China Articles - February 13, 2022
Friends,
This week’s issue of articles and reports on the malign activities of the Chinese Communist Party starts with an interview of the Hoover Institution’s senior fellow, Dr. Elizabeth Economy on her new book, The World According to China. In this 45-minute podcast, Dr. Economy provides her insights into Beijing’s intentions and the implications on the rest of the world. For more, I recommend picking up her new book.
We also have a short video report from Sky News on how PRC agents and police routinely operate in other countries to intimidate and kidnap Uyghurs, as well as other groups and individuals the Chinese Communist Party sees as a threat. Based on this reporting, as well as other sources, it appears increasingly clear that Beijing uses both INTERPOL and the law enforcement elements of third countries to commit human rights abuses.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, it appears that the Chinese Communist Party is waging a social media influence campaign to deflect criticism about their human rights during the Olympics. For weeks, the Twitter hashtag #GenocideGames has been swamped by thousands of largely automated accounts to undermine the efforts of human rights groups.
Given that Twitter is banned inside the PRC, the automated nature of the responses, and the fact that many of these accounts were created in just the last 2-3 months, there is strong evidence that this campaign is being waged by the PRC Government. As usual, Twitter has done very little to remove these activities from their platform and it has taken a mainstream media outlet to highlight this activity.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. AUDIO – Elizabeth Economy on Her Book the World According to China
Jessica Teets and Elizabeth Economy, National Bureau of Asian Research, February 4, 2022
An excellent interview of Dr. Elizabeth Economy about her new book, The World According to China. Jessica Teets, an associate professor of political science at Middlebury College, talks with Economy, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, about Xi Jinping’s decade-long effort to fundamentally change the international system to serve the Party’s interests.
2. VIDEO – How China is using black sites in the UAE as they target Uyghurs abroad
Tom Cheshire, Sky News, February 9, 2022
Sky News journalist Tom Cheshire reviews his investigation into Chinese agents and police that routinely operate in other countries, attempting to identify Uyghurs who have fled China. Some are coerced into spying for the Chinese government, while others simply vanish.
3. Countering Threats Posed by the Chinese Government Inside the U.S.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, Federal Bureau of Investigation, January 31, 2022
The Director of the FBI provides a broad overview of the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party inside the United States and what the FBI is trying to do to protect all Americans.
Luke Patey, The Wire China, February 6, 2022
Luke Patey for The Wire China reports on the growing possibility for countries to take collective action against the PRC’s economic coercion. As governments, companies and citizens become more aware of Beijing’s behavior and as successful responses by Australia and European countries become more well known, we may be approaching a tipping point of concerted backlash against the CCP.
5. A report detailed the tech gap between China and the U.S. Then it disappeared.
Shen Lu, Protocol, February 9, 2022
Shen Lu at Protocol reports on the fascinating disappearance of a report by a leading think tank in the PRC that concluded that the unfolding technology competition between the US and the PRC would harm the PRC more. The researchers at Peking University Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS) wrote that while “both the U.S. and China will lose from ‘decoupling,’”… “at this point, it looks like China’s loss may be greater.” After circulating widely, the report was removed from the Chinese internet without explanation.
6. Pro-China Twitter Accounts Flood Hashtag Critical of Beijing Winter Olympics
Georgia Wells and Liza Lin, Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2022
The Wall Street Journal reveals what appears to be a coordinated campaign across Twitter to dilute the hashtag #GenocideGames by thousands of largely automated accounts to undermine the efforts of human rights groups to draw attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes during the Olympics. Given that twitter is banned inside the PRC, the automated nature of the responses, and the fact that many of these accounts were created in just the last 2-3 months, there is strong evidence that this is a PRC Government campaign.
AUTHORITARIANISM
Liza Lin and Elaine Yu, Wall Street Journal, February 6, 2022
8. Xi Jinping brushes off furore dogging Beijing’s ‘Genocide Olympics’
Tom Mitchell, Financial Times, February 4, 2022
9. Why the Beijing Olympics Are Awkward for Corporate Do-Gooders
Nathaniel Taplin, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2022
Christy Leung, South China Morning Post, February 4, 2022
11. Closure of media outlets in Hong Kong: Media Freedom Coalition statement
UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development, February 7, 2022
12. China’s Anti-Graft Show Is Educational, With Unintended Lessons
Li Yuan, New York Times, February 9, 2022
13. VIDEO – overijverige Chinese bewaker duwde NOS-correspondent weg [Overzealous Chinese guard pushed NOS correspondent away] – ORIGINAL IN DUTCH
NOS, February 5, 2022
14. Corporate Complicity Scorecard
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, February 3, 2022
The US private sector increasingly finds itself at the heart of US-China geopolitical tension. In their endeavor to capture Chinese markets and boost their bottom lines, American corporations have increasingly supported Beijing’s military modernization, surveillance state, domestic securitization, and attendant human rights violations.
