to the idea that an alternative international system is both possible and desirable.
Second, it feeds on divisions within and between democracies by amplifying popular criticisms from both the left and right of the political spectrums within individual countries.
Third, the Party is setting the conditions to protect its own military adventurism from criticism. By portraying the United States as instigating these wars for its own selfish benefit, Beijing seeks to inoculate global public opinion from the arguments the U.S. would make should the PRC attack one of its neighbors like the Philippines, Taiwan, or Japan.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. China Calls for Ceasefire, ‘Two-State Solution’ Amid Conflict Between Hamas, Israel
Sam Kim, Time, October 9, 2023
China has called for an "immediate ceasefire" and reiterated support for an independent Palestinian state after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel. The Chinese foreign ministry stated its concern over the intensifying violence and urged the international community to act urgently. In June 2023, Xi Jinping proposed an international peace conference on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and expressed willingness to play an active role in facilitating peace talks.
2. AUDIO – Two Views from Israel on Hamas + China-Middle East Relations
Jordan Schneider, Carice Witte, and Ofir Dayan, ChinaTalk Podcast, October 10, 2023
Carice Witte and Ofir Dayan discuss PRC-Middle East relations in the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attacks on Israel and the potential for an expanded war in the Middle East.
COMMENT - I also recommend listening to Jordan’s guest episode of ChinaTalk on October 12, a reposting of the Promised Podcast episode titled “Cities of Slaughter.”
3. Antisemitic Comments Flood China’s Censored Internet After Hamas Attack
Wenhao Ma, Voice of America, October 11, 2023
Antisemitic remarks have flooded China’s heavily censored online platforms and the Israeli government's Chinese social media accounts since the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Scores of online Chinese commentators and netizens quickly rallied for Gaza after the Hamas attacks began Oct. 7, accusing Israel of oppressing Palestinians for decades and saying Israel deserves the bloodshed.
"In the past, Germany persecuted you. Now, you persecute Palestinians. In this world, do not force others to the corner because you would only be digging your own grave," wrote Ziwu Xiashi, one of the biggest nationalist commentators with 1 million followers on Weibo, China's equivalent of X, formerly Twitter.
Although the Chinese government has called on both sides to end the hostilities and condemned "all violence and attacks on civilians," Beijing has long been a friend of the Palestinian cause.
It recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964 and Palestinian sovereignty in 1988 before establishing full diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority in 1989. And, during a state visit to Saudi Arabia in 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping voiced frustration over the "historical injustice" suffered by Palestinians and expressed China's support for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
"It is not possible to continue the historical injustice suffered by the Palestinians," the Chinese president said at the opening of the Riyadh-Gulf-Chinese Summit for Cooperation and Development in Saudi Arabia.
In the wake of the attacks, official Chinese state media has blamed the U.S. for not playing a constructive role in defusing the tension.
“While the Biden administration warned any group against taking advantage of the #Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if any group stands any chance to exploit the conflict and profit from the violence, it will probably be the #US military-industrial complex,” the Global Times wrote on X.
But on China’s internet, instead of echoing criticism of the U.S, nationalist commentators and netizens have directed their ire at the Jewish people, which many netizens believe is the Chinese government signaling where it really stands on the conflict. Or as one poster wrote, "Based on how this trending topic was arranged, now I see where our country really stands."
"Jews always talk about how badly they were treated during World War II and throughout history. But you can't ask why. Otherwise, you are called a racist or that you envy their money," said the username of Rabbit head senior Zhang Tiegen in a Weibo post with over 2,000 likes. "Actually, before the Holocaust during World War II, Jews' reputation was down in the ghetto throughout Europe."
"Wherever the Jews have gone, they have always been massacred. There's a reason why. You only love Jews when they are not in your area," wrote online commentator Vincent.
4. China’s soft message on Hamas is part of a much bigger strategy
Nahal Toosi, Phelim Kine, and Andrew Zhang, Politico, October 12, 2023
This latest eruption of Middle East violence gives Beijing an opportunity to offer developing countries a U.S.-displacing alternative vision for global leadership.
China appears to have decided that its road to greater global clout lies through the Palestinians — no matter what hits it takes for going soft on Hamas.
Beijing’s initial statement failing to condemn Hamas for this weekend’s attack drew immediate backlash from Israeli and U.S. officials for minimizing the brutality the Palestinian militants had visited on Israel.
But China is likely making a long-term play: gain favor in the Middle East as well as with countries sympathetic to the Palestinian cause in regions such as Africa and Latin America, many of which increasingly are looking for alternative partners to the United States.
Alienating Israel, however, could come at high cost for China. It has lucrative tech-sector trade with the country, often importing more than $1 billion worth of semiconductors a year from Israel. And Beijing’s efforts to position itself as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians may now be damaged.
