China Articles - September 11, 2022
Friends,
Like many of you, I’m paying close attention to the apparent collapse of Russia’s frontlines in northeast Ukraine and what could be as much as 1,000 square miles retaken by Ukrainian forces near Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv. Simultaneously, traditionally nationalist voices in Russia are calling for Putin’s resignation over these reverses and the failure to mobilize Russia fully for war.
These are not the developments that Xi Jinping and his supporters wanted to see a month before the 20th Party Congress.
Of course, those developments only compound the challenges that Xi has internally. As journalist Dexter Roberts recently pointed out, Party cadres at the local level face an impossible task from their Core Leader: prevent any COVID outbreak, stimulate growth, and reduce debt simultaneously. That they have to do this as their key revenue source (land sales to developers) is collapsing, suggests that there are some serious problems.
The first essay this week is from Cai Xia. In 2020, she was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party after serving for decades as a professor of political theory at the Central Party School. In the 1990s and 2000s, she advocated for political liberalization, a position that became anathema under Xi Jinping and she fled to the United States.
As someone with first-hand experience within the Party elite (along with Guoguang Wu and his article, #49), it bears paying attention to the dynamics unfolding within the Party.
On a different note, today is the 21st anniversary of the attacks against the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93. I encourage everyone to take a moment to reflect on those who were lost and those whose lives were forever changed that day.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. The Weakness of Xi Jinping: How Hubris and Paranoia Threaten China’s Future
Cai Xia, Foreign Affairs, September 9, 2022
Outwardly, Xi still projects confidence. In a speech in January 2021, he declared China “invincible.” But behind the scenes, his power is being questioned as never before. By discarding China’s long tradition of collective rule and creating a cult of personality reminiscent of the one that surrounded Mao, Xi has rankled party insiders. A series of policy missteps, meanwhile, have disappointed even supporters. Xi’s reversal of economic reforms and his inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic have shattered his image as a hero of everyday people. In the shadows, resentment among CCP elites is rising.
I have long had a front-row seat to the CCP’s court intrigue. For 15 years, I was a professor in the Central Party School, where I helped train thousands of high-ranking CCP cadres who staff China’s bureaucracy. During my tenure at the school, I advised the CCP’s top leadership on building the party, and I continued to do so after retiring in 2012. In 2020, after I criticized Xi, I was expelled from the party, stripped of my retirement benefits, and warned that my safety was in danger. I now live in exile in the United States, but I stay in touch with many of my contacts in China.
At the CCP’s 20th National Party Congress this fall, Xi expects that he will be given a third five-year term. And even if the growing irritation among some party elites means that his bid will not go entirely uncontested, he will probably succeed. But that success will bring more turbulence down the road. Emboldened by the unprecedented additional term, Xi will likely tighten his grip even further domestically and raise his ambitions internationally. As Xi’s rule becomes more extreme, the infighting and resentment he has already triggered will only grow stronger. The competition between various factions within the party will get more intense, complicated, and brutal than ever before.
At that point, China may experience a vicious cycle in which Xi reacts to the perceived sense of threat by taking ever bolder actions that generate even more pushback. Trapped in an echo chamber and desperately seeking redemption, he may even do something catastrophically ill advised, such as attack Taiwan. Xi may well ruin something China has earned over the course of four decades: a reputation for steady, competent leadership. In fact, he already has.
2. German economy ministry reviews measures to curb China business
Andreas Rinke, Reuters, September 8, 2022
Germany's economy ministry is considering a raft of measures to make business with China less attractive as it seeks to reduce its dependency on Asia's economic superpower, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
3. Tech Companies Slowly Shift Production Away from China
Daisuke Wakabayashi and Tripp Mickle, New York Times, September 1, 2022
Worried about geopolitical tensions and stung by pandemic shutdowns, Google, Apple and others are moving some work to nearby countries.
4. Drugged And Detained: China’s Psychiatric Prisons
Yanxi Mou, Safeguard Defenders, August 16, 2022
Drugged and Detained: China’s psychiatric prisons investigates one of the most chilling ways the CCP uses to disappear critics – forced hospitalization in a psychiatric facility without medical justification.
Called Ankang, after the system of police-run psychiatric prisons launched in the 1980s, nowadays, most victims are locked up in regular psychiatric wards, meaning that doctors and hospitals collude with the CCP to subject victims to medically-unnecessary involuntary hospitalizations and forced medication.
