China Articles - June 12, 2022
Friends,
Over the past two weeks the PLAAF (the PRC’s Air Force) has committed two dangerous intercepts of Canadian and Australian patrol aircraft in international airspace.
In the first instance, a PLAAF fighter jet nearly collided with a Canadian CP-140 patrol aircraft that was monitoring the enforcement of United Nations sanctions against North Korea (sanctions that the PRC rhetorically supports yet fails to take any material action to uphold in violation of its international responsibilities).
Last week, a PRC J-16 fighter flew alongside an Australian P-8 patrol aircraft and veered in front and deployed its chaff (small pieces of aluminum that serve as decoys for missiles) into the path of the Australian aircraft causing the chaff to be ingested into the patrol aircraft’s engines. This represents a deliberate effort to damage or potentially force down the aircraft, which is built on the frame of a Boeing 737, with a crew of nine.
This should be placed in context with the massive numbers of fighters and bombers that the PRC routinely sends towards Taiwan and the recent Sino-Russian joint air exercise with bombers and fighters that was sent against Japan following the Quad meeting in Tokyo. I’m concerned that the Chinese Communist Party wants to cause an incident which increases tensions between itself and its neighbors in an effort to drive wedges between democratic allies.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Details surface on China's 'dangerous' interception of RAAF P-8A
Mike Yeo, Australian Defense Magazine, June 6, 2022
Australia has accused China of conducting a dangerous intercept of a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) P-8A Poseidon multi-mission aircraft in late May, with Australia’s Defence Minister subsequently saying that the Chinese jet released decoys that were ingested by the P-8A’s engine.
Defence issued a statement early on Sunday saying that the incident occurred in international airspace over the South China Sea on the 26th of May, adding that the P-8A was intercepted by a Chinese Shenyang J-16 while conducting “routine maritime surveillance activity”.
It added that the intercept then “resulted in a dangerous manoeuvre which posed a safety threat” to the RAAF aircraft and crew and that the Australian government has raised its concerns with its Chinese counterpart over this incident.
Defence Minister Richard Marles later provided more details about the intercept when questioned about it on TV, saying that the J-16 flew alongside the P-8 and released flares before accelerating and cutting across the front of the RAAF aircraft and settling in front of it at “very close distance” and releasing “a bundle of chaff which contained small pieces of aluminium, some of which were ingested into the engine of the P-8 aircraft.”
He added that “obviously, this was very dangerous” but that the RAAF crew were all unharmed and praised them for responding professionally during the incident.
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The news of this intercept came after Canada accused China of similarly dangerous intercepts of its CP-140 Aurora maritime patrol aircraft, with reports in Canada’s Global News accusing Chinese military interceptors of coming close enough to flash their middle fingers at the Canadians.
The CP-140, which is the Canadian designation for the Lockheed P-3 Orion, is currently monitoring North Korean sanctions-busting efforts at sea under Operation Neon.
2. Marxism Makes a Comeback in China’s Crackdown on ‘Disorderly Capital’
Tom Hancock, Bloomberg, June 6, 2022
Traditional Western economics is out of favor, as Xi Jinping’s government funds research on ‘socialist political economy with Chinese characteristics.’
Cheers greeted China President Xi Jinping as he toured Beijing’s Renmin University of China in April, telling students and teachers: “We must continue to promote the modernization of Marxism.” Social science research, he said, should have “Chinese characteristics” and contribute to “China’s independent knowledge system.”
It was a notable contrast to 11 years earlier, when Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, visited the same campus, “listening carefully” to discussions on macroeconomics. That was in China’s boom years. The economy was growing faster than 10% a year, and private entrepreneurs in sectors such as real estate and technology operated with more autonomy than ever. Corruption and pollution were rampant. Karl Marx wasn’t mentioned.
Now, Xi was meeting with two “political economists”—Liu Wei, the university’s president, and Zhao Feng—who blend Marxism with elements of Western economics. The visit highlighted China’s pivot to funding and supporting researchers who are suspicious of the power of private business, with some advocating barring private capital from entire sectors. The message was clear: In today’s China, Marxism is back, and investors had better take note.
The intellectual shift hasn’t happened overnight, but it has become more evident in the past two years. Since the end of 2020, when China’s Communist Party began vowing to rein in the “disorderly expansion of capital,” a regulatory onslaught has swept through the economy and stock market. Beijing reduced the power of the country’s largest internet and video game companies with new rules backed by tough fines and launched a campaign to slow debt growth, choking the private-sector-dominated real estate industry. Then the huge industry offering for-profit tutoring to schoolchildren was outlawed entirely.
3. Are Uyghurs different from Ukrainians? — Q&A with Rayhan Asat
Rayhan Asat and Jeremy Goldkorn, SupChina, June 6, 2022
Rayhan Asat and her brother worked for better Uyghur-Han relations in China. Then he was forcibly disappeared. So Rayhan was outraged by the recent visit of the UN’s human rights chief to Xinjiang that became a photo op for Beijing. She also had some pointed criticism for SupChina.
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What can people outside of China do to help get your brother and others like him out of concentration camps?
I don’t want to sugarcoat it and say, “Oh, SupChina is doing a good job.” You are giving platforms to promote the Uyghur cause and put their struggle in the spotlight. You are giving a platform to a few Uyghur-related articles. That’s too minimal an effort. But look at the last episode that you’ve had a Uyghur person speak on your podcast, that was me in 2021.
I mean, this has to be a conversation that we need to have constantly and repeatedly. That’s the bare minimum that we can do. I just find it quite troubling when you at SupChina only speak about it here and there. That kind of halfhearted approach doesn’t advance the Uyghur cause.
So this is my fair criticism, if you will, to make sure that this issue is highlighted over and over again until we see real change happening.
Second, you have many people surrounding your organization. Whether it’s devout followers of SupChina or people who you engage with, they always talk about how important it is to promote the U.S.-China relationship because it is one of the most important relationships of the century. Okay. I agree with that to a large degree. But can you also claim to be an ambassador for human rights while you’re doing that? You’re promoting that relationship. Can you also say, “Hey, you are making me look terrible.”
I’m pro constructive engagement myself. Not engagement at all costs that involves disregarding human suffering. I feel like that’s something still lacking. And I’ve argued with some people on this issue because you cannot just always say good things, never criticize China, and go on Chinese state media and pretend everything is okay. You are no better than being complicit by doing that.
If people go on Russian state media right now, how would the international community react? What makes genocide less of a crime than war crime? Because it’s not so overt in our eyes? We saw the newly leaked documents. We saw all those people’s eyes. Now come and tell me, “Oh, but because it’s hard to see the proof.” Now you’ve seen it. What are you going to do?