5. In China, social media is bursting with support for Palestine — and blame for Washington
Matthew Loh, Business Insider, October 10, 2023
As war rages in Israel and Gaza, Chinese social media users have come out in support of Palestine. Their criticism of Israel on Weibo emerged in tandem with barbed comments aimed at the US.
The heavily moderated Weibo is often a sign of what's allowed to spread in China's thought spaces.
Authoritarianism
6. Australian journalist Cheng Lei back home after China release
Kirsty Needham and Yew Lun Tian, Reuters, October 11, 2023
Australian journalist Cheng Lei, who had been detained in China on national security charges for more than three years, returned home on Wednesday after being released, Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Cheng, 48, was a business television anchor for Chinese state television when she was detained in August 2020 for allegedly sharing state secrets with another country.
Cheng, who was tried in secret in March 2022, arrived in Melbourne and has been reunited with her two children and family, Albanese told a press conference.
COMMENT – This is great news for Cheng Lei and her family, and I’m certain this consumed considerable effort by Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and her team. The fact that foreign journalists can be taken and held for multiple years on murky charges should serve as a flashing red light to anyone who would consider traveling to the PRC.
The PRC is not a safe place to go.
7. China extends Taiwan trade probe, Taipei cries election interference
Reuters, October 9, 2023
8. How China invaded Tibet and annexed it
Arjun Sengupta, Indian Express, October 7, 2023
When Chinese troops advanced into Tibet on October 7, 1950, most Tibetans were unaware of the invasion. Dawa Norbu, a toddler at the time, wrote in 1978 for Worldview magazine: “The news about the Chinese invasion of 1950 reached us sometime in 1952.”
Such was Tibet in 1950. On the “roof of the world”, a remote land far removed from both the boons and banes of modernity, news travelled slowly, and concern even slower. “Despite the alarming news, no one in Sakya sharpened his sword or dusted his bow and arrows,” Norbu wrote.
COMMENT – The Chinese Communist Party has spent decades trying to erase their imperialistic annexation of Tibet from popular memory.
9. Chinese programmer ordered to pay 1m yuan for using virtual private network
Amy Hawkins, The Guardian, October 9, 2023
Police confiscate ‘illegal income’ of developer deemed to have used ‘unauthorised channels’ to connect to international networks.
A programmer in northern China has been ordered to pay more than 1m yuan to the authorities for using a virtual private network (VPN), in what is thought to be the most severe individual financial penalty ever issued for circumventing China’s “great firewall”.
The programmer, surnamed Ma, was issued with a penalty notice by the public security bureau of Chengde, a city in Hebei province, on 18 August. The notice said Ma had used “unauthorised channels” to connect to international networks to work for a Turkish company.
The police confiscated the 1.058m yuan (£120,651) Ma had earned as a software developer between September 2019 and November 2022, describing it as “illegal income”, as well as fining him 200 yuan (£23).
Ma said on Weibo that the police had first approached him a year ago, believing him to be the owner of a Twitter account they were investigating. Ma said the account did not belong to him. “I stated that I was currently working for an overseas company, and my personal Twitter only occasionally liked and retweeted the company’s tweets,” Ma wrote. His post has since been deleted but was archived by China Digital Times.
Ma said the police seized his phone, laptop and several computer hard drives upon learning that he worked for an overseas company, holding them for a month. He was later asked to provide details about his work, his bank details, his employment contract and other information, before being issued with the penalty in August. Ma said he would be appointing a lawyer to appeal against the decision.
Charlie Smith (a pseudonym), the co-founder of GreatFire.org, a website that tracks internet censorship in China, said: “Even if this decision is overturned in court, a message has been sent and damage has been done. Is doing business outside of China now subject to penalties?”
VPNs, which help users circumvent the “great firewall” of internet censorship by making it look as if their device is in a different country, operate in a legal grey area in China. Technically, companies are allowed to use government-approved VPNs for commercial activities. Businesses and universities rely on the software to communicate with international partners.
The government generally turns a blind eye to the relatively small number of individuals who use the technology to access websites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and, often, view pornography. But in recent years the government has been making it harder for people to access the VPNs, and in rare cases has punished their use.
Several people have been jailed for selling VPNs. In 2017, a man named Wu Xiangyang was sentenced to five and a half years in prison, and fined 500,000 yuan, for selling the software. In June, Radio Free Asia reported that a Uyghur student, Mehmut Memtimin, was serving a 13-year sentence in Xinjiang for using a VPN to access “illegal information”.
Ma said he only used a VPN to access Zoom for meetings and that most of his work, which uses GitHub, could be done without scaling the firewall.
In discussion about the incident on Zhihu, China’s Reddit-like platform, one user wrote: “If we impose convictions and fines based on this reason, China’s IT industry would basically be wiped out.” The comment has since been deleted.
Ma and the Turkish company he is believed to have worked for did not respond to requests for comment.
