Friends,
I recommend everyone read former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ OpEd in the Washington Post this week (#8 below).
If there was ever an OpEd that was a flashing and blaring red siren, this is it. Gates put it in the Washington Post with hopes that the White House and Congressional leaders will read it… I hope they do and take appropriate action.
Ishiba Shigeru was elected as leader of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which means he replaces Kishida Fumio as Prime Minister of Japan. Ishiba has been a member of the Japanese Diet since 1986 and has held numerous cabinet roles including Defense and Agriculture Minister. He is known for his interest in history and military affairs, as well as his long-time commitment to strengthening Japan-Taiwan relations.
In fact, he announced his run for leadership of the LDP during a visit to Taipei just a few weeks ago. No doubt this will cause the Chinese Communist Party to lash out even more aggressively.
Post by former Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen congratulating Ishiba on his election win.
As Ishiba takes office from Kishida, he will have to wrestle with an increasingly hostile international space for Japan. Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang are increasingly aligned and view Japan as an enemy. The recent murder of a 10-year-old Japanese boy going to school in southern China, is just one more example of this. Decades of Anti-Japanese propaganda by the Chinese Communist Party has created an environment of hatred and it will force Ishiba to continue to rebuild Tokyo’s defenses against Chinese aggression, as well as the threats posed by Russia and North Korea.
In other news…
On Friday, Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah, as well as many of his remaining commanders, were buried in their command bunker hidden beneath a residential neighborhood in southern Beirut (hiding behind civilian shields is standard operating procedure for Iranian proxies).
This Israeli airstrike marks yet another important step in dismantling an organization that had spent the last 11 months raining missiles and rockets down on Northern Israel and was poised to launch more on Israeli cities and towns… 18 years after the United Nations required the disarming of Hezbollah (UN Security Council Resolution 1701). This must be embarrassing for the Turtle Bay diplomats, who had been unable to enforce their own UNSC Resolution and disarm the terrorist group.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Tokyo Demands China Stem Anti-Japan Hate After Fatal Attack
Bloomberg, September 23, 2024
Senior Japanese officials told their Chinese counterparts to provide a full explanation of the recent stabbing death of a Japanese boy in southern China and deal with “untruthful and malicious” internet posts targeting Japan, as Tokyo stepped up pressure on Beijing to respond to the incident.
In a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in New York on Monday, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said China must take steps to protect Japanese nationals within its borders, according to a statement from the Japanese Foreign Ministry.
COMMENT – This murder took place on the 93rd anniversary of the “Mukden Incident” which preceded Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and was the second knife attack against Japanese children in China in the last few months.
The Chinese Communist Party routinely demonizes Japan and Japanese people in their efforts to build a hyper-nationalistic society and dismiss criticisms of the CCP as unpatriotic.
These attacks against Japanese children are the predictable outcomes of the CCP’s efforts to stoke xenophobia.
Banner hanging in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan in 2013, it reads, “Japanese people not allowed to enter, disobey at your own risk.”
The most recent spate of Anti-Japanese propaganda started a year ago when Japan, after a decade of assessments, announced the release of treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean. Despite overwhelming scientific consensus that the release of treated wastewater was safe, the Chinese Communist Party waged a massive disinformation campaign painting Tokyo’s action as criminal.
2. Top Economist in China Vanishes After Private WeChat Comments
Chun Han Wong and Lingling Wei, Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2024
Government adviser is detained as Xi Jinping targets negative comments about Chinese economy.
A prominent economist at one of China’s top think tanks was placed under investigation, detained and removed from his posts after he allegedly criticized leader Xi Jinping’s management of the world’s second-largest economy in a private chat group, according to people familiar with the matter.
The investigation of Zhu Hengpeng, who for the past decade was deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, comes as the Communist Party ramps up efforts to suppress negative commentary about China’s economic health.
Beijing has struggled to revitalize a sluggish economy weighed down by a real estate slump and tepid sentiment among consumers and businesses—weaknesses that, some economists say, have been exacerbated by Xi’s efforts to boost the state sector, rein in what he considers capitalistic excess, and protect China against perceived foreign threats.