If every person just fights for one Uyghur person and keeps repeating the message so that you cannot say, “So, we’ve talked about it already.” I just feel that, whether it’s through sanctions or something along those lines, I would love to see the current economic and political mechanisms deployed against the Russian crisis to be deployed for China.
Everyone agrees it was justified to sanction Russian oligarchs. When can we say that it’s okay to sanction Chinese oligarchs who are benefiting from the Uyghur crisis? I know this is going to be controversial, but people are talking about potentially sanctioning Russian Olympians. And here we just had the Chinese government host the Winter Olympics. I mean, just think about it for a second. Why are there certain measures that are okay to be deployed against another country, but for China those same measures are not even considered? We cannot bring it up. As a moderate voice, I am also cautious when I don’t have to be.
Maybe because the money is different? Much more of it is at stake in China?
The Chinese market is much larger, we all know that. But I think these are difficult questions that every person should pose to their own conscience, and ask, “Why do we have this double standard?”
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4. An anonymous letter from a Uyghur in China
Darren Byler, SupChina, June 1, 2022
A citizen in eastern China describes how Uyghur “mouths have been sealed” over the past five years.
Some time ago in a major city in eastern China, a letter was hand-delivered by a Uyghur young man. The young man addressed the letter to the world outside China. The recipient of the letter, a non-Chinese citizen in eastern China, in turn shared it with me at the author’s request.
At the risk of great personal harm, the author insisted that the letter be translated, edited, and published in English. After independently confirming the identity of the letter-writer, I agreed to do this. The version of the letter below has been approved by the author. The original full-length Chinese version of the letter is available here.
In the letter, the author describes how his life has been shattered by the mass internment campaign that has swept up Uyghurs from across the country, trapping them “in the darker world of Xinjiang.” He talks about the way the souls of Uyghur children are imprisoned from the day they are born, and how it didn’t used to be that way. He grew up believing in China, honored to be the one who raised the red flag at his school in Xinjiang. Now he has seen his relatives taken away, the fear on his parents’ faces. He, like most Uyghurs in China, knows a great deal about the reeducation camps and “poverty alleviation” programs that are used to separate them from each other and their way of life.
The world he describes is portrayed in full color in a vast archive of thousands of images taken by police officers of detainees in Kashgar Prefecture, which was published in May 2022. The images show thousands of Uyghurs, some as young as 15, in the process of being interned in camps, prisons, and industrial parks in 2017 and 2018. A speech included in the leaked data from Zhào Kèzhì 赵克志, the national leader of China’s Ministry of Public Security, describes as many as 2 million such Muslims in need of such reeducation.
Scanning through the faces of these detainees, the reality of what the letter-writer describes from his vantage point in eastern China, though filtered through the messages and experiences of his family and friends in Xinjiang, is presented in high resolution.
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I am a Uyghur living in China, and I am taking a terrible risk by writing this. I dare not disclose my name, because I would not be the only one to suffer. My parents, who are nearing retirement, would likely go to prison, and my little sister would never escape the fallout.
From the time of my grandparents onward, my family members have all been members of the Communist Party. I have been in government since I was young, and always in contact with a large number of government personnel.
My parents sent me to a Chinese school as a child because Chinese language skills are necessary to attain good standing in China. Our family never rejected this. I was eager to be the flag-raiser in elementary school. When I was in third grade, I got my wish. Seeing the red flag flying, I felt pride and deep love for this land.
I never thought about splitting the country [by advocating for Uyghur independence], never thought that my family would be persecuted. But all of my thinking has been gradually broken down since 2009 [when there were widespread Uyghur protests and rioting, followed by mass disappearances and policing].
My family members never committed any illegal acts, but my uncle accidentally crossed a line. An old Communist Party member, he was sentenced to 30 years and was not allowed to appeal, under the threat that my grandmother would also be locked up for three years. And my grandmother’s younger brother, who was not a party member because of his religious beliefs, was also locked up.
Now my parents go to work day after day, where they are subjected to criticism and struggle sessions in front of their colleagues. They dare not ask for dismissal from work. They must be extremely careful, or they will be taken into the concentration camps.
These things should be known and someone should say them. But when you disclose such information, Chinese diplomats take the stage, claiming that the information is false and there is no way to verify it. But this will not stop me from writing to testify to my experiences and those of my family and friends, to demand change from my country, and to plead for help from the international community.
Like all Uyghurs I know, my identification card carries a special electronic security warning. In Xinjiang, where Uyghurs’ homeland is located, you have to swipe this card to pass checkpoints that have popped up all over the cities, at the entrance of bookshops, supermarkets, malls, and university campuses. I am fortunate to live far from Xinjiang, on China’s eastern coast. Surveillance is looser here, but when I travel, my ID card suddenly gives away my ethnicity.
As soon as you swipe, an alarm sounds behind the scenes and the person you are dealing with will start to treat you differently. Once at a high-speed rail station in Beijing, I was dragged immediately to the security area, where they turned over my bag. In Yunnan, before getting off a plane, the flight attendant told me that I needed to wait. The plane unloaded as expected, and the police were waiting for me at the exit. The same happened when I went to Guangzhou and Hangzhou. Once I was in Shenzhen, and, after checking into a hotel, the police came to check the room and turn over my belongings. Then they took me in the police car to the police station. The general process is to simply ask you questions and make notes, then take you into the photography room, let you stand against the wall with a height scale, and take three consecutive photos. Some overzealous police stations will ask you to add your WeChat, and then at a certain time, you will be asked to send your location, along with photos of what you are doing.
Many Uyghurs would feel extremely lucky to be in my situation. Utilizing China’s household registration policy, more and more Uyghurs tried to move out of Xinjiang to other parts of China, so as to avoid the much harsher surveillance and harassment by local officials in Xinjiang. But after the authorities recognized what was happening, they immediately suspended most areas from accepting Uyghur household registration. Nearly all Uyghurs are trapped in the darker world of Xinjiang.
Around 2017, the arrests started. At first, it was people with previous convictions and criminal records. Then they started arresting religious people. One was a relative of mine, whom I remember as a very prestigious religious person, a very kind and devout Muslim. Then they began to arrest all Uyghurs who had a record of international travel, focusing on people who had been to Turkey and other Islamic countries.
This inspired a group of influential writers from Xinjiang and relevant senior officials to fight back. The only thing they could do was to express their opinions and tell the government that the policy was inhuman. This obviously aroused a stronger suppression by the government. All Uyghur cultural circles and intellectuals active at all levels of society were brought in.