The case raised questions that authorities were profit-seeking rather than crime-fighting. In a now-deleted Weibo post, an influencer wrote: “This incident has become an international laughing stock, and the police in a certain place have become synonymous with robbers.”
Local governments in China are laden with an estimated $23tn of debt, which economists see as a brewing crisis in the country’s economy. Already, several municipalities have struggled to pay for salaries and public services and have resorted to creative measures to boost their coffers. In Chengde, the city’s revenues from forfeitures reached nearly 990m yuan in 2022, a year-on-year increase of more than 7%.
10. China bans West End-bound theatre production
Eryk Bagshaw, Sydney Morning Herald, October 3, 2023
11. Mao to Now
Perry Link, The Wire China, October 8, 2023
Communist China, once all but impenetrable, opened up only to tighten politically again. Has Xi circled back to the Mao era? And what can we learn from six decades of China writings?
We tend to forget that during the 1960s the U.S. officially sent more people to the moon than it did to China. In that era, the “People’s Republic” under Mao Zedong seemed not only other-worldly but quasi-metaphysical, something constructed in the mind based only on whiskers of evidence. China seemed like Shangri-la. My own first in-person glimpse came in fall 1966, when friends in Hong Kong brought me to peer over the colony’s northern border at Shenzhen (then a farming village, now the fourth largest city in China). I counted myself lucky to spot a water buffalo.
Among Westerners, only a few privileged travelers were allowed to enter. Han Suyin, a Chinese-Belgian writer of fiction and memoirs, and Felix Greene, a British journalist (and cousin of the novelist Graham Greene) were among them. To those of us on the outside, thirsting from afar, the words of such writers glowed — not only because of their scarcity but because they were uplifting. They attested that Shangri-la was real. In retrospect, one can blame the authors for not mentioning the rain of executions during land reform in the early 1950s or the immense, mind-boggling famine of 1959-62 — but that would be unfair. Traveling with government guides, they were sealed off from such facts. They took rosy façades at face value — in the same way that I, on the outside, took their rosy words at face value. Our mistakes were similar.
In the 1970s delegation travel to China became possible. I was an interpreter for the Chinese Ping Pong Delegation that toured America in April 1972, two months after Richard Nixon’s ice-breaking visit to China. Beijing offered us interpreters a return trip in May 1973, and we were thrilled. But the month-long journey introduced a few cracks into my image of Shangri-la.
I wondered why rail passengers were segregated by class — “soft sleeper” for officials and foreigners, “hard seat” for everyone else. Our guide explained that “the officials have burdens; they need rest.” Near the city of Tangshan our group descended deep into a coal mine. There, small rail cars scurried through dimly-lit tunnels, but quotations from Chairman Mao, which on the surface of the earth were everywhere, glittering in gold or white letters on bright red backgrounds, were nowhere to be seen. When I asked our guide about this she seemed a bit put off. “Too dirty!” she answered. To me, that was a jolt. The grime in the mines is OK for the workers, but not for the thoughts of their leader?
China opened wider during the years after Mao’s death in 1976. Western journalists who worked mostly from Hong Kong could now move to Beijing. Fox Butterfield opened a bureau for The New York Times in Beijing, Richard Bernstein went there for Time, Melinda Liu for Newsweek, and Jay and Linda Mathews for The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times, respectively. These and other writers produced books that not only went deeper than the China journalism of the Mao era but were much more expansive in scope. For readers, the effect was like moving from street stalls to supermarkets.
…
While reviewing six decades of China writing by Westerners, we might also note how Chinese views of the West have shifted. In 1950, with the Korean War, Mao launched a “Resist America and Aid Korea” campaign, and in the years that followed he continued to denounce American imperialism. Yet it is unclear how deeply that attitude sank into ordinary Chinese life. Beginning about a hundred years before then, America had already been meiguo, “the beautiful country.” The term originated not from the idea of beauty but because of the second syllable in the word America, but homonyms carry weight in Chinese culture, so the sound itself was a fortuitous start for the American image. Moreover, by the late 1970s the U.S. had become the go-to example in China of what “modernization” looked like. In the 1980s I had to work hard to persuade young Chinese that the U.S. had flaws.
In recent years a tide of anti-Americanism has appeared. Some of it is state-sponsored. Two decades ago the CCP began paying people “fifty cents” (half a Chinese yuan) for each anti-American comment posted on the Internet. Prisoners could earn perks and even early release for such work. But other anti-Western vitriol, based in a feeling of national pride and of rivalry with (not hatred of) the West, is heartfelt. An example was the nationwide uproar last April after BMW employees, at a car show in Shanghai, were caught on videotape apparently giving free ice cream to foreigners but not to Chinese.