As a result of this growing dependency, some corporations engage in political lobbying in the US in ways that ultimately serves Beijing’s interests while potentially undermining the values and principles that undergird the western democratic order.
Until now, scrutiny of US industrial actors’ complicity with problematic actions of the Chinese state has been scattered and ad hoc, without comprehensive or comparative assessments across players.
This report fills this important gap: it presents broad-ranging assessments of the nature of American corporations’ involvement in China, and then grades them based on a transparent and replicable new methodology.
This research does not assume that doing business in China is inherently wrong. However, support for Beijing’s military modernization, surveillance state, and human rights violations may contradict professed corporate ethics, mislead consumers, and risk violating relevant laws in the US and elsewhere.
Many US companies began their relationships with China well before China revealed itself as an aggressive international player. Companies which do substantial business with China need to reassess their role—not just the benefit they receive, but the degree to which they could be said to facilitate China’s abusive domestic and international policies.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
15. World to China: Time to step up on climate
Ryan Heath, Politico, February 9, 2022
China has alienated a large swath of people around the world with its woeful climate performance, the latest sign of the country’s battered reputation as it rises to superpower status.
A new POLITICO Morning Consult Sustainability Poll finds that majorities in every age group, income bracket, ideological affiliation and gender across 12 developed and developing countries agree that China needs to be held to the same standards as Western countries when it comes to reducing emissions and combating climate change.
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
16. Australia offers timely lessons in resisting Chinese trade coercion
Alan Beattie, Financial Times, February 9, 2022
17. China suspends Lithuanian beef, dairy, beer imports as Taiwan row grows
Dominique Patton and Andrius Sytas, Reuters, February 10, 2022
18. Guto Harri must declare any recent contact with Huawei, says ex-MI6 chief
Lucy Fisher, The Telegraph, February 8, 2022
Sir Richard Dearlove calls on PM’s new communications chief, Guto Harri, to come clean about his links to companies like Huawei amid news he once lobbied for Chinese telecoms company.
19. No 10 insists Guto Harri’s Huawei lobbying was within rules
David Hughes, Evening Standard, February 8, 2022
20. Taiwan, Canada, Japan ask to join EU’s WTO case against China
Stuart Lau, Politico, February 10, 2022
21. U.S. university reverses decision to remove Olympic protest posters
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Axios, February 7, 2022
The president of George Washington University in D.C. has reversed his earlier decision to remove campus posters protesting the Beijing Olympics, which the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) had said "incited racial hatred and ethnic tensions."
While campus chapters of the CSSA are established “independently,” the entire framework of the CSSA is overseen and sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Education and is an integral part of the Party’s United Front Work Department as made clear in numerous reports (here and here) as well as statements by the U.S. State Department.
The posters that GWU President Mark Wrighton had removed and originally called racist were done by Badiucao, a famous Chinese-Australian who has been using his art to bring attention to the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party for years. He is same artist I highlighted to this group in the January 16th Issue of this newsletter.
Badiucao responded to President Wrighton’s reversal by asking that the posters be put back up and to demand that the University protect the students that hang the posters from the kinds of harassment and bullying that the CSSA is well known for. He also asked for a direct apology and an opportunity to speak to students.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
22. Journalist who interviewed Peng Shuai casts doubt over her freedom
South China Morning Post, February 8, 2022
23. What’s Next for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act
Haley Byrd Wilt, The Dispatch, January 18, 2022
24. China: Imprisoned Tibetan Monk’s Health in Peril
Human Rights Watch, February 9, 2022
Caitlin McFall, Fox Business News, February 4, 2022
26. China’s Peng Shuai says there was ‘misunderstanding’ over her allegations, announces retirement
Christian Shepherd, Washington Post, February 7, 2022
In carefully managed interview with French media, Peng Shuai denied accusing a former senior Chinese official of sexual assault
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
U.S. Department of Justice, February 7, 2022
A federal indictment was unsealed today in the Northern District of Illinois, charging a telecommunications company with conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets.