Then the government began the ridiculous “integrated system” [IJOP: a computer system that flags individuals as potential criminals based on personal data and surveillance]. For example: if your car is parked in the garage for a long time, the government will call you to tell you that because your car has been inactive, you have been flagged by the system and need investigation. For this reason, someone was also brought in.
As for the rules and regulations of the “integrated system,” there is no explanation on how to implement and determine the nature and scope of the individuals to be inspected or arrested. The person who detained you will not tell you anything. In most cases, they do not know the reason for arresting you, but your name is indeed on the IJOP list. Computer-generated data turned out to be a random excuse to seize people.
An uncle I knew used to work in a camp. His brother was detained in the camp, but he had no right to visit. Every day this uncle endures inner suffering.
Each concentration camp is equipped with countless monitoring devices, and the perimeter of the camps are completely closed by barbed wire and large iron gates. The staff only enters and exits with a personal work permit, and there is a fixed commute time every day. No entry or exit is allowed at other times, and large barriers are erected at the gates.
The camps are concrete voids. Every day, people in them are subjected to intensive education, criticism sessions, and, for some people, violence.
Since 2019, with the escalation of international discussions on human rights in Xinjiang, the government has begun to panic. In particular, when internal documents are circulating in foreign media, all internal documents are ordered to be cleared. Relevant policy books and all documents are destroyed uniformly, and some WeChat groups are also broken up to prevent the spread of any similar information on the internet.
Since the camps were reported by foreign media, many of the camps have been converted into workshops and factories. On the surface, the prisoners have been placed in employment.
Outside of the camps, a so-called “poverty alleviation” project is being carried out in many places. For example, in Shache County, Kashgar Prefecture, in order to meet the poverty alleviation standards, the poor farmers were forced to make loans, build their own houses, and purchase high-end furniture. It seems that they are indeed out of poverty, but the next problem is, how do they repay bank loans on time every month?
Education in the Uyghur language has virtually ended. Uyghur language books have been widely burned.
No one can say what will happen in 10 years, but the facts are the facts, and it is impossible to hide the truth. I want to remind government officials, when your children see your face in the future, after they understand the facts, they will certainly condemn you in their hearts. Later generations will not remember your empty lies. All they will remember is your persecution.
We Uyghurs are defenseless. Beyond sacrificing our own blood, we have no path of resistance! Our mouths are sealed and our hands cut off. If we do not borrow the rest of the world’s voice and hands, we will never see the light of day. We will be drowned in the spit of the Communist Party! Our children’s souls are imprisoned the day they are born.
I beg the nations of the world, especially Islamic countries, please wake up! Profit cannot come before your God. Don’t abandon your friends who love God to this hell on account of money. Thanks also for the consistent voices of Western countries: We need you, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany — don’t forget us! We in China, in Xinjiang, are waiting for the arrival of freedom and democracy. China, please wake up at the last moment! It is not too late to pull back. Otherwise, your delight in brutality will usher in a violent end!
5. Taiwan: preparing for a potential Chinese invasion
Kathrin Hille and Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times, June 7, 2022
Xi Jinping’s ambitions and the modernisation of China’s military are prompting growing fears about an attempt to annex the island.
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Biden appears to have drastically reduced that ambiguity. Asked by a reporter during his recent trip to Japan if he was willing to use force to defend Taiwan, he said: “Yes. That is the commitment we made.” The White House hurried to stress — as it did after Biden’s previous similar statements which some analysts viewed as gaffes — that US policy towards Taiwan has not changed.
But senior officials in Taiwan and countries allied with the US believe Biden is trying to deter Beijing by signalling more clearly it might have to fight the US, too. “We think Biden has made a political decision to demonstrate that this option cannot be excluded,” says a senior Taiwanese official.
“In the Ukraine case, he said beforehand that the US would not enter the war. But when China feels that their military capability has reached the level ready for taking Taiwan, just using financial or economic sanctions will not create an effective deterrence,” he says. “So you must absolutely not let China believe that you will not take military action.”
6. Preparing for China Decoupling Should Start NOW
Dan Harris, China Law Blog from Harris Bricken International Law Firm, June 6, 2022
China’s decoupling will be fairly gradual and then very sudden
In early 2019, I remarked on how United States and China were decoupling and how that would only continue:
This “decoupling” from China is still in its early stages, but a UBS “survey of chief financial officers at export-oriented manufacturers in China” late last year found that a third had moved at least some production out of China in 2018 and another third intended to do so this year.
The die has been cast.
US-China decoupling is accelerating and inevitable. Trade relations between the United States and China will lead, and the EU, with trade relations between China and Canada, Australia, Japan, and many other countries soon following. China’s trade relations with these other countries will be greatly impacted in part because they will have little choice if they want to maintain their trade relations with the United States. What we have seen in with Russia’s relationship with the world will become a reality for China as well. This decoupling will be fairly gradual, but at some point it will be incredibly sudden.
7. Silicon Sellout Report: Why Apple is Making a Deal with Chinese Semiconductor Manufacturer YMTC
Roslyn Layton and Jeff Ferry, China Tech Threat and Coalition for a Prosperous America, June 8, 2022
The Coalition for a Prosperous America and China Tech Threat have released Silicon Sellout, a new report detailing how Apple’s decision to use chips made by Chinese semiconductor manufacturer YMTC threatens to harm Americans’ security and privacy and reshape the global semiconductor market in China’s favor.
To recap: Right now Apple has entered into an agreement with YMTC to source YMTC chips for the iPhone. This deal will have serious negative consequences for both Americans and the world:
· It will concentrate more chip production inside China at a time when supply chains are already vulnerable to Chinese lockdowns and government diktats.
· It will create major security and privacy risks to Apple users all over the world.
· It will increase the risk of a western tech leader providing material support to the Chinese military, which has already used American semiconductor technology to advance its capabilities.
· It will likely force the exit of at least one memory chip supplier based in a democratic country from the global market.
· It will confer legitimacy on YMTC at a time when the global demand for chips – one China is intent to be the world leader in satisfying – will only continue to grow.
Why would Apple consummate such a deal, in spite of the risks? Two reasons are likely:
First, Apple is probably improving its profit margins by sourcing chips from a company that thrives on state subsidies. YMTC has received $24 billion in subsidies from the Chinese government since its creation in 2016. Those subsidies allow YMTC to sell its products at lower price, undercutting other memory chip suppliers such as in the process.
Second, some observers of the tech world have speculated that the Chinese government is leaning on Apple to use YMTC chips. Apple’s growing sales inside China incentivize the company to do so. As Silicon Sellout states, “For Apple, as for many U.S. companies, the opportunity to increase sales is an irresistible feature of the Chinese market. China has one billion consumers—and a government that conditions foreign companies’ ability to sell on their willingness to play by its rulebook.” Last year, Apple reported sales of $68 billion from China and revenues up 70 percent. Those figures translate into leverage for Beijing.