At a deeper level, some Chinese intellectuals who had long seen the U.S. as a model for democracy have felt some disillusionment. The insurrection at the U.S. capitol on January 6, 2020, made the foundations of American democracy seem less iron-clad than before, and the insistence on political correctness pressed by an elite reminded others of the Cultural Revolution. An external pressure that said “you have to believe X and if you don’t you need to look inside yourself to find the reason why and then confess and then correct yourself” was chilling.
In short, Chinese views of the West during the post-Mao years have sometimes been as blinkered as Western views of China. Both sides have drawn too much use of their own contexts as they look across oceans at the other. But this is natural, and we should not be discouraged. Western writing on Communist China, while still flawed, is immensely better today than it was sixty years ago.
The moon has regained its lead as the lesser-known terrain.
COMMENT - Perry Link’s 2002 article in the New York Review of Books, “China: The Anaconda in the Chandelier,” is a classic and worth reading again today.
For those who believe that the PRC’s slide back into Maoist repression began only with Xi Jinping in 2013 should consider the antecedents Link pointed out a decade before.
12. Asian Games: China censors 'Tiananmen' image of athletes hugging
Derek Cai, BBC, October 4, 2023
COMMENT – 6/4 = June 4, 1989
This is not the action of a confident and secure regime.
13. Fears China ‘closing in on itself’ amid crackdowns, rising nationalism
Frederik Kelter, Aljazeera, October 3, 2023
14. Why China’s young people are quitting their jobs and throwing ‘resignation parties’
Berry Wang and Jessie Yeung, CNN, October 5, 2023
On the day Liang resigned from his banking job in China’s Zhejiang province, his friends threw a party and congratulated him by beating gongs and drums, in an echo of traditional marriage rituals.
His friends, who had also quit their jobs, pinned a flower on Liang’s chest under a scarlet banner that read: “We’re done with this bullsh*t job!”
Around them hung lanterns, banners and “double happiness” signs typically seen during weddings, while tables overflowed with food.
Every partygoer received an invitation stating: “Hope you eat well and drink well, escape from the bitterness as soon as possible.”
It may seem strange to celebrate leaving a stable job with an enviable salary, especially amid China’s gloomy economic prospects and record high youth unemployment rate, when such positions are in short supply.
But Liang, 27, who has since become a content creator while running a café, said he has become happier since quitting in May, a sentiment shared online by many others in similar circumstances.
“I fell into mechanized, repetitive work. It consumed a lot of my energy,” he told CNN, adding that he felt stifled creatively at a bank’s public relations department. “Your innovative ideas would have been dismissed and vanish eventually.”
CNN is identifying Liang with a pseudonym for privacy reasons.
Hundreds of posts about resignation parties have spread on Chinese social media this year, as the country slowly emerges from its Covid-19 cocoon of isolation and grapples with the economic and social fallout. Most of the people participating in the trend are in their 20s, citing various reasons for quitting ranging from low wages to burnout.
According to China’s LinkedIn equivalent Maimai, out of 1,554 employees across various sectors surveyed from January through October 2022, 28% resigned that year. The number doubled for those who intended to quit but hadn’t yet done so.
A similar movement, dubbed the Great Resignation, had taken off in the United States, with almost 50 million people quitting their jobs in two years. While the phenomenon is petering out in the West, it seems to be just getting started in China.
Disillusionment is high among overworked young people who have spent their lives competing against each other academically and climbing the corporate ladder, only to find little satisfaction.
15. For queer couples wanting a child in China, surrogacy brings hope and danger
Gus Rick, Rest of World, October 10, 2023
16. Reading China's Media Counterattack
David Bandurski, China Media Project, October 5, 2023
China responded with fury and indignation to a report alleging that it has invested billions to build a “global information ecosystem” to spread propaganda and disinformation. A media analysis of the country’s response, which paints the US as an “empire of lies,” only substantiates the report’s main thesis.
Last week, the US Department of State released what it called a “landmark report” on China’s propaganda and disinformation efforts, alleging that the Chinese government is using various means — and billions of dollars in investment — to “bend the global information environment to its advantage.” The report drew snarls over the weekend from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), which responded in an official release (English here) that the report itself was disinformation and that the United States is “a veritable ‘empire of lies.’”
Look more closely at China’s response to the Department of State report and a revealing pattern emerges. Far from refuting the report’s allegations, the official response from the MFA and state-run media makes the case. It demonstrates systematic control of the narrative by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership at home, even as it employs state-run channels and non-transparent propaganda accounts to reach audiences abroad.
No Discussion on the Home Front
In Chinese state media, all coverage of the Department of State report since last week has closely mirrored the official MFA release and its single-question-single-answer response. In most cases, the MFA release is reported verbatim. No media outlets have grappled with the substance of the report. To do so, after all, would invite public discussion not just of “external propaganda” (外宣), a core and openly stated practice of the CCP, but also of the legitimacy of media controls and propaganda at home.