Under Xi, the party has directed a far-reaching clampdown on dissent that has punished critics of his leadership inside the party and beyond, with some high-profile targets, including influential business people and academics, getting detained, imprisoned or forced into exile. Authorities have also tightened controls on data, curtailing access to information prized by investors and analysts for insights into China’s economy.
Zhu, who turns 55 this month, was detained in the spring after he allegedly made some impolitic remarks in a private group chat on the WeChat mobile-messaging app, according to people familiar with the matter.
COMMENT – So an internationally renowned economist criticizes the Government’s management of the economy in a private chat group, and he gets disappeared without a trance (or even an acknowledgement by anyone) for five months.
And it takes a foreign media outlet to find this out and tell the world.
Imagine how terrified Zhu Hengpeng’s co-workers must be, or his family, or folks that have been his friends. They all know he has been disappeared, but they are too scared to talk about it. Chinese journalists are too scared to report on it.
The fear and paranoia imposed on the Chinese people by the Chinese Communist Party destroys common decency and tears at the fabric of social life. All to protect the ego of an individual who has never been elected by the Chinese people and rules through the barrel of a gun.
The Chinese Communist Party is destroying the lives of its people… if you’re interested in halting Anti-Asian Hate (whether it is this action against a Chinese citizen or the stabbing of a Japanese 10 year-old), let’s start by holding the Chinese Communist Party accountable.
3. Ex-Georgetown Researcher Claims School Has Withheld Support amid Chinese Biotech Firm’s Threats
Jimmy Quinn, National Review, September 23, 2024
'My story also highlights our country’s own elite capture that aids China,' she said.
A former Georgetown University researcher is claiming that the school has so far refrained from supporting her against legal threats brought by a Chinese military-linked biotech firm. She says the school’s handling of the situation reveals China’s “elite capture” of American institutions.
Anna Puglisi, a former counterintelligence official, said at a congressional hearing on Thursday that she received letters this summer from biotech company BGI, and an entity linked to it, MGI, threatening legal action. That followed her publication of a report in May focused on the Chinese government’s support of BGI — which the U.S. government describes as a “Chinese military company” — in her previous job at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Neither entity has brought a lawsuit yet, though the letters could precede one. Georgetown said that it will defend her with its legal counsel if the companies sue.
“What has happened to me can happen to anyone that conducts research that China’s state-supported entities and the government in Beijing does not like,” she said.
In a lengthy statement to National Review on Friday, meanwhile, BGI attacked Puglisi’s research and waved away reporting on its ties to China’s military. It did not directly address its legal threats against her.
In her testimony before the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, Puglisi said it was troubling that “my story also highlights our country’s own elite capture that aids China and silences or tempers the work of many others, as I have not received the support I need from and was promised by Georgetown University to respond to BGI’s threats of lawfare.”
She said Georgetown “has to this point refused to indemnify my defense to the lawfare brought by these Chinese companies I have criticized.”
An academic’s invocation of legal indemnity could include a request to receive compensation for one’s own legal counsel distinct from counsel retained directly by a university itself, which could have interests that differ from those of its employees. Puglisi was once a senior fellow at CSET, though the report, published in May, refers to her as formerly a senior fellow, indicating that she left the organization before its release. She is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
CSET’s executive director, Dewey Murdick, in a post to LinkedIn that followed the hearing, wrote that both the research center and Georgetown “stand fully behind the report” and are “prepared to defend the report and its authors should the letters lead to formal legal action.” He said that “this was communicated to Anna and any insinuation otherwise is false.”
Murdick added: “Anna thus far has chosen to hire her own lawyer, as is her right, and has declined legal assistance offered by Georgetown. At any time, Anna may accept Georgetown’s standing offer to have its legal counsel represent her in any litigation that arises from her scholarship at Georgetown—an essential protection that Georgetown offers to all of its academics and researchers.”
The dispute — and the revelations about the alleged pressure campaign by Shenzhen-based BGI — came as the House committee examined Chinese government-linked firms’ weaponization of the U.S. legal system against American critics. Lawmakers and experts explored ways to close existing gaps in law that allow such entities to exploit the U.S. legal system.
The letters, Puglisi told the House panel, came from “established American law firms here in Washington, D.C.” The first one came from BGI in June, followed by a second from MGI Tech, a company that was purportedly spun off from BGI. MGI claims that it is independent of BGI, though Puglisi alleged in her research report that it was still a subsidiary of BGI. Each entity demanded that Puglisi alter the contents of the report, she said, with BGI’s counsel calling it defamatory and demanding a full retraction. The letter from MGI took issue with her characterization of the two firms’ Chinese-government ties.