Whatever the reason for Apple’s agreement with YMTC, it creates technological, economic, and supply chain risk for the American people.
AUTHORITARIANISM
U.S. Embassy to the People’s Republic of China, June 7, 2022
COMMENT: This episode of deliberately manufacturing false statements to U.S. diplomats bears watching. The Chinese Communist Party is deeply sensitive to the growing realization across the world that it is committing a genocide against their Uyghur Muslims citizens. The Party has been searching for years to find a way to either divert attention (claim that its not happening or claim that it is just completely legitimate and voluntary “education centers”) or to make counteraccusations (as evidenced by this example: claim that the United States is “making up” genocide in order to split and weaken China). ‘Friends of China’ have been repeating this counteraccusation for some time, I’ve personally heard Party apologists make these arguments in off-the-record events. What’s so disturbing about these genocide-deniers is that they refuse to engage with the Uyghur-American community and essentially amplify the Party’s hostility towards this minority group.
It reminds me of Stalin’s fellow-travelers, who worked hard to deny the truth of the Great Terror in 1937… they invented similar excuses that the mass executions were being “made-up” to undermine the Soviet Union.
9. Xi Jinping bans grumbling inside the Communist Party
The Economist, June 2, 2022
To grasp the dire state of political debate in modern China, consider this: there are reformist speeches by Deng Xiaoping, the late paramount leader, that could easily be banned by censors today. A good example is Deng’s speech on the benefits of collective leadership of the Communist Party and Chinese state, delivered in August 1980 as he moved against veterans of the recently ended Mao era and replaced them with modernisers.
Deng was a party man, not a dissident. A ruthless, battle-hardened revolutionary and nationalist, he backed those reforms that promised to make one-party rule and the economy work better, and thus strengthen China. Still, when re-read in 2022, his speech on the reform of party and state leadership sounds like a cry of dissent. For it is a cogent argument about why it is folly, given China’s history, to hand too much power to one person.
Later this year President Xi Jinping is expected to secure a third term as party chief and with it personal authority of a sort last enjoyed by Chairman Mao Zedong. At preparatory meetings nationwide, provincial party bosses are busy declaring fealty to the “two establishes”: clunking party-speak for establishing Mr Xi as the core of the party leadership and for establishing Xi Jinping Thought as China’s guiding ideology. Such Mao-era titles as “helmsman” are being dusted off. Party newspapers talk of living through an era whose greatness is signalled by the emergence of Mr Xi, a man of “outstanding leadership and majestic personality”.
Deng explained four decades ago why such developments are dangerous. His speech in 1980 drew on fresh memories of the Mao years, a cruel time of policy blunders and man-made famines, political purges and a personality cult that only ended with the despot’s death in 1976. It opens with four principles. First, he warned against excessive concentrations of power. Next, noting the limits to any one person’s knowledge, experience and energy, Deng counselled against handing two or more jobs to the same individual: a bitter joke in a China in which Mr Xi is party boss, military chief, head of state and chairman of numerous policymaking bodies. Third, Deng called for a clearer distinction between the political-oversight role of the party and the technocratic work of the government: a principle increasingly trampled since 2012, when Mr Xi took over and reasserted party authority over institutions of state. Fourth, Deng backed the promotion of younger officials to prevent succession crises. Mr Xi turns 69 this month and has no named heirs. For good measure, Deng denounced fawning praise that implies that “history is made by a few individuals”, a notion that he called not very Marxist (a fair argument, given Marx’s focus on the large economic and social trends that shape events).
On one point, Deng seemed to concur with his present-day successor, when he warned in 1980 against “factionalism”, recalling the destructive infighting of the late Mao period. Mr Xi’s first decade as chief has seen ever-stricter party rules against “cliques and cabals” and the disparaging of leaders’ policies. Discipline has been reinforced by a years-long anti-corruption campaign. It has seen millions of party members and officials of all ranks investigated, ostensibly for graft and immorality but with notably harsh prison sentences for grandees who challenged or criticised Mr Xi. Last month the party announced, in effect, a ban on grumbling, with retired senior members forbidden to make “negative political speeches” or comment publicly on important policies.
Mr Xi’s silencing of dissent is more ambitious than anything his predecessors attempted. For decades after Mao’s death, party chiefs hailed the wisdom offered by “collective leadership” while denouncing “factionalism”. But in fact they knew, and tacitly accepted, that these are two aspects of the same phenomenon, argues Olivia Cheung of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, author of an elegant new research paper: “Factional model-making in China: party elites’ open political contention in the policy process”. The paper sets out how national leaders governed by balancing rival factions. In turn, norms emerged that allowed elders to show disdain for mainstream party policies without crossing a line into open revolt. By way of a case study, the paper describes a procession of party elders, retired generals and Mao family members who between 1990 and Mr Xi’s elevation as leader visited Nanjie, a village in the central province of Henan that rejected land reforms to become a collective again. Their visits indicated disquiet over the party’s embrace of capitalism and were welcomed by Nanjie’s politically savvy leaders. Now, bowing to the times, the village calls itself part of Mr Xi’s nationwide campaign of rural-poverty alleviation, even if it is still festooned with posters of Mao, Stalin, Lenin and Marx. Factional signalling by leftists and others was annoying to previous leaders, but had its uses. Mr Xi’s ban on grumbling is really a ban on informal ways in which elders talked to one another, says Ms Cheung. Without informality, the party risks becoming an echo chamber.
Where are the safety valves?
Chinese politics is often simplified into a saga of a few clashing personalities. That misses the extent to which Mr Xi presides over a sprawling political machine, powered by competing interest groups. He has dismantled safety valves that allow that machine to vent internal pressures, says Jude Blanchette of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Washington. Such pressures have not gone away: Mr Blanchette is intrigued to see Deng’s speech from 1980 being posted on Chinese social media. That is not evidence that Mr Xi faces a coup, despite recent speculation about rifts at the top. It is a reminder that he is not guaranteed a successful third term, not least because unhappy Chinese bureaucrats are masters at foot-dragging. Understanding such dangers, Deng in 1980 declared: “No leading cadre should hold any office indefinitely” (before retaining supreme power for himself). It would be a brave elder who quoted his words today.
10. Why a Top Chinese Influencer Got Taken Offline
James Palmer, Foreign Policy, June 8, 2022
The censorship of Li Jiaqi’s livestream highlights sensitivity around the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
11. China’s new vassal: Vladimir Putin
Stuart Lau, Politico, June 6, 2022
Xi Jinping now holds the better cards in steering the Moscow-Beijing relationship.