More revealing still is the fact that the response in China’s official state media has been amplified primarily through those media specifically tasked with conducting external propaganda, suggesting that the leadership views the story as a question of managing foreign public opinion. The text from the MFA was run verbatim, for example, by the China Daily, a newspaper published by the government’s Information Office and intended for foreign consumption. Similarly, it was covered in English, with supporting comments from Chinese experts, by the Global Times, which has a special mandate to address global affairs, and which panders to nationalist sentiment at home and abroad.
While an official Xinhua rundown of the MFA remarks was posted online over the weekend and made page three of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily on October 1, the news was largely absent from important domestic propaganda outlets, including provincial-level media. It was not reported at all during China Central Television’s official nightly newscast Xinwen Lianbo (新闻联播) on September 30 or October 1. Further substantiating the point that the story was intended chiefly for external propaganda, the MFA response was reported prominently on CCTV’s Chinese-language international channel, CCTV-4, which targets overseas Chinese audiences, and has more than one million subscribers on YouTube.
As the Chinese government rushed to refute the US Department of State report about its construction of “a global information ecosystem,” the very same ecosystem leaped into action. Attention to the issue was carefully managed and suppressed at home, while a combative counter-narrative targeted overseas audiences.
Perhaps more importantly, the MFA counter-narrative was pushed not just by well-established and overt state outlets such as China Daily, the Global Times, and CCTV-4, but by newer and more covert channels making use of international social media platforms.
COMMENT – This ecosystem is already spinning up for the Hamas attack on Israel.
17. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi Is Headed to Washington
Robbie Gramer and Christina Lu, Foreign Policy, October 3, 2023
Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, is expected to visit Washington to manage escalating tensions and pave the way for a potential meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. This visit follows a series of high-level visits by Biden administration officials to Beijing, aiming to ease tensions on various fronts, including trade, technology, military matters, and human rights.
COMMENT - Given the PRC’s efforts to blame the latest war in the Middle East on the United States, will this visit still happen? I haven’t seen any further reports on Wang Yi’s potential visit since Hamas’ attacks last weekend.
Environmental Harms
18. EU considers anti-subsidy probe into Chinese wind turbines
Alice Hancock and Andy Bounds, Financial Times, October 6, 2023
19. South American governments are trying to curb illegal fishing
The Economist, October 5, 2023
The Chinese fishing fleet has the worst reputation for illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing globally. It is notorious in South America. Nearly a third of its 3,000 ships operate in the region all year. Chasing migratory squid, they spend the first six months plundering the Atlantic waters off Argentina and the next six hoovering their Pacific catch near Ecuador and Peru, having gone around Chile’s Strait of Magellan. The fleet is currently off Ecuador’s coast. But some countries are fighting back. On September 30th Ecuador, Peru, the United States and 11 other countries concluded their latest exercise against IUU fishing, to practise intercepting ships.
In the past decade IUU fishing has depleted global stocks. It generates up to $36bn per year and accounts for one in every five fish eaten globally. That makes it the world’s sixth-largest illicit industry (counterfeiting is the biggest at $1.1trn, while illegal drugs is second at $650bn). In South America IUU fishing strips countries of 8-15% of their annual catch, according to research by the American University in Washington. China accounts for three-quarters of foreign vessels in those waters.
20. The Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat
Ian Urbina, The New Yorker, October 9, 2023
China has invested heavily in an armada of far-flung fishing vessels, in part to extend its global influence. This maritime expansion has come at grave human cost.
Foreign Interference and Coercion
21. China’s commerce chief presses US Senate leader Schumer on trade restrictions
Sylvie Zhuang, South China Morning Post, October 10, 2023
22. China, Europe, and the U.S. Struggle for Satellite Supremacy
Aaron Mc Nicholas, The Wire China, October 8, 2023
23. Israel expected 'stronger condemnation' of Hamas from China, Beijing embassy official says
Reuters, October 8, 2023
24. Xi Jinping’s wants a ‘multipolar world’, as China accelerates its shift away from the west
Amy Hawkins, The Guardian, October 8, 2023
25. Philippines says China coast guard did not drive away navy gunboat
Reuters, October 10, 2023
26. Indian police accuse Chinese telcos of funding investigated news portal
Arpan Chaturvedi and Krishn Kaushik, Reuters, October 6, 2023
27. Remarks by Assistant Secretary Ely Ratner at Center for Strategic and International Studies Conference on "China’s Power: Up for Debate 2023"
U.S. Department of Defense, October 6, 2023
28. How Aligning with China Changed Life in the Solomon Islands
Yan Zhuang, New York Times, October 6, 2023
The author of a new book on the diplomatic switch says that ending recognition of Taiwan affected life in unexpected ways across the island nation.
In 2019, the Solomon Islands ended its decades-long alliance with Taiwan and instead diplomatically recognized China, a much-publicized decision that prompted fears of Beijing’s growing influence in the region and divided residents within the island nation of 700,000.