In its statement last week, BGI doubled down on its campaign against Puglisi. It claimed that her report “distorted publicly available financial information and mistakenly claimed that BGI is government controlled,” claiming that Chinese-government investment in BGI is more akin to how U.S. federal and state pension funds buy stock in publicly traded companies. “This does not make the companies government controlled. BGI Group is a private company held by its founders and executives, and our work is undertaken for civilian and scientific purposes only,” BGI asserted in the statement, delivered via an unsigned email.
Last year, the Pentagon added BGI to its blacklist of Chinese military companies, owing to its ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Reports in Reuters documented BGI’s work with the PLA on genetic analysis to improve the performance of Chinese soldiers in high-altitude environments. The newswire service also reported that BGI harvests the genetic data from pregnancy tests administered across the world, which it also uses in research alongside the PLA.
In written testimony submitted to the committee, Puglisi said the report received “scathing opposition” internally at the Center for Science and Emerging Technology “despite having five peer reviewers, and a fact check completed without issue.” Puglisi added that comments from the internal review “are unfortunately, and very curiously, remarkably similar to the points that the lawfare counsel for the Chinese companies make about the paper.”
Murdick said in his post that CSET conducts “difficult” reviews but “so long as CSET aims to produce this kind of work, rigorous reviews are essential.”
BGI seized on the internal disagreement about the report, telling National Review: “As you may have well noticed from her same testimony that Georgetown’s CSET criticized her report and called it a ‘dog-whistle.'”
The company also said: “We also urge you to investigate whether there is connection between Puglisi and the China Committee who sponsored the BIOSECURE Act, or Puglisi and the dominant company in the genomics market.” It did not provide any basis for the claim that these connections might exist.
The statement attacked the sponsors of the BIOSECURE Act, an effective U.S. ban on BGI and other Chinese genomics firms that recently passed the House, claiming that they “have no evidence in their accusations.” It panned them for citing news reports about BGI’s work with China’s military: “The sponsors merely cited some news reports which BGI and other companies have already refuted. News reports are not evidence in any case.” National Review did not receive a response from MGI, which Puglisi and the House committee have both said is still controlled by BGI.
In testimony submitted to the committee, Puglisi also wrote that CSET’s executive director provided her email address to “a Chinese state official” last September as she worked to finish the report, after which the first secretary of the Chinese Embassy wrote her an email criticizing her previous testimony before the U.S. Senate and Canada’s House of Commons about scientific and technology cooperation between the U.S. and China. After this article was first published, CSET communications director Christa Bennett, claimed, via an email to NR, that “that Ms. Puglisi asked Dewey to send her email address to the official.”
COMMENT – I’ve known and worked with Anna Puglisi for a decade and have enormous respect for her research and professionalism. Her 2013 book, Chinese Industrial Espionage: Technology acquisition and military modernization, which she wrote with her co-authors William Hannas and James Mulvenon, is a MUST READ for anyone interested in these topics.
I don’t have first-hand knowledge of what happened, but I am very skeptical of Dewey Murdick’s (CSET’s Executive Director) version of events.
I hope that other journalists will work to get to the bottom of what has happened to Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) and its relationship with the Chinese Embassy. It used to be a place doing fearless research on important issues, but it appears to have changed once Jason Matheny left and Dewey Murdick took over.
4. Russia has secret war drones project in China, intel sources say
Reuters, September 25, 2024
Russia has established a weapons programme in China to develop and produce long-range attack drones for use in the war against Ukraine, according to two sources from a European intelligence agency and documents reviewed by Reuters.
IEMZ Kupol, a subsidiary of Russian state-owned weapons company Almaz-Antey, has developed and flight-tested a new drone model called Garpiya-3 (G3) in China with the help of local specialists, according to one of the documents, a report that Kupol sent to the Russian defence ministry earlier this year outlining its work.
COMMENT – Hopefully, we will eventually see some significant sanctions against these entities and the Chinese supporting entities… at the very least, the Commerce Department should be imposing export restrictions on any entity associated with this.