China can now enjoy turning the tables.
When Chairman Mao Zedong visited Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the winter of 1949, he was very much the junior supplicant. Stalin packed him off to wait for weeks in his snow-bound No. 2 dacha, 27 kilometers outside Moscow, where the humiliated and constipated Chinese leader grumbled about everything from the quality of the fish to his uncomfortable mattress.
When the two Communist leaders did get to business, Stalin bullied his way to a very favorable deal that put Mao on the hook to buy Russian arms and heavy machinery with a loan on which Beijing would have to pay interest.
Seven decades later, the power dynamics reveal a radical reset. Shortly before invading Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to the Winter Olympics in Beijing to proclaim the “no limits” friendship with China’s Xi Jinping, but there’s no doubting who the real superpower is in that duo these days. China’s $18-trillion economy is now 10 times mightier than Russia’s. Beijing will hold nearly all the good cards in setting the terms of any financial lifelines from big brother.
As Russia faces a sharply contracting economy under sanctions and an impending oil embargo from Europe, China is the obvious potential benefactor for Putin to turn toward.
Xi shares Putin’s hostility to the West and NATO, but that doesn’t mean he will be offering unalloyed charity. Xi’s overriding strategic concern is China’s prosperity and security, not saving Russia. Beijing is likely to buy at least some oil diverted from Europe, but only at a hefty discount from global benchmarks. China will only help Russia to the extent that it doesn’t attract sanctions and imperil its own ability to sell goods to rich countries in North America and the EU.
12. China encourages public to help with national security with cash for tip-offs
Martin Quin Pollard, Reuters, June 7, 2022
13. China’s Risky Revival of Mao-Era Grassroots Mobilization Methods
Dan Macklin, The Diplomat, June 7, 2022
14. Nike to end its Run Club app in China in the latest retreat by a US brand
ABC News, June 8, 2022
China is the app's most profitable market. Nike says it will discontinue its popular Nike Run Club app in China from July, in the latest reassessment by a US brand of its offerings to the Chinese market.
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New tech laws see US companies fleeing Chinese market
Multiple US tech brands have ceased to offer or reduced services to users in mainland China in the past year, citing reasons from censorship to increasing compliance requirements.
China has put new curbs on internet companies in areas such as content and has also imposed new laws, such as one on personal information protection designed to protect users' data privacy.
In November last year, Yahoo pulled its services from China, citing an "increasingly challenging" operating environment.
A month prior, Microsoft pulled the plug on LinkedIn in China, marking the retreat of the last major US-owned social network in China.
LinkedIn cited a "more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China".
The departures illustrate the choices companies face in a hugely profitable market, but one where they are required to censor content as China tightens its control on the industry.
15. Crude, Ugly and Pro-American? China Investigates Images in Math Textbooks.
Austin Ramzy, New York Times, May 31, 2022
16. China’s Lockdowns Prompt a Rethinking of Life Plans Among the Young
Liyan Qi and Shen Lu, Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2022
For many Chinese who saw Shanghai as a magical place to pursue their dreams, the city’s two-month-long Covid-19 lockdown has been a wake-up call.
It wasn’t just the isolation and living under the threat of being hauled to a quarantine center. Many describe how a forced switch to survival mode created a deep sense of insecurity. Now, some are outlining drastically altered life plans.
Earlier this year, Sandra Shen, a 27-year-old who teaches piano in her apartment, was discussing with her husband, also from Shanghai, whether they would soon have children. She was hesitating. Now, she has decided: It’s a firm no.
17. Manoj Kewalramani on Reading the People’s Daily, Daily
Andrew Peaple and Manoj Kewalramani, The Wire China, May 22, 2022
The scholar reflects on what he's learned from reading the Communist Party's official newspaper every day for two years.
18. The China shock: Germany turns away from its biggest trading partner
Matthias von Hein, Deutsche Welle, May 27, 2022
19. Hong Kong Police Quash Vigil to Mark Tiananmen Square Massacre
Selina Cheng, Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2022
20. Puzzling Profits: Why is it so hard to know what multinational companies make in China?
Eliot Chen, The Wire China, June 5, 2022
21. Taiwan will never forget China’s Tiananmen crackdown, says president
Yimou Lee and Ben Blanchard, Reuters, June 4, 2022
22. WHO: COVID origins unclear but lab leak theory needs study
Maria Cheng and Jamey Keaten, Associated Press, June 9, 2022
Over two years after the coronavirus was first detected in China, and after at least 6.3 million deaths have been counted worldwide from the pandemic, the World Health Organization is recommending in its strongest terms yet that a deeper probe is required into whether a lab accident may be to blame.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
23. BYD pollution probe heaps pressure on China’s stuttering electric vehicle sector
Primrose Riordan, Gloria Li and Andy Lin, Financial Times, June 6, 2022
Carmaker under investigation after claims residents near factory suffered nosebleeds and breathing problems
24. China’s Energy Nationalism Means Coal Is Sticking Around
Gabriel B. Collins, Foreign Policy, June 6, 2022
China is touting its renewable energy investments and has vowed to “accelerate the pace of coal reduction” in coming years. Yet in practice the country continues doubling down on coal on the back of blackouts, energy security fears, great-power competition, and Europe’s biggest land war in nearly 80 years. Fear and risk aversion both favor coal entrenchment, and both are in ample supply in Beijing these days.
As a result, millions of metric tons per day of additional greenhouse gases surge into the atmosphere. And the coal hopper is being loaded higher. Chinese policymakers recently greenlighted a coal mine capacity expansion of an additional 300 million metric tons in 2022—almost the annual production of the entire European Union. That’s enough coal to fill a train of standard rail hopper cars that would wrap around the entire equator, plus enough left to stretch from Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles.
25. As China mines more coal, levels of a more potent greenhouse gas soar
Christian Shepherd, Washington Post, May 27, 2022
When China ramped up its reliance on coal-fueled power plants over fears of an energy crunch, climate experts were already worried, but now a study shows that the renewed mining will boost levels of methane, a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide.
26. Ukraine war helps China's coal addiction stack up
Yawen Chen, Reuters, June 1, 2022
27. China pivots to boost coal output, putting climate goal at risk
Shunsuke Tabeta, Nikkei Asia, May 21, 2022
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
Jack Lau, South China Morning Post, June 7, 2022
WeChat account states diplomats in China said US knew there were no human rights violations in Xinjiang but sought to create dissatisfaction among Uygurs
US embassy spokesperson denies claim, says Chinese online activists exposed personal information of US officials and spouses, and encouraged attacks on them
29. Macron MP fights to prove he isn’t Beijing’s man
Giorgio Leali, Politico, June 3, 2022
Buon Tan, a member of President Emmanuel Macron’s party, was the only lawmaker to vote against French resolution calling China’s treatment of Uyghurs a genocide.