A new book, “Divided Isles: Solomon Islands and the China Switch,” by Edward Acton Cavanough, analyzes what happened leading up to and after the diplomatic change and examines the locals who have been influential figures in the story.
29. Saudi-China collaboration raises concerns about access to AI chips
Simeon Kerr, Samer Al-Atrush, Qianer Liu, and Madhumita Murgia, Financial Times, October 10, 2023
30. Schumer Criticizes China’s Response to Israel in Meeting with Xi
Brian Spegele, Wall Street Journal, October 9, 2023
31. Analysis: Is the US strategy of engaging China working?
Michael Martina and Humeyra Pamuk, Reuters, October 6, 2023
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
32. China’s Repressive New Law on Religious Activity Venues: A Tibetan View
Tsewang Gyalpo Arya, Bitter Winter, October 9, 2023
33. Campaigners aim to lower support for China on UN human rights council
Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, October 8, 2023
34. The Uyghurs Forced to Process the World’s Fish
Ian Urbina, The New Yorker, October 9, 2023
China forces minorities from Xinjiang to work in industries around the country. As it turns out, this includes handling much of the seafood sent to America and Europe.
COMMENT – If a reporter for The New Yorker can uncover all of this, why hasn’t the Department of Commerce and the Department of Homeland Security taken action to prevent these imports. Laws that have been on the books for decades, as well as the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) prohibit the importation of goods made with forced labor.
The PRC has completely undermined the so-called independent certification process in China, going so far as to make it illegal under the 2021 Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law to cooperate with UFLPA enforcement. (As the author points out, all of the seafood plants that they found to be using Uyghur forced labor had been certified by the Marine Stewardship Council, an industry watchdog that is supposed to certify labor and environmental standards, the head of MSC’s public relations openly admits that they have “significant limitations” in the PRC).
The only reliable way to address these crimes is to implement broad restrictions on all PRC imports. I would point everyone back to Mathias Döpfner’s book The Trade Trap: How to Stop Doing Business with Dictators… we do ourselves no favors by becoming economically dependent on countries that refuse to uphold the rule of law.
It is time to abandon the Change through Trade (Wandel durch Handel) ideology that is pervasive in business and investor communities across Europe, North America, and Japan.
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
35. US restricts trade with 42 Chinese entities over Russia support
Reuters, October 7, 2023
36. Refreshed China-Germany deal helps Beijing keep economic foothold in West amid US-led decoupling
Mia Nulimaimaiti and Ralph Jennings, South China Morning Post, October 04, 2023
37. China funds look to Mideast cash as US investments wane
Summer Zhen, Reuters, October 10, 2023
38. How Shein and Temu are changing the face of China’s export machine, making life easier for an army of small businesses
Iris Deng and Tracy Qu, South China Morning Post, October 04, 2023
39. Citigroup to sell China consumer wealth business to HSBC
Reuters, October 9, 2023
40. Without good options to diversify, China can’t wean itself off US dollar assets
Frank Chen, South China Morning Post, October 10, 2023
41. China Budget Revision Would Mark ‘Sea Change’ in Fiscal Strategy
Tom Hancock, Bloomberg, October 11, 2023
42. China saves billions of dollars from record sanctioned oil imports
Chen Aizhu and Muyu Xu, Reuters, October 11, 2023
43. China growth forecasts downgraded by IMF as world economies diverge
Jack Stone Truitt, Nikkei Asia, October 10, 2023
44. Taiwan to probe 4 firms accused of helping Huawei build chip plants
Hideaki Ryugen, Nikkei Asia, October 5, 2023
45. China premier balks at US blacklist with visit to sanctioned surveillance giant, calls for digital economy revolution
Mandy Zuo, South China Morning Post, October 10, 2023
46. Assessing the U.S.-China Competition for Minerals Crucial to the Development of Emerging Technologies
Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, Stanford University, October 1, 2023
47. China Is Becoming a No-Go Zone for Executives
Chip Cutter, Elaine Yu and Newley Purnell, Wall Street Journal, October 6, 2023
Foreigners are thinking twice about business trips to the country after Beijing has barred some executives from leaving.
Foreign executives are scared to go to China. Their main concern: They might not be allowed to leave.
Beijing’s tough treatment of foreign companies this year, and its use of exit bans targeting bankers and executives, has intensified concerns about business travel to mainland China. Some companies are canceling or postponing trips. Others are maintaining travel plans but adding new safeguards, including telling staff they can enter the country in groups but not alone.
“There is a very significant cautionary attitude toward travel to China,” said Tammy Krings, chief executive of ATG Travel Worldwide, which works with large employers around the world. “I would advise mission-critical travel only.”