However, the statements from various think tankers, the White House, UK Foreign Office, and NATO for this story, seem to reinforce a disturbing trend of not wanting to see China’s deliberate support for Russia’s war effort.
They all seem to contort themselves into saying that the Chinese Government must not be aware of these activities:
“Samuel Bendett, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, said Beijing would be hesitant to open itself up to international sanctions for helping Moscow's war machine. He said more information was needed to establish that China was playing host to production of Russian military drones.”
Or
“The White House has not seen anything to suggest the Chinese government was aware of the transactions involved, but China has a responsibility to ensure companies aren't providing lethal aid to Russia for use by its military, a spokesperson added.”
Or
“Asked about the Reuters report, a NATO spokesperson said via email: "These reports are deeply concerning and Allies are consulting on this matter." "The Chinese government has a responsibility to ensure its companies are not providing lethal assistance to Russia," added the spokesperson, Farah Dakhlallah. "China cannot continue to fuel the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War without this impacting its interests and reputation."”
Or
“Britain's Foreign Office called on China to stop providing diplomatic and material support to Russia's war effort. "We are extremely concerned by reports that Russia is producing military drones in China," a spokesperson said. "This adds to a growing body of open-source evidence that Chinese companies are enabling Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The supply of weapons would be a direct contradiction to statements from China that it would not provide weapons to relevant parties of the conflict."”
I suspect that the Chinese Government feels pretty certain that Washington and its European partners don’t want to sanction the PRC for its support for the Russian war effort and as long as they publicly deny it, they can provide all the weapons and dual-use components Moscow needs without fear of reprisal.
The question for the allies is: When does the body of evidence tip the scales from “not knowing” whether the Chinese Government is aware of these activities, to “being certain” that the Chinese Government is not only aware, but supportive, of these activities?
5. China’s Newest Nuclear Submarine Sank, Setting Back Its Military Modernization
Michael R. Gordon, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2024
China’s newest nuclear-powered attack submarine sank in the spring, a major setback for one of the country’s priority weapons programs, U.S. officials said.
The episode, which Chinese authorities scrambled to cover up and hasn’t previously been disclosed, occurred at a shipyard near Wuhan in late May or early June.
It comes as China has been pushing to expand its navy, including its fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
The Pentagon has cast China as its principal long-term “pacing challenge,” and U.S. officials say that Beijing has been using political and military pressure to try to coerce Taiwan, a separately governed island that Beijing claims as part of its territory.
China says its goal in building a world-class military is to deter aggression and safeguard its overseas interests. A spokesman for the Chinese embassy didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
COMMENT – Shortly after the Wall Street Journal broke this story, a U.S. defense official confirmed to Reuters that the Zhou-class submarine (the first in its class of new nuclear submarines) sunk pier-side in May or June.
This is interesting and I’m waiting for folks to fill in some of the gaps and details.
Months ago, there were rumors that a PLAN nuclear submarine had suffered a catastrophic accident in the Bohai Sea, claiming the lives of 55 Chinese sailors.
Now we see this reporting of an accident pier-side at a shipyard in Wuhan, a thousand miles inland on the Yangtze River.
Were the rumors in early summer just the reflections of this accident?
Probably not, since the rumored accident involving a PLAN submarine in the Bohai was in August 2023, not this May or June. And we have still not heard any confirmation whether that accident actually happened or not. Those who have investigated it, believe that if it did happen, it was a Type 093 nuclear attack submarine. On August 31, 2023 a PLA Spokesperson denied rumors of the submarine accident… but I think we can be pretty skeptical of that.
Imagine if the U.S. Navy had an accident with a nuclear submarine in an American city with a population of nearly 14 million people and kept it secret for nearly four months until a foreign newspaper reported on it?
For the safety of the Chinese people, as well as the safety of the rest of the world, the Chinese Communist Party really should be more transparent than it is.
6. China Says It Test-Fired Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
Clarence Leong and Austin Ramzy, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2024
Launch of long-range missile carrying dummy warhead lands in Pacific Ocean as regional tensions run high.
China said it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile on Wednesday, a rare public acknowledgment that is likely to increase tensions with its neighbors.