30. Hollywood's high-wire act with China
Charissa Yong, Straits Times, June 6, 2022
The scrutiny of a tiny flag patch in Top Gun: Maverick reflects the manoeuvres US film-makers have to undergo to satisfy American and Chinese audiences
31. China says all IAEA member states must agree before Aukus nuclear sub project begins
Liu Zhen, South China Morning Post, June 7, 2022
32. Estonian court jails woman over Chinese espionage charges
Gabriela Galindo, Politico, June 4, 2022
An Estonian court jailed a woman after it found her guilty of spying for China and conspiring against Tallinn.
The court found Gerli Mutso, 42, guilty of espionage activities on behalf of the People’s Republic of China, according to national broadcaster ERR. She had been charged with conspiring against the Republic of Estonia and participating in and supporting intelligence activities against Estonia.
She was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.
33. Fentanyl’s New Flow: The unexpected rise of the Chinese fentanyl industry in Mexico
Sean Williams and Danny Gold, The Wire China, June 5, 2022
Despite Beijing’s ban, fentanyl and its many chemical building blocks still, overwhelmingly, originate in China, and they routinely find their way to the U.S. via Mexico, according to a 2020 report released by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency that highlighted the shifting global supply chain. And with relations between Washington and Beijing worsening over issues like Ukraine and Taiwan, experts are torn on how to stem the tide of illicit drugs.
At best, China is thinly-stretched in regulating its own rapidly growing pharmaceutical industry, which is estimated to be worth $161.8 billion by 2023. At worst, it seems unwilling to stop the flood into the U.S. of the most deadly opioid on earth.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
Kelly Ho, Hong Kong Free Press, June 6, 2022
The transfer of the case from a lower court means that the defendants face up to life in prison over an alleged conspiracy to commit subversion in connection with an unofficial legislative primary election held in July 2020.
35. EU lawmakers push to designate human rights conditions in Xinjiang as ‘genocide’
Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, June 7, 2022
The motion enjoys the support of four of the biggest parties in the European Parliament, meaning it appears likely to succeed in Thursday’s vote
Such a resolution is not binding and does not change the official position of the European Union, but it serves to gauge the mood in Parliament
36. Biden Plans High Bar for Imports from Xinjiang Under US Ban
Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg, June 1, 2022
Biden administration officials signaled Wednesday they’re prepared to take a tough stance enforcing a ban on imported goods from China’s Xinjiang region unless companies provide clear evidence the goods are free of forced labor.
In a webinar offering the most detailed look yet at the US government’s plan for implementing the law that takes force June 21, Customs and Border Protection officials warned companies the bar for clearing imports will be “very high,” and that the agency will not look the other way when goods have only a minimal connection with Xinjiang.
“If there’s a part or a piece of an input that is coming from the Xinjiang region, then that shipment will be considering containing forced labor and it will not be allowed into the country,” said Elva Muneton, acting executive director of the task force implementing the new law.
37. Xinjiang Labor Used by Distributor that Exports Seafood to U.S., Canada
Kelsey Hamilton, Kharon, May 31, 2022
A seafood processing company located in China’s eastern province of Shandong, that supplies large food distributors and retailers in the U.S. and Canada, accepted workers from Xinjiang through government organized labor transfers as of February 2020, Kharon found.
U.S. law currently prohibits importing any item made with the use of forced labor globally. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which comes into effect on June 21st, highlights the risk surrounding government labor transfer schemes that move workers from Xinjiang to other parts of China.
Shandong Meijia Group, a frozen food processor and distributor based in the coastal province of Shandong, received over 100 “Xinjiang employees” through the Xinjiang Human Resources and Social Security Bureau “under the targeted poverty alleviation policy proposed by President Xi [Jinping],” according to a 2019 People’s Daily article. In February 2020, a group of 39 “surplus rural laborers” from Makit County, Xinjiang, were also sent to Shandong to work at the Meijia Group “after undergoing training” overseen by the local Xinjiang Aid Command Bureau.
Poverty alleviation efforts such as Xinjiang Aid, labor transfers, and the presence of “surplus rural labor” have all been flagged by the U.S. Department of State as indicators of forced labor practices. It is unclear to which of Meijia’s factories the transferred workers were assigned.
Frozen seafood processed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Meijia has been exported in large quantities to the U.S. and Canada, including as recently as April 2022 to food distributors in North America that supply major grocery stores and retailers.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
38. Chokepoints: China’s Self-Identified Strategic Technology Import Dependencies
Ben Murphy, CSET, May 2022
China’s "Science and Technology Daily," a state-run newspaper, published a revealing series of articles in 2018 on 35 different Chinese technological import dependencies. The articles, accessible here in English for the first time, express concern that strategic Chinese industries are vulnerable to any disruption to their supply of specific U.S., Japanese, and European “chokepoint” technologies. This issue brief summarizes the article series and analyzes the Chinese perspective on these import dependencies and their causes.
COMMENT: Note to businesses that produce the 35 “Chinese technological import dependencies,” invest in excellent cybersecurity, conduct insider threat analysis and diversify your customer base away from the PRC.
39. China’s Slowdown Poses Credibility Test for Economic Data
Jason Douglas, Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2022
One lesson economists say they have drawn from scrutinizing Chinese statistics is to be on the lookout for discrepancies in China’s data when the economy is at a turning point—as it appears to be now—or at moments of special political significance.
Later this year, Mr. Xi will seek to overturn recent precedent and secure a third term in power, a move that would be more easily choreographed against a backdrop of healthy growth. He has already instructed officials to ensure China’s growth outpaces the U.S.’s in 2022.
The depth of the economic slowdown leaves Beijing with only a few options, economists say: Accept a much slower rate of growth than the government’s goal of around 5.5% for 2022, change or scrap that target, or fudge the figures.
40. Italy's PM Draghi vetoes technology transfer to China
Giuseppe Fonte and Ella Cao, Reuters, June 7, 2022
Italy's prime minister, Mario Draghi, has vetoed a transfer of technology and software to China in a deal involving industrial robot maker EFORT Intelligent Equipment, according to a Shanghai filing and a source close to the matter.
41. Engineer Who Fled Charges of Stealing Chip Technology in US Now Thrives in China
Jordan Robertson and Michael Riley, Bloomberg, June 6, 2022
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
42. China rebrands proposal on internet governance, targeting developing countries
Luca Bertuzzi, Euractiv, June 6, 2022
The Chinese government made another attempt in promoting its vision of the internet, in a repackaging intended to lure lagging regions.