Ten years ago, China passed a new Mental Health Law aimed in part at preventing this abuse. But Safeguard Defenders has found that the law has not worked. Local police and government agents continue to routinely and widely practice the political abuse of psychiatry across China.
We used more than 140 secondary sources, the majority interviews with victims
and families from 2015 to 2021. This data is just the “tip of the iceberg”.
“The hardest part of being held in the psychiatric hospital is there is no expiry date… you could be there for 20 years or 30 years.” – activist Song Zaimin
5. Home Becomes Prison – China’s expanding use of house arrests under Xi Jinping
Safeguard Defenders, September 6, 2022
New data from the Chinese government shows a remarkable use of house arrests under Xi Jinping, in the hundreds of thousands. Alongside an increase in use, two major revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law - in 2012 and 2018 - have further codified its use. The room for abuse is significant.
Today’s new report Home As Prison provides the first systematic insight into the long-standing practice of the Chinese police to detain people under house arrest, both through lawful measures as codified by law, as well as via arbitrary and entirely illegal means, the latter often used to target human rights defenders.
6. The Chinese Public Doesn’t Know What the Rules Are Anymore
Helen Gao, Foreign Policy, September 5, 2022
Taken together, these crises make a mockery of the dictum—current since China began its extraordinary growth in the 1990s—that the Chinese Communist Party offers its people security and prosperity in exchange for political loyalty. The unusual eruptions of public rage are not just a result of the party’s failure to keep up its side of the bargain; it is also the fact that much of the recent difficulties are the product of erratic, reckless party policies.
Yuen Yuen Ang, Journal of Democracy, July 2022
Under President Xi Jinping’s personalist rule, the CCP’s formula for authoritarian resilience has evolved, and so too have the risks it confronts. While Xi has drastically weakened some dimensions of institutionalization—particularly limits on his own power—he has not eliminated all of them. The CCP still commands a high-capacity and selectively adaptive bureaucracy; it has tightened political control; and U.S. animosity toward China has inadvertently helped Xi rally the party and nation behind him. Yet Xi’s concentration of personal power has reintroduced the risk of succession battles and amplifies the effects of his ideology and decisions, which are felt not only within the PRC but around the world.
AUTHORITARIANISM
8. Chinese state media chief vows to toe the line for Communist Party’s national congress
Xinlu Liang, South China Morning Post, September 6, 2022
Fu Hua says ‘primary political task’ is to propagate Xi Jinping’s political thoughts and party control of the internet. News agency focused on guiding domestic public opinion while battling narrative war with the West.
9. Crazy rich relocations: Singapore becomes a haven for Chinese elite
Oliver Telling, Financial Times, August 30, 2022
Beijing’s talk of ‘going after the entrepreneurs’, its draconian Covid lockdowns and a growing hostility to China from the west all make the city-state an attractive place to reside.
10. China vastly expands use of house arrests under Xi, report finds
Christian Shepherd and Alicia Chen, Washington Post, September 6, 2022
Soon after Shi Minglei’s husband, Cheng Yuan, an activist against workplace discrimination, was arrested in July 2019 on subversion charges, Chinese security agents informed her that she too would be placed under “residential surveillance” on suspicion of similar offenses.
Unlike her husband, Shi had never worked for a nongovernmental organization, and she couldn’t understand the charges, she said in an interview. But the officers maintained that she was being investigated and instructed her to hand over her ID card, passport, driver’s license, social insurance card, cellphone, computer and bank cards.
Shi, who remained under house arrest for 180 days, was terrified primarily about the implications for her 3-year-old daughter. “As a mother, if you cannot protect your child and give her freedom from fear — it scares me to death,” she said. Her husband was handed a five-year prison sentence in July 2021.
11. Battling Violence and Censors, Women in China Become ‘Invisible and Absent’
Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang, New York Times, September 6, 2022
The Chinese Communist Party has long promoted gender equality as a core tenet, but as cases of gender abuse make headlines, Beijing has tried to squelch dissent and control the narrative.
When a prominent woman in China’s #MeToo movement took on a powerful man in court, it was the accused, not the accuser, who was held up as the victim. When several women were savagely beaten by men after resisting unwanted advances in a restaurant, the focus of the story pivoted from gender violence to gang violence. And when a mother of eight was found chained to the wall of a doorless shack, it was her mental fitness — not her imprisonment — that became the talking point.