The ICBM, which was carrying a dummy warhead, fell into “expected sea areas” in the Pacific Ocean, China’s Defense Ministry said, without specifying the exact location. The ministry said the launch, which was carried out by the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, was part of routine annual training and wasn’t directed against any country or target.
Navigational warnings indicated the missile was launched from Hainan Island in southern China and landed in the South Pacific, analysts said.
China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency said Beijing had notified “relevant countries” ahead of the launch, though it didn’t specify which countries.
COMMENT – What was the Pentagon’s reaction to this missile test during the middle of the UN General Assembly?
US Hails Early Notice of China ICBM Test to Avoid Miscalculation
Natalia Drozdiak, Bloomberg, September 25, 2024
As someone else pointed out, I suspect the Administration will paint this provocation as a “win” for “managed competition.”
I wonder if Beijing has ever praised Washington’s notifications?
Perhaps the Pentagon can ask for some details on the lost nuclear submarine? That deserves a notice as well.
7. China-Linked Hackers Breach U.S. Internet Providers in New 'Salt Typhoon' Cyberattack
Sarah Krouse, Robert McMillan, and Dustin Volz, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2024
It is latest intrusion into core U.S. infrastructure by entities tied to Beijing.
Hackers linked to the Chinese government have broken into a handful of U.S. internet-service providers in recent months in pursuit of sensitive information, according to people familiar with the matter.
The hacking campaign, called Salt Typhoon by investigators, hasn’t previously been publicly disclosed and is the latest in a series of incursions that U.S. investigators have linked to China in recent years. The intrusion is a sign of the stealthy success Beijing’s massive digital army of cyberspies has had breaking into valuable computer networks in the U.S. and around the globe.
In Salt Typhoon, the actors linked to China burrowed into America’s broadband networks. In this type of intrusion, bad actors aim to establish a foothold within the infrastructure of cable and broadband providers that would allow them to access data stored by telecommunications companies or launch a damaging cyberattack.
Investigators are exploring whether the intruders gained access to Cisco Systems routers, core network components that route much of the traffic on the internet, according to people familiar with the matter.
A Cisco spokeswoman said the company is investigating the matter. “At this time, there is no indication that Cisco routers are involved” in the Salt Typhoon activity, the spokeswoman said.
Microsoft is investigating the intrusion and what sensitive information may have been accessed, people familiar with the matter said. A spokesman for the company declined to comment.
China has made a practice of gaining access to internet-service providers around the world. But if hackers gained access to service providers’ core routers, it would leave them in a powerful position to steal information, redirect internet traffic, install malicious software or pivot to new attacks, said Steven Adair, the founder of Volexity, a cybersecurity firm that has investigated China-backed intrusions.
Former U.S. intelligence officials said the alleged attack appeared audacious in scope, even by the standards of past major breaches achieved by Chinese hacking squads.
“This would be an alarming—but not really surprising—expansion of their malicious use of cyber to gain the upper hand over the United States,” said Glenn Gerstell, former general counsel at the National Security Agency.
COMMENT – You’d be forgiven if you thought I had simply posted an old news story, but this is yet another massive hacking attack by PRC Government sponsored teams against U.S. infrastructure and companies.
To remind you of some of the past hacks by the PRC Government against the United States, here is an incomplete list:
VOLT TYPHOON – PRC State-Sponsored Actors Compromise and Maintain Persistent Access to U.S. Critical Infrastructure with the capability to sabotage or destroy it.
APT 10 – Two hackers associated with the Chinese government indicted for infiltrating numerous companies around the globe as well as U.S. government agencies.
OPM Hack – The Chinese Government hacked into the Office Personnel Management and stole sensitive data on millions of Americans in 2015.
PLA Unit 61398 – U.S. Charges Five Chinese Military Hackers for Cyber Espionage Against U.S. Corporations and a Labor Organization for Commercial Advantage.
These attacks happen with such regularity that we’ve largely become desensitized to them. It seems quite clear that Beijing is NOT deterred from conducting these operations which harm the United States.
8. Robert Gates: The Pentagon and Congress must change their ways
Robert M. Gates, Washington Post, September 24, 2024
Despite the boasts of both presidential candidates as well as congressional Republicans and Democrats that they will ensure American military superiority, the Defense Department begins the 14th fiscal year of the past 15 without an appropriated budget. The dire consequences of yet another year beginning with a continuing resolution funding the Pentagon were communicated to Congress by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin this month. This is just the most recent demonstration of the yawning gap between the political rhetoric in Washington about sustaining American military strength and the stark realities on the ground.