The indictment alleges that a telecommunications company conspired with former employees of Chicago-based Motorola Solutions Inc. to steal digital mobile radio (DMR) technology developed by Motorola.
According to court documents, Motorola Solutions developed the DMR technology through years of research and design. Motorola Solutions marketed and sold the radios, which are sometimes referred to as “walkie-talkies,” in the United States and elsewhere.
The indictment alleges that PRC-based Hytera Communications Corp. LTD recruited and hired Motorola Solutions employees and directed them to take proprietary and trade secret information from Motorola without authorization.
The charges allege that, while still employed at Motorola, some of the employees allegedly accessed the trade secret information from Motorola’s internal database and sent multiple emails describing their intentions to use the technology at Hytera.
Josh Ye, South China Morning Post, February 4, 2022
Che Pan, South China Morning Post, February 10, 2022
30. U.S., Chinese Investors Feud Over Startup Icon Aircraft During National Security Review of Deal
Kate O’Keeffe, Wall Street Journal, February 8, 2022
Feuding investors in a California plane startup are firing off allegations against each other while the company is in the midst of a U.S. national security review, a risky tactic during the secretive process.
Icon Aircraft Inc. makes a small, amphibious plane with foldable wings that is marketed for recreational use. A group of American shareholders fell out with Chinese investors who hold a dominant stake in Icon, alleging they are improperly transferring the company’s technology to China. The Chinese investors have said in legal filings that they are pursuing a normal technology licensing agreement. They and Icon deny any improper dealing.
The Americans last year filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the alleged technology transfer. They then appealed to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS, which reviews deals on national-security grounds, and told the panel that Icon’s technology has possible military applications.
31. AUDIO – How China Influences U.S. Innovation and Technological Capabilities, with Barry Naughton
Innovation Files Podcast, January 24, 2022
32. Global Aluminium Trade Groups Call on G7 To Rein In Chinese Subsidies
Aluminum Insider, February 6, 2022
Last week the Aluminum Association, European Aluminium, the Aluminium Association of Canada, and the Japan Aluminium Association came together to release Towards a Fairer and Cleaner Trade in Aluminium, a policymaker briefing that details the manifest harm exacted by state subsidies of aluminium production by the People’s Republic of China to the global economy and environment.
33. Weaving Strategic-Industry Competitiveness Into the Fabric of U.S. Economic Policy
Robert Atkinson, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, February 7, 2022
34. India Prohibiting Drone Imports Effectively Blocks China’s DJI
Ragini Saxena, Bloomberg, February 10, 2022
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
35. Cyberattack on News Corp, Believed Linked to China, Targeted Emails of Journalists, Others
Alexandra Bruell, Sadie Gurman and Dustin Volz, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2022
36. Welcome to the Burner Phone Olympics
Matt Burgess, Wired, February 2, 2022
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
37. North Korea Builds ICBM Base Near China as Fears of New Test Loom
Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times, February 8, 2022
38. India and China share a grey relationship. It all hinges on ‘waiting for the right time’
Tara Kartha, The Print, February 7, 2022
39. One of China’s picks for a torchbearer is an army commander who clashed with India.
Keith Bradsher and Karan Deep Singh, February 3, 2022
40. Russia deal gives Xi safety net for potential Taiwan action
Katsuji Nakazawa, Nikkei Asia, February 10, 2022
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
41. Argentina Joins China’s Belt and Road
Marc Lanteigne, The Diplomat, February 10, 2022
42. China’s ‘soft-power blitzkrieg’ on Sri Lanka’s Tamils rings alarm bells in India
Penny MacRae, South China Morning Post, February 5, 2022
OPINION PIECES
John Stossel, February 9, 2022
44. Olympics Heighten Oppression in China
Anastasia Lin, Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2022
45. China’s Forever War Against Covid-19
Holman W. Jenkins Jr, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2022
46. Strategic Clarity and the Future of U.S.-Taiwan Foreign Relations
Raymond Kuo, National Bureau for Asian Research, February 3, 2022
47. Russia and China Unveil a Pact Against America and the West
Robin Wright, New Yorker, February 7, 2022
In their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan.
The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, NATO as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world.
“Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
48. Another university learns the hard way about Chinese censorship on campus
Josh Rogin, Washington Post, February 9, 2022
49. The Guardian view on Beijing’s Winter Games: a very political contest
The Guardian, February 8, 2022
Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, February 7, 2022
51. US trade policy needs a radical redesign
Rana Foroohar, Financial Times, February 6, 2022
Chinese strategy makes it unrealistic to return to the ‘one world, two systems’ vision of the 1990s.
If you doubt that we’ve left the era of laissez-faire free trade, read a white paper put out late last year by the Chinese government. The title, China’s Export Controls, isn’t scintillating. But the conclusions are, at least to those who care about trade.
“The world is undergoing profound changes of a scale unseen in a century, with an increase in destabilising factors and uncertainties,” reads one passage. “The status and role of fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory export control measures is growing in importance as an effective means to address international and regional security risks and challenges and safeguard world peace and development.”
On the one hand, this tells us nothing we didn’t already know from the last several years of US-China trade battles, particularly around high growth technologies. But the Chinese argument deserves close attention, because very often when US politicians, regulators and policymakers make the same point, they are shot down as protectionist, nationalistic or worse. This is true even within the US administration itself, where there seem to be two opposing camps.
The first, Team Status Quo, is heavy on state department and commerce types. They want to believe that we can somehow travel back to the 1990s, a time of willful blindness about a “one world, two systems” model in which China and liberal democracies would co-operate to their mutual benefit despite maintaining fundamentally different political and economic systems.
The second, Team New Rules, includes Katherine Tai, the US trade representative, as well as other administration officials interested in labour, climate and long-term security issues. They have a more realistic approach, grasping that even if the US wanted to go back to a neoliberal trade approach that prioritised market access for big companies over better wages, the ability to make crucial products or the protection of the planet, China is going in another direction.
Beijing’s so-called dual circulation plan is a decisive step away from World Trade Organization rules and multilateral agreements orchestrated by technocrats from the US and Europe. It prioritises self-reliance, indigenous innovation and the use of all strategic resources to shape a world where the US no longer calls most of the shots. That means settling more trade deals in renminbi, the better to reduce the financial leverage that the dollar gives the US. It also involves weaponising supply chains — various legislative loopholes in the US still allow states and companies to source supplies such as personal protective equipment from China.
This is the state of play. The only question is how the US should respond. Team Status Quo should give up on the rather arrogant idea that the US can return to the Clinton era, or that the electorate wants to. And the US should craft a trade policy fit for today. The starting point should be goals. Rather than simply cutting new trade deals with no concrete understanding of how they connect to today’s geopolitical reality, the US should ask itself, “what kind of economy do we want to build?”.
The new settlement should be economically fair and geopolitically secure, with an even playing field for businesses of all sizes, better wages and environmental standards, resilient supply chains and a thriving industrial commons. This is particularly important for innovation in industries such as semiconductors, where companies learn by making.
Once the overriding goals are in place, the administration can articulate coherent policies and craft strategic trade deals. This is exactly what China does. In fact it goes further, incorporating trade as one part of a much larger economic vision that is measured in decades, not quarters — or in the case of America’s previous president, tweets.
That kind of top-down planning is complicated, risky and inappropriate for the US. But more strategic thinking for a new world is not. “Trade is a tool,” says Lori Wallach, a trade lawyer who directs the Rethink Trade programme at the American Economic Liberties Project, a think-tank focused on breaking concentrations of economic power. “This administration has articulated goals like creating good jobs for workers with and without college degrees and strengthening economic resilience,” she adds, “and our trade policy and deals must deliver not damage that.”
One timely example is the fight over the House Competes Act and the Senate Innovation and Competition Act. Both bills support more domestic chip production and rebuilding of critical supply chains. But the House bill has a deeper analysis of and approach to goods and capital offshoring, better environmental protections and stronger trade adjustment assistance. This is crucial for Democrats to avoid the mistakes of the Clinton era, when they pushed unfettered trade without adequate support for those who lost jobs, some of whom went on to support Donald Trump. For the Democrats, this was the most politically devastating policy choice of the past two decades.
I could go on. There are numerous inconsistencies between White House goals and initiatives such as Buy America, which actually means Buy America plus 60 other countries with widely varied economies and political systems, or how we are thinking about pan-Asian trade and security. The point is that the US doesn’t have a new, unifying theory for trade policy in our post-neoliberal era. It needs one, now.