Krings said she has seen a roughly 25% increase in cancellations or delays of business trips to China by U.S. companies in recent weeks. A U.S. government-linked survey, published in September and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, found that nearly a fifth of respondents are reducing business travel to China.
The reluctance among foreign executives to travel to mainland China could put more strain on the relationship between Beijing and the U.S., which has been damaged by tensions over Taiwan, competition for supremacy in the race for AI chips and a prolonged trade war. Foreign businesses have recently adopted the approach of “siloing” their China risk, which means isolating their activities there from global operations.
A major fear among large U.S. companies is that their employees could be barred from leaving mainland China, either temporarily or for long periods, corporate travel and security advisers said. A Hong Kong-based senior executive at U.S. risk-advisory firm Kroll has been blocked from leaving the mainland for the past two months, the Journal reported last week. A senior investment banker at Japanese firm Nomura also can’t leave the mainland.
Beijing uses travel restrictions to help it with criminal investigations, to pressure dissidents or to gain leverage in disputes with foreign companies and governments, according to Western officials and human-rights groups. These exit bans can last years and are sometimes imposed on those who aren’t suspected of a crime. Neither the Kroll executive nor the Nomura banker was the direct target of investigations by Chinese authorities, according to people familiar with the cases.
COMMENT – If, as is the case, the U.S. State Department recommends against travel to the PRC, then it is irresponsible for companies to send their employees there on business.
48. China’s Country Garden Succumbs to Debt Crisis After Sales Plunge
Rebecca Feng, Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2023
49. China’s economy misses Golden Week glow as property gloom persists
Joe Leahy, Nian Liu, Chan Ho-him, and William Langley, Financial Times, October 10, 2023
Cyber & Information Technology
50. Shenzhen, China’s Silicon Valley, unveils 20-point plan to boost funding for local tech companies amid US investment restrictions
Iris Deng, South China Morning Post, October 9, 2023
51. China targets 50% growth in computing power in race against U.S.
Josh Ye, Reuters, October 9, 2023
52. US lawmakers press White House for tougher enforcement of China chip rules
Stephen Nellis, Reuters, October 7, 2023
53. Lawmakers shift gears on TikTok ban
Gavin Bade, Politico, October 9, 2023
54. The Quantum Chips Are Stacking Up
Rishi Iyengar, Foreign Policy, October 11, 2023
Even as the U.S. government tries to hold back China’s semiconductor industry and steal a march on its artificial intelligence capabilities, it is also preparing a much bigger, and more important, battlefield: quantum computing.
Mentions of the technology have been tucked into a recent executive order curbing outbound investment into China, guardrails around funding for the CHIPS and Science Act, and a pair of presidential directives last year aimed at securing America’s own quantum capabilities.
For everything from encryption to combat communications, winning the quantum war means winning the bigger war. And this battle has just begun.
“For the U.S. and our allies, not getting it first has profound implications,” said Rick Switzer, director of strategy and policy at the State Department’s Office of the Special Envoy for Technology, at the Quantum World Congress in Virginia last week.
55. China Goes on the Offensive in the Chip War
Sihao Huang and Bill Drexel, Foreign Affairs, October 11, 2023
56. US Lets Samsung, SK Hynix Expand Giant Chip Plants in China
Yoolim Lee and Heejin Kim, Bloomberg, October 9, 2023
Washington effectively granted the pair an indefinite waiver, decision removes uncertainty hanging over memory makers.
The Biden administration will allow Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. to acquire the equipment they need to sustain and expand their giant chipmaking operations in China, a victory for the world’s two biggest memory makers.
Washington has effectively granted the pair an indefinite waiver on broader restrictions banning the shipment of advanced chipmaking gear to China, South Korea’s presidential office said in a statement.
COMMENT – Probably a bad idea and it likely highlights how unsuccessful the U.S. has been at mapping and influencing the commercial landscape that determines the flow of dual-use technology.
Military and Security Threats
57. US Navy sailor admits taking bribe, sharing military data with China
Andrew Goudsward, Reuters, October 10, 2023
58. Near collision, tense encounter as Beijing flexes muscles in the South China Sea
Adrian Portugal, Reuters, October 9, 2023
59. Australia redeploys troops to north in bid to deter China
Rurika Imahashi, Nikkei Asia, September 29, 2023
60. Inside Asia's arms race: China near 'breakthroughs' with nuclear-armed submarines, report says
Greg Torode, Reuters, October 9, 2023
A submarine arms race is intensifying as China embarks on production of a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines that for the first time are expected to pose a challenge to growing U.S. and allied efforts to track them.