Each incident went viral online in China, initially touching off a wave of outrage over violence against women. But in every case, the conversation was quickly censored to minimize the ways in which women had been abused.
China’s Communist Party has long promoted gender equality as one of its core tenets, yet as such cases continue to make national headlines, Beijing has done little to address calls for accountability. Fearing social unrest, the party has instead used social media censors to stifle criticism and amplify comments that support the government’s preferred narrative of social harmony.
When a story becomes popular online, the party’s propaganda department will send guidelines to managers at large social media companies for how to handle the topic, said King-wa Fu, a professor at the Journalism and Media Studies Center of the University of Hong Kong. Censors then remove popular comments or accounts that voice opinions that stray too far from the party line.
12. Exports, the Engine of China’s Slowing Economy, Are Sputtering
Stella Yifan Xie, Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2022
13. Russia says China will start paying for gas in rubles and yuan
CNN, September 6, 2022
14. Shenzhen Tells Most Residents to Stay Home, as Covid-19 Controls Tighten Across China
Raffaele Huang and Rachel Liang, Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2022
Move follows similar curbs in Chengdu, with Omicron wave coming at politically sensitive time; ‘Everyone’s on edge’
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
15. Swarms of Satellites Are Tracking Illegal Fishing and Logging
Jonathan O’Callaghan, Wired, August 30, 2022
16. China-Mexico Trade Talks Touch on Illegal Fishing Practices
Caleb Symons, Law360, September 7, 2022
17. The Scourge of Illegal Fishing in South America
Lucas Berti, The Brazilian Report, August 11, 2022
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
18. Enabling “Patriots” to Be Masters of the Island: Evolution of Xi’s Policy on Taiwan Since 2013
Bonny Lin, China Leadership Monitor, September 1, 2022
This article examines the evolution of China’s Taiwan policy under Xi Jinping. It argues that there have been four key shifts since 2013.
First, China expanded the definition of Taiwan independence and defined what Beijing viewed as the status quo in the Taiwan Strait. This provided the basis for Beijing to respond to more perceived Taiwan and U.S. “transgressions” and China views both Taipei and Washington as “revisionist” and changing the status quo.
Second, Xi established a bidirectional linkage between national rejuvenation and unification with Taiwan and Beijing aims to achieve both goals simultaneously. This means that China will seek progress on unification and has established a soft benchmark to accomplish it by 2049.
Third, Xi has pushed to develop a more specific “two systems” solution for Taiwan that will allow Beijing to impose its control over the island and ensure that unification with Taiwan avoids the pains Beijing experienced in Hong Kong. It is unlikely that Taiwan can maintain its democracy post-unification and Beijing will ensure that Chinese “patriots” rule the island.
Finally, China has escalated and increased coercion across-the-board against Taiwan, leveraging its growing political, economic, and military power to attempt to shape cross-Strait dynamics in its favor.
These changes in PRC policy have not produced the desired results and Taipei has push backed against Chinese activities and rejected China’s ‘solutions’ for Taiwan. Although Beijing has not given up hopes of peaceful unification and would prefer to never have to invade the island, Beijing is likely to continue its bolder, less flexible, more unilateral, and more coercive approach towards Taiwan. Moving forward, the risk of tensions and instabilities in the Taiwan Strait will likely increase.
19. Solomon Islands’ pro-China leader wins bid to delay elections
Michael E. Miller, Washington Post, September 8, 2022
20. Past Patterns and Present Provocations: China’s Electoral Interference in Taiwan’s Local Elections
Edward Barss, Global Taiwan Brief, September 7, 2022
The main point: The CCP’s election interference activities in Taiwan’s local elections have grown more aggressive and sophisticated over time, and serve as focal points for testing election interference tactics. However, due to shifts in domestic politics, the impact of COVID-19, and Beijing’s strategic missteps, the effectiveness and scope of its election interference activities should be limited in the 2022 local elections.
Brent Crane, The Wire China, September 4, 2022
The insurance moguls Hank and Evan Greenberg both want better engagement with China. The way they argue for it, however, has some telling differences.