As secretary of defense for both Republican and Democratic presidents, I strongly supported allocating more resources for nonmilitary instruments of power — diplomacy, strategic communications, development assistance, geoeconomic tools and more. But it is a fact of life that these instruments are effective only against the backdrop of American military power so compelling that adversaries are deterred from taking up arms against us or our allies.
The current approach to ensuring such superiority in Congress, the White House and the Defense Department cannot meet the international challenges — and peril — facing America and our allies. The bipartisan Commission on the National Defense Strategy said in its report issued in July: “The threats the United States faces are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945 and include the potential for near-term major war. … The nation ... is not prepared today.” After a 30-year holiday from history, we face an aggressive China and Russia (abetted by North Korea and Iran) and the very real prospect of war between nuclear-armed great powers.
Yet, our Army is shrinking, our Navy is decommissioning warships faster than new ones can be built, our Air Force has stagnated in size, and only a fraction of the force is available for combat on any given day. The defense-industrial base, after decades of neglect, cannot produce major weapons systems in the numbers we need in a timely way nor — as we have seen in Ukraine — can it produce the vast quantity of munitions required for a great-power conflict. Despite these realities, it is largely business as usual in Washington. Dramatic change is needed to convert rhetoric into ensuring and sustaining long-term military superiority.
There are three institutions responsible for our predicament. First, the White House. Whoever is elected president in November must take the lead in educating the American people about the global dangers we face. The new president must then put forward budgets for the military necessary to deal with those dangers. Barely staying even with inflation or worse is wholly inadequate. Significant additional resources for defense are necessary and urgent. The new president must propose and fight for those resources.
The second institution is the Defense Department itself. While there have been a number of significant initiatives and innovations in recent years (e.g., Space Force, the Defense Innovation Unit, the Replicator drone program and others), as the commission observed, “these examples remain the exception rather than the rule.”
Above all, the department must accelerate and deepen changes to its business practices. It must demonstrate it can wisely and efficiently spend the huge amount of money it already receives. In 2009, the department cut or capped three dozen major programs that were excess to need, had outdated or unrealistic technologies, failed development programs, or faced staggering cost overruns and years of delays. These programs would have cost taxpayers some $330 billion if built to completion. In 2010, we identified $180 billion in cuts of overhead expenses over a period of years. The Pentagon must demonstrate such internal discipline if it is to seek and receive significantly more resources to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.
At the same time, the department and military services must freshly evaluate legacy systems and strategies for a kind of war we have never fought before — and a combination of adversaries more powerful technologically, industrially and economically than we have ever faced. The department and the services have all embarked on this path with many new initiatives, but urgency and decisive new thinking and strategies are needed.
Congress is the third problem institution. Over the past dozen or so years, the Defense Department has had to deal with sequestration (the Budget Control Act of 2011), year after year of continuing resolutions, dollar-for-dollar linkage of defense and domestic spending, legislative turf fights, and parochial protection of outdated programs — all contributing to the multiple challenges our military now faces. Congressional leaders and committee members in both chambers should work together to end continuing resolutions for defense budgets, reform congressional procedures, enable much expanded multiyear funding of programs (necessary to revive our defense industries), expand reprogramming authorities to permit fast innovation and production, and reduce micromanagement in the name of oversight. Congress is a major obstacle to agility, innovation and modernization.
Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have committed to sustaining American military superiority. The question is whether they will commit, if elected, to fight for the institutional and budgetary changes needed at the White House, in Congress and at the Defense Department necessary to maintain that superiority in the face of unprecedented peril.
COMMENT – Go ahead and reread that OpEd.
15 years ago, when the dysfunction of both political parties spread to appropriating a defense budget, the world was a fairly benign place. Sure in 2009 we were still involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and Russia had just invaded Georgia, but this was years before the annexation of Crimea and the PRC’s ramping up of aggression against its neighbors.
In 2009 we could risk a year or two of defense budget uncertainty.
But 15 years of it has severely undermined the U.S. military and we can no longer risk these partisan games.