61. How prepared is Taiwan for a war with China?
Erin Hale, Aljazeera, October 10, 2023
62. China urges Philippines to end 'provocations' in South China Sea
Reuters, October 9, 2023
63. Former Soldier Indicted for Attempting to Pass National Defense Information to People’s Republic of China
Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Department of Justice, October 6, 2023
64. Another Summer in The South China Sea: A Guided Tour Of The World's Most Contested Waters
Mallory Shelbourne, USNI News, October 6, 2023
65. Police Fatally Shoot Driver Who Crashed into Chinese Consulate in San Francisco
Livia Albeck-Ripka and Alexandra Stevenson, New York Times, October 9, 2023
66. As invasion fears rise, China hones Taiwan blockade strategy
Gabriel Dominguez, Japan Times, October 3, 2023
As China ups the ante near Taiwan with military exercises designed to encircle the self-ruled island, Beijing may not have an invasion on its mind but rather another approach: a blockade.
The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) increasingly frequent exercises around Taiwan, particularly its long-range deployments in the Pacific, indicate that Beijing is refining a strategy to cut the island off from the outside world and keep Taipei's potential military partners at bay.
“China likely has the capabilities to conduct an aerial and naval blockade per what we know of their military capabilities, force structure and the military exercises we’ve seen them undertake in the past year,” said Kristen Gunness, a security expert and senior policy researcher at the U.S.-based Rand Corp.
One Belt, One Road Strategy
67. Why China laid the tracks for Indonesia's first high-speed rail
Julia Malleck, Quartz, October 2, 2023
Whoosh wouldn’t have been possible without funding from China, which beat out Japan—known for its seamless Shinkansen train service—in 2015 to lay claim to the contract. The bidding war between the two countries was as much a financial battle as a political one. China ultimately won out, a decision that Indonesia said was due to its preference for an approach that focused on business rather than government, as Forbes reported. Japan’s then–chief cabinet secretary, Suga Yoshihide, called the outcome “difficult to understand” and “extremely regrettable.”
For China, it was a coup. A joint venture between Jakarta and Beijing, Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), now operates the new train. Whoosh also marks the first high-speed rail contract that China has secured and completed abroad, but it’s far from the last.
Where China’s railways extend, so too does its geopolitical influence
Since BRI’s inception in 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping has envisioned railways as a means to extend the reach of not just his nation’s commerce, but also its currency and tourism.
Xi has framed his soft power strategy in “win-win” terms. “Infrastructure connectivity is the foundation of development through cooperation,” he said at the 2017 BRI forum. “We should build the Belt and Road into a road of opening up. Opening up brings progress while isolation results in backwardness.”
Whoosh is the latest addition to that vast, increasingly international network. While Indonesia’s high-speed rail is expected to have positive economic impacts for the country, the train is also a symbol of regional clout for China. Not all projects have been a success—the stalled Tinaco-Anaco railway in Venezuela is one example—but China has forged ahead with others.
68. China vows Belt and Road ramp up despite debt-trap criticism
Ck Tan, Nikkei Asia, October 10, 2023
69. U.S., EU to support African railway development to counter China
Takeshi Kumon, Nikkei Asia, October 11, 2023
Opinion Pieces
70. Pushing back against China’s media offensive
Brad Glosserman, Japan Times, October 3, 2023
71. How to Break China’s Hold on Batteries and Critical Minerals
Brian Deese and Jason Bordoff, Foreign Policy, October 4, 2023
The surge in adoption of electric vehicles offers a chance to lessen oil dependence and fight climate change; yet worries about China's hold on EV supply chains have led to concerns over energy insecurity regarding minerals for batteries.
COMMENT - If democracies are going to pursue an energy transition away from carbon-intensive fuels to renewables, then they must think through the kinds of economic and strategic dependencies that would arise under a new energy paradigm. The refusal to take these issues seriously will both weaken support for the energy transition and make democracies less capable of defending the kind of international system that makes an energy transition possible.
I’m glad to see the Biden Administration’s former Director of the National Economic Council address this issue directly.
It is wrong to assume that we can choose between waging a new cold war against a Sino-Russian axis or address climate change (as Senator Bernie Sanders argued over two years ago in Foreign Affairs, “Washington’s Dangerous New Consensus on China: Don’t Start Another Cold War”)… we will need to do both.
72. Why Russian and Chinese spy scandals are a threat to us all
Elisabeth Braw, Financial Times, October 5, 2023
73. Should We Be Worried That Washington’s Pandas Are Being Sent Back to China?
Michael Schaffer, Politico, October 6, 2023
74. Chinese Regulators Give AI Firms a Helping Hand
Angela Huyue Zhang, The Wire China, October 8, 2023
75. China expert Matt Pottinger: ‘Even with a weak economy, Xi is feeling emboldened’
Henry Mance, Financial Times, October 9, 2023
76. Why are tourists not returning to mainland China? Experts cite a host of reasons but it’s anyone’s guess as to when ‘normality’ will resume
Mark Footer, South China Morning Post, October 5, 2023
77. China’s ‘opening up’ policy risks becoming an empty promise without going beyond simple business deals
Zhou Xin, South China Morning Post, October 3, 2023