COMMENT: Hank Greenberg has long sought to influence U.S. policy-making on the PRC to assist his business and personal financial interests. In many ways, Greenberg parrots the talking points of the Chinese Communist Party with the clear benefit of creating business and financially lucrative opportunities. Greenberg’s influence on U.S. policy towards the PRC over the decades, including influence over some of the most important think tanks in the United States, provides an affirmative example of just how useful the Party’s ‘United Front’ work is to achieving their goals.
22. Have Chinese Spies Infiltrated American Elections?
Kanekoa’s Newsletter, September 2, 2022
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
23. Psychiatric Hospitals for Dissidents: China Revamps an Old Communist Favorite
Ruth Ingram, Bitter Winter, September 8, 2022
China’s alarming record of locking up activists in mental hospitals for “misdemeanors” such as speaking against injustice, protesting evictions and standing up for workers’ rights, has been exposed in the latest Safeguard Defenders report, “Drugged and detained: China’s psychiatric prisons.”
24. For Uyghurs, U.N. Report on China’s Abuses Is Long-Awaited Vindication
Austin Ramzy, New York Times, September 1, 2022
25. U.N. Xinjiang report puts a target on U.S. supply chains
Phelim Kine, Politico, September 8, 2022
26. Boris Johnson’s Father Halts Xinjiang Trip After Covid Lockdown
Jenni Marsh, Bloomberg, September 5, 2022
Stanley Johnson was in China to shoot travel film in region. The father of the UK’s outgoing prime minister, has left China after being caught in a Covid lockdown that spoiled his plans to shoot a travel film in Xinjiang, where London has accused Beijing of widespread rights abuses.
27. China steps up Tibet DNA collection in 'rights violation': report
Pak Yiu, Nikkei Asia, September 5, 2022
28. New Evidence of Mass DNA Collection in Tibet: Rural Areas, Children Targeted for Intrusive Policing
Human Rights Watch, September 5, 2022
29. Christian Church That Fled China Seeks Refugee Status from United Nations
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, September 5, 2022
Rights activists have described the church’s departure from China more than 2½ years ago as a rare instance of a Chinese congregation seeking asylum en masse, and a marker of how Chinese leader Xi Jinping has curtailed religious freedoms since taking power in 2012.
The church has given up on seeking asylum in South Korea, where the members had lived since leaving the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen between late 2019 and early 2020. Church members have had their asylum claims rejected a number of times and decided not to continue appealing through South Korean courts due to the low likelihood of success and what they felt was increasing harassment from Chinese officials, Mr. Pan said.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
30. KPMG sued for $830mn over ‘appalling’ Chinese audit
Tabby Kinder, Financial Times, September 5, 2022
KPMG has been accused of “appalling” audit work that allowed a US-listed Chinese biotechnology company to carry out a “brazen” $400mn accounting fraud, the Hong Kong High Court heard on Monday.
The liquidator of China Medical Technologies, which collapsed in 2012 and whose senior executives are wanted on fraud charges in the US, said the Big Four audit firm failed to ask “obvious” questions that would have “easily” exposed the fraud.
31. Pentagon suspends F-35 deliveries after discovering materials from China
Lee Hudson, Politico, September 7, 2022
32. SEC Warns Chinese Companies About Risks of Auditor Changes
Mark Maurer and Michelle Chan, wall Street Journal, September 6, 2022
As businesses switch auditors to avoid U.S. delistings, the agency’s acting chief accountant cautions of potential investigations and enforcement actions.
33. Banned U.S. AI chips in high demand at Chinese state institutes
Eduardo Baptista, Reuters, September 6, 2022
34. A New Chinese EV Battery Giant Has Emerged
Anjani Trivedi, Bloomberg, September 5, 2022
The military-linked company is expanding fast, further cementing Beijing’s dominance of the supply chain and pushing past any geopolitical concerns.
35. The Impact of COVID-19 on China’s Consumption
Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, September 1, 2022
36. China and America’s long-awaited audit deal may yet fail
The Economist, September 1, 2022
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Iris Deng, South China Morning Post, September 6, 2022
South China Morning Post, September 5, 2022
39. TikTok denies reports that it’s been hacked
Emma Roth, The Verge, September 5, 2022
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
40. Not So Fast: Insights from a 1944 War Plan Help Explain Why Invading Taiwan Is a Costly Gamble
Benjamin Jensen, War on the Rocks, September 8, 2022
The sheer size, scale, and complexity involved with invading Taiwan likely checks even the most self-serving and impetuous instincts inside the Chinese Community Party. Court sycophants and hawks have viable alternatives to invading Taiwan that they can recommend as they seek to win favor and shape the future of modern China. The enduring challenges associated with terrain, logistics, and force-ratios on display in Operation Causeway have only compounded over time. Even if the plan is not a guide used by the Chinese military, it offers a reminder of the complexity of joint forcible entry operations.