Throughout the years, China has made several attempts at changing the current internet architecture, mostly in the context of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nation’s agency for ICT technologies.
Contrarily to other standardisation organisations that are dominated by private companies, in ITU governments play a leading role. Thus, Beijing has been using this forum to attract countries that might have similar interests in asserting stronger governmental control over the internet.
In September 2019, the delegate of Chinese telecom juggernaut Huawei presented a proposal for a new IP (Internet Protocol). In February, EURACTIV anticipated that more proposals were expected in the context of the World Telecommunication Standardisation Assembly.
43. One Key Challenge for Diplomacy on AI: China’s Military Does Not Want to Talk
Gregory C. Allen, CSIS, May 20, 2022
Substantive diplomacy on this topic is worth pursuing and, if successful, could meaningfully contribute to reducing the risk of a future U.S.-China conflict. With such loud public support in prominent Chinese venues, one might think that the U.S. military need only ask in order to begin a dialogue on AI risk reduction with the Chinese military.
Alas, during my tenure as the Director of Strategy and Policy at the DOD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, the DOD did just that, twice. Both times the Chinese military refused to allow the topic on the agenda.
Though the fact of the DOD’s request for a dialogue and China’s refusal is unclassified—nearly everything that the United States says to China in formal channels is—the U.S. government has not yet publicly acknowledged this fact. It is time for this telling detail to come to light.
China’s refusal was not the first time that China’s diplomatic strategy on military AI included a gap between words and actions. China’s 2016 and 2018 position papers to the United Nations discussions on lethal autonomous weapons have supported a ban on the usage of such weapons, but not their development. If that is the case, it begs the question why are Chinese weapons companies—including ones controlled and owned by the Chinese military— building and exporting internationally AI-enabled weapons that openly advertise lethal autonomous capabilities.
…
The truth, unfortunately, is that—despite the United States’ efforts at transparency and requests for dialogue—the United States knows very little about how seriously the Chinese military considers ethics in its use of AI, how robust Chinese test and evaluation processes are, and what governance structures and procedures exist to reduce the risk of military AI accidents.That secrecy in and of itself is a source of risk to international peace and security.
But, then again, what incentive does China have to substantively engage? The United States is already providing a great deal of transparency around its own risk reduction efforts, and China is already garnering many reputational benefits from calling for dialogue without any of the costs of substantively participating.
COMMENT: The Chinese Communist Party also refuses to discuss strategic arms control or conventional arms control. For all the hand-wringing about the need for dialogue and engagement with Beijing, the CCP has been a terrible partner for decades in trying to create strategic stability.
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
44. China’s military industry is booming with huge demand for combat equipment
Barry van Wyk, SupChina, June 3, 2022
As a big merger takes place between two state-owned aviation equipment companies, the 14th Five Year Plan is propelling huge demand in the military industry — along with a crucial change of emphasis.
45. China secretly building naval facility in Cambodia, Western officials say
Ellen Nakashima and Cate Cadell, Washington Post, June 6, 2022
46. Ukraine war highlights stakes of Chinese attack on Taiwan
Stuart Lau, Politico, June 7, 2022
"Ukraine led threat perceptions to rise all over Asia," said James Crabtree, executive director for the Singapore office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which organizes the Shangri-La event. "Defense establishments suddenly thought geopolitical calamities previously thought highly unlikely were suddenly possible, with Taiwan merely being the most obvious potential flashpoint in a region riven with potential tensions."
47. VIDEO – South China Sea: Home to oil, gas reserves and rich fishing grounds
Charissa Yong, Straits Times, May 21, 2022
48. VIDEO – Taiwan Strait: Cross-strait clash could draw others into the fray
Charissa Yong, Straits Times, May 21, 2022
49. Is China Preparing to Destroy the U.S. Navy?
Peter Suciu, 1945, May 31, 2022
50. China Nears Launch of Advanced Aircraft Carrier, Satellite Images Show
Gordon Lubold and Warren P. Strobel, Wall Street Journal, June 2, 2022
China is poised to launch its newest, most advanced aircraft carrier, in a major step that will enable its navy to expand its military operations on the high seas.
New satellite imagery reviewed by The Wall Street Journal shows that after several years of work in the Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, China’s third carrier, known as a Type 003, may be afloat in coming weeks or even days, analysts said. The Type 003 is China’s third aircraft carrier, and its largest and most advanced. It uses new electromagnetic catapult technology akin to what the U.S. and French carriers have to launch aircraft, analysts said.
51. China Gears Up to Launch Its Third Aircraft Carrier
Matthew P. Funaiole, CSIS, June 2, 2022
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
52. CCP Inc. in West Africa: How Chinese Party-State Actors Secured Critical Minerals in Guinea
Briana Boland, Lauren Maranto and Jude Blanchette, CSIS, June 7, 2022
This CCP Inc. case study explores how Chinese diplomatic, regulatory, financial, and commercial actors work in concert to secure critical minerals in the West African nation of Guinea. Efforts in Guinea to mine bauxite and iron ore, the primary inputs for aluminum and steel, illuminate Beijing’s conduits for influencing and supporting its geo-economic objectives.
Examining one key Chinese player in Guinea’s mining sector, this study highlights state actors’ connections with nominally private Chinese companies and the importance of partnerships with state-owned enterprises for building costly infrastructure.
Across multiple bauxite and iron ore mining ventures, Chinese diplomatic support and state financing provided conduits to help further favored projects and increase Chinese companies’ access to Guinea’s mining industries.
53. Lithuania minister urges EU countries to leave China's '17+1' bloc
Sayumi Take, Nikkei Asia, June 7, 2022
54. Biden envoy to visit Marshall Islands as U.S. concerns grow about China’s Pacific push
CNBC, June 8, 2022
55. The Secrets of China’s Economic Statecraft in Africa
Anzetse Were, The Diplomat, June 1, 2022
Beijing has succeeded by responding to African governments’ precise needs, against a backdrop of lingering mistrust of the West.
OPINION PIECES
56. China’s growth miracle increasingly looks as if it’s coming to an end
George Magnus, Times of London, June 8, 2022
Analysts in China can’t say this out loud or in writing, but this year may be the one in which it came to be recognised that China’s economic miracle is over. Since February, the closely managed Chinese yuan has fallen by about 6 per cent against the US dollar, its fastest decline for a decade. From the time of the Russian invasion of Ukraine through to late May, foreign investors, who poured money into Chinese equities and bonds in 2020-21, withdrew a record amount. While Covid lockdowns were a factor, the effects of China’s support for Russia and of its Covid management will linger for longer than the short-term bounce driven by the lifting of restrictions in Shanghai and Beijing.