9. VIDEO – Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law?
Joe Piscatella, Matthew Torne, and Mark Rinehart, POV, September 23, 2024
Who’s Afraid of Nathan Law? explores the life of Nathan Law, a prominent figure in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Law became a key leader of the Umbrella Revolution at 21, Hong Kong’s youngest elected lawmaker at 23, and a wanted dissident under China’s National Security Law at 26. The documentary highlights Law’s journey and the larger implications of China’s crackdown on freedom in Hong Kong.
According to a report by Central News Agency today, according to the official website of the Chinese Embassy in the United States, Xie Feng made the above statement when delivering a keynote speech at the "New Era Lecture Hall" event via video on the 12th Eastern Time. Xie Feng also said that the attempt of China and the United States to completely decouple is "a fantasy", and viewing each other as a new Cold War opponent is "the biggest strategic misjudgment of the 21st century", and that China and the United States falling into conflict and confrontation is "an unbearable burden for the world."
Xie Feng declared that China's strategic intentions are "bright and aboveboard" and that it is committed to "enabling the Chinese people to live a better life" domestically and "striving to make greater contributions to world peace and development" externally. China will not repeat the mistakes of traditional great powers in history where "a strong country must seek hegemony" nor will it swallow the bitter fruit of undermining China's sovereignty, security and development interests.
He then claimed that Taiwan, democracy and human rights, the road system, and the right to development are the four red lines drawn by China. The "Taiwan issue" is the "first red line that cannot be crossed" in Sino-US relations; and "democracy against authoritarianism" is a "false proposition." China's political system and development path cannot be challenged, and the Chinese people's "legitimate right to development cannot be deprived."
Xie Feng also said that if China-US relations want to "hold the bottom line", these "high-voltage lines" must not be touched. The US should abide by the "one China principle" and the "three Sino-US joint communiqués" and put its statements such as "not supporting Taiwan independence, not seeking to change China's system, and not seeking to contain China's development" into action.
Radio France International, September 13, 2024
Xie Feng, Chinese ambassador to the United States, claimed on the 12th that Taiwan, China's democracy and human rights, China's road system, and China's right to development are the four red lines drawn by China. Among them, the "Taiwan issue" is the "first insurmountable red line" in Sino-US relations; China's political system and development path cannot be challenged, and Sino-US relations cannot touch these "high-voltage lines."
COMMENT – The four “red lines” that Ambassador Xie Feng stated were:
#1 – Challenging the PRC’s demand to annex Taiwan
#2 – Criticizing the PRC’s record on human rights
#3 – Criticizing the PRC’s political system
#4 – Challenging the PRC’s “right to development” (aka withholding economic and technological support to China)
Well… I guess I’ve violated all of Beijing’s red lines, usually on a weekly basis… and so does the U.S. Government.
In all seriousness, Xie Feng’s remarks are unacceptable demands… the United States will not stop challenging the Party’s threat to invade and annex Taiwan, the United States will not stop criticizing the Party’s atrocious human rights record, the United States will not stop criticizing the Party’s monopoly hold on power, and the United States will continue (as it has done for seven decades since the founding of the PRC) to withhold economic and technological support given the clear threats Beijing poses to its neighbors and the United States.
I recommend the Ambassador go back and reconsider his remarks… once he has corrected his own thinking, perhaps we can find some common ground to communicate on.
Authoritarianism
11. After a Savage Attack, Brutal Silence
Alex Colville, China Media Project, September 24, 2024
The killing last week of a Japanese schoolboy in south China is the latest in a pattern of anti-Japanese hate — but the hard lessons of the tragedy are lost on the country’s media.
The brutal killing of a Japanese schoolboy in the Chinese city of Shenzhen last week has made headlines across the world. The wider context of the tragedy — that it happened on the anniversary of the “Mukden Incident” that began Japan’s invasion of China nearly a century ago, and just months after another nearly deadly attack on a Japanese mother and her child in another city — raises serious questions about how it might be linked to decades of anti-Japanese education, entertainment and cultural conditioning in China.
But these are serious questions China’s media are not asking, or cannot ask.
How the media in China have reported the incident domestically (or not) is an unfortunate reminder not just of how stringent controls have become, but also how detrimental this atmosphere has been to discussion of the darker undercurrents of contemporary Chinese society.