John Dotson, Global Taiwan Brief, September 7, 2022
South China Morning Post, August 31, 2022
A procurement plan unveiled by Japan’s defence ministry on Wednesday shows that its military is seeking the ability to strike more distant targets.
43. China’s median line violations suggest Taiwan ‘decapitation’ rehearsal
Phelim Kine, Politico, September 1, 2022
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
44. Laos' debt pressure raises specter of a China vassal state
Marwaan Macan-Markar, Nikkei Asia, September 6, 2022
Echoes of Sri Lanka on the Mekong as muzzled public seethes over economic woes.
COMMENT: Despite the best efforts of the CCP and its “friends” in certain academic and business circles, here is yet another example of Beijing’s ‘debt-trap’ policy playing out in real time. This is bound to only bring greater suffering to the Laotian people and further cement the power of the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party… yet another disastrous communist party that continues their one-party rule.
OPINION PIECES
45. It’s time the free world commits to the defense of Taiwan
Lin Fei-fan, Washington Post, August 12, 2022
China’s bellicose response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) historic visit to Taiwan proves the paramount necessity for the international community to be vocal about its support for Taiwan — now more than ever.
46. China spends more on controlling its 1.4bn people than on defense
Nikkei Asia, August 29, 2022
47. America Could Lose the Tech Contest with China: How Washington Can Craft a New Strategy
Eric Schmidt and Yll Bajraktari, Foreign Affairs, September 8, 2022
The United States is in the midst of a high-stakes competition with China for dominance in the next wave of technological innovation. Despite a flurry of activity at the federal level over the past three years, Washington has for the most part been playing catch-up.
48. Xi Jinping’s Political Agenda and Leadership: What do we know from his decade in power
Minxin Pei, China Leadership Monitor, September 1, 2022
The political agenda of Chinese President Xi Jinping during his first decade in power consisted of three core components: establishing personal political dominance, revitalizing the Leninist party-state, and expanding Chinese power and influence globally. As he completes his first two terms and seeks a third term, he has made uneven progress in accomplishing his agenda.
Due to his political skills and control of the regime’s instruments of coercion, Xi has firmly established his political authority and dominance. The revitalization of the Leninist party-state has been most successful in reinstituting tight social control. The reintroduction of ideological indoctrination and organizational discipline into the party may have produced a revival of political ritualism but questionable genuine ideological commitment and political loyalty.
The reassertion of state control over the economy has just begun, and it is likely to entail immense costs.
The assertive foreign policy has yielded mostly counterproductive outcomes as attempts to take advantage of the shift in the global balance of power has provoked a vigorous pushback by the U.S. and its allies.
Guoguang Wu, China Leadership Monitor, September 1, 2022
This essay presents a retrospective examination of China’s elite politics during Xi Jinping’s ten years in power. It focuses on the following questions:
Why does Xi Jinping prefer to confront, rather than accommodate, the cadres in his own regime?
How has he been able to achieve his goals of leadership reorganization and cultivation of new elites?
How has China’s elite politics been remade along with Xi’s concentration of power?
And, to touch on the latest developments in elite politics ahead of the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), why does the belated emergence of elite resistance to Xi’s plan of taking on a third term have little chance of success or change the dynamics of China’s elite politics going forward?
The essay positions CCP elite politics in an institutional context that is defined and framed by China’s political regime, and it argues that the nature of the regime requires Xi to confront his cadres to achieve his goals. At the same time, the same regime poses huge dilemmas to both Xi and his rivals.
50. Chinese companies are leaving U.S. stock exchanges. Good riddance.
Josh Rogin, Washington Post, August 31, 2022
The United States and China struck an agreement last week that could allow Chinese corporations to avoid being kicked off U.S. stock exchanges. Wall Street firms are rejoicing, but the rest of us should be asking whether helping Chinese companies to continue accessing U.S. capital markets is a good idea. For both U.S. investors and U.S. national security, the answer is clearly no.