GDP may have contracted in the second quarter by between 5 per cent to 10 per cent on an annualised basis, even allowing for a better June. Freight and passenger traffic in the year to May were down by 39 per cent. Property sales at the 100 largest developers were down by nearly 50 per cent. Sales of cars, construction equipment and consumer goods dropped like a stone and the leisure, hospitality and other services sectors contracted. The officially measured unemployment rate rose to 6.7 per cent, as high as it was at the start of Covid in 2020 but now, as then, a large underestimate.
Underlining the severity of the situation, Li Keqiang, the country’s premier, held a teleconference on May 25 with more than 100,000 officials across the country to emphasise the measures that the government and the central bank had introduced to stabilise the economy. He exhorted them to implement these immediately, and in good time for the important 20th Communist Party Congress later in the year.
Looking ahead, and subject to renewed outbreaks of Covid, which doubtless would trigger the same zero-Covid policy response, we should expect the economy to revive a bit. Lower interest and mortgage rates, plentiful liquidity, more infrastructure borrowing and spending programmes, tax breaks and other help for firms, as well as an easing of restrictions on property developers’ balance sheets are all likely to give the economy a lift. Yet, absent statistical manicuring, the official 5.5 per cent growth target for 2022 is out of reach and the underlying growth rate this year will be barely more than 2.5 per cent.
Covid-related factors clearly are shaping this year’s economy, but it was in poor shape even before. It is experiencing an array of structural headwinds that are weighing heavily on growth and employment. These comprise still-rising debt levels and debt-serving burdens, rapid ageing and labour force decline, high income inequality, low productivity and signs that the property sector, accounting for about a quarter of annual GDP, is set to stagnate for the first time. Meanwhile, China’s private sector and entrepreneurs are being coerced by regulations, laws and arbitrary measures into pursuing party goals and the “orderly expansion of capital”.
The rest of the world has not yet integrated the idea of the end of China’s growth miracle or that its trend growth in future is perhaps no more than 3 per cent. Policymakers can only determine if this happens with more or less disruption.
Commentators may still quip that China will overtake the United States, but the numbers suggest it might never happen. In the meantime, China’s more subdued outlook suggests that eventually commodity prices will roll over and that global inflation will be pulled one way by higher cost regionalisation of supply chains and in the other by weaker Chinese demand and a cheaper yuan. Formal decoupling will increase as China and other countries pursue national security agendas, while foreign firms will become more responsive to the concerns of their home governments and shareholders. Engagement has been the lifeblood of a rising China. Disengagement now looms.
57. Lockdowns and Tiananmen amnesia – why Beijing isn’t ready for the Chinese century
Shi Jiangtao, South China Morning Post, June 7, 2022
The international order is rapidly unravelling in front of our eyes in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis and Russia’s war in Ukraine, with the decline of Pax Americana, or US dominance in world affairs.
But, despite all the talk about the emergence of the Chinese century, Beijing does not seem ready for it yet.
A litany of recent events, from the chaotic Shanghai lockdown to blanket bans on the mainland and in Hong Kong on commemorations of the June 4 crackdown, suggest Beijing still has a long way to truly become a global power.
For many, including its enthusiastic apologists, Beijing’s heavy-handed response to the outbreaks of the Omicron variant, especially the shutdown or partial shutdown of Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, was largely unexpected and unnecessary.
The draconian two-month lockdown of Shanghai, a city of 25 million and the country’s biggest port, dealt a devastating blow to China’s ailing economy and accelerated the exodus of foreign workers and others who previously had no plan to leave.
Its exact economic and political impact may take months to play out, but it has clearly diminished the remaining confidence in the Chinese economy among global investors and drawn sharp criticism from business communities and world leaders.
But not surprisingly, Beijing has displayed little willingness so far to rethink – let alone scrap – its controversial zero-Covid strategy ahead of the sweeping leadership reshuffle later this year.
While some observers lament Beijing’s missed opportunity to retain global leadership in pandemic control, its clampdowns on public commemorations of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 came as little surprise.
The ban in Hong Kong, which until 2019 was the only place in China allowed to hold remembrances for those killed in the pro-democracy movement 33 years ago, is a sign that the city is losing its most precious freedoms and becoming like every other in the country.
Over the years, Beijing has tried to erase memories of the tragic event, with the topic deemed off-limits across the mainland. But such censorship efforts can have unintended effects too, and can even backfire, especially for those who have no knowledge of the event.
Like the inhumane Omicron lockdowns, Beijing’s censorship of one of the country’s most politically sensitive issues has raised questions about its credibility. Its global ambitions are also on the line, with doubts about whether it can be trusted to live up to its pledges to become a benign, responsible power.
58. Ukraine and the start of a second Cold War
Gideon Rachman, Straits Times, June 6, 2022
The US once again sees itself as engaged in a global struggle with Russia and China
59. Can America Prevent a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan?
Patrick Mendis and Hon-Min Yau, National Interest, June 5, 2022
60. The U.S.-China Competition for the Indo-Pacific Is Just Beginning
Patrick McLaren, National Interest, June 1, 2022
In the long term, it is unlikely that regional stability will be achieved through complete domination by any one state in particular.
61. New direction
Ed Stocker, Monocle, May 2022
We speak to Lithuania’s foreign minister about his ambitious blueprint for shaking off the nation’s dependency on bad actors. Bigger countries should take heed.
Until the start of the year, Lithuania’s 40-year-old centre- right foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, presided over the diplomacy of a small European power whose stability kept it largely out of the international headlines. That changed when the nation suddenly found itself in a trade dispute with China over Taiwan.
62. Democracies Can Out-Compete the China-Russia Alliance
Hal Brands, Bloomberg, May 20, 2022
The economic trauma of the Ukraine war is only beginning: Energy shocks, food-supply disruption and commodity shortages will have growing impact as the conflict persists. The war, moreover, is just part of an accelerating geo-economic realignment.
The golden age of globalization, when countries pursued interdependence with minimal fear of insecurity, is over. The global economy is now being reshaped by competition and conflict. That will create some opportunities for the US to strengthen its position — as well as a whole lot of worldwide turmoil.
63. The Case for Applying Global Magnitsky Sanctions Against Hikvision
Dahila Peterson, National Interest, June 6, 2022
The United States and its allies should levy Magnitsky sanctions on Hikvision and convey that they are prepared to add more Chinese companies if the Xinjiang surveillance state continues to operate unabated.