From the early stages of the incident, key details were missing. The police report from Shenzhen did not mention the boy’s nationality, age, or where the attack took place. Instead, news filtered into China through overseas media. Some of the earliest reporting of the response from the Japanese government inside China came from the WeChat account of Nikkei Asia. Several reports published on the day of the incident that noted the statement from Japan, including from Caixin and from Shanghai’s Guancha, have been scrubbed from the internet, yielding 404 errors. Another report from the news portal NetEase, which seemed to have included some on-the-ground reporting from Shenzhen, was also taken down.
COMMENT – Toxic hyper-nationalism is the cause of these attacks and the Chinese Communist Party is responsible.
12. Xi Unleashes a Crisis for Millions of China’s Best-Paid Workers
Bloomberg, September 18, 2024
13. Hong Kong jails man 14 months for 'seditious' T-shirt
Kenji Kawase, Nikkei Asia, September 19, 2024
14. China Has Become Powerful Before It Is Rich
Jo Inge Bekkevold, Foreign Policy, September 24, 2024
15. Hong Kong Editors Sentenced in Landmark Case
Tiffany May, New York Times, September 26, 2024
The two journalists for Stand News were convicted in August of conspiracy to publish seditious articles, in a case signaling new limits on press freedom.
A judge in Hong Kong on Thursday handed down sentences to two editors in a landmark case that showed how a crackdown by China has curtailed press freedoms in the once-freewheeling city.
The two journalists, Chung Pui-kuen, and his successor, Patrick Lam, were convicted in August of conspiring to publish seditious materials on Stand News, a now defunct pro-democracy news site. Mr. Chung was sentenced to 21 months, and Mr. Lam, who has a serious health condition, to the time he had already served between his arrest and his release on bail — slightly less than a year.
Stand News, like several other news outlets in Hong Kong, was once an example of the civil liberties the city offered that were unimaginable in the rest of China. It pursued investigations exposing the government’s failures and gave voice to the city’s beleaguered pro-democracy movement.
After antigovernment protests roiled Hong Kong in 2019, Beijing crushed the opposition with a powerful national security law. But Stand News continued to publish pro-democracy voices in editorials and interviews.
16. All British universities in China ‘have a communist party branch’
Emma Yeomans, Times, September 20, 2024
17. Russia puts Taiwan on enemy list
Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, September 21, 2024
Japan, South Korea, Singapore also on 47-country list.
Taiwan featured on a new list of countries with “values inimical to Russia” published by Moscow, reports said Saturday (Sept. 21).
Other countries in East Asia included on the list were Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. Russia used the formula “Taiwan (China),” as it recognizes China’s claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, per CNA.
China was not one of 47 countries on the list, while of European Union members, only Hungary and Slovakia were not mentioned. The only NATO member state not to be considered an enemy was Turkey.
Premier Mikhail Mishustin reportedly put his signature on the new list on September 17, with publication following on Friday (Sept. 20). According to the Russian government, residents of the countries on the list could apply for “humanitarian assistance” from Moscow if they accepted “traditional Russian values.”
The first official enemies list, published in 2021, only included the US and the Czech Republic, but just weeks after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it expanded rapidly, also adding Taiwan.
COMMENT – So if Taiwan is an inseparable part of the People’s Republic of China (as both Beijing and Moscow assert), then doesn’t that mean that the PRC is also on Russia’s “enemies list”?
Or is Moscow admitting that Taiwan is a separate and independent country?
Hmm…
18. Mainland China puts exit ban on exec from Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group
Sylvie Zhuang, South China Morning Post, September 19, 2024
The executive was detained on arrival in Shanghai and has not been able to return since, report says.
A senior executive from one of Taiwan’s biggest industrial conglomerates has been banned from leaving mainland China since arriving in Shanghai for a visit more than two weeks ago.
The unnamed executive from Formosa Plastics Group landed at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport on a flight from Taipei on September 1, and was immediately detained by border control authorities, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported on Wednesday.
COMMENT – I’ve said this on many occasions: don’t travel to the PRC.
Do I think everyone is going to get arrested? No, but that isn’t the point.
The Chinese Communist Party perceives that these kinds of actions carry little to no cost, which means they will continue until they perceive things differently.
If we ever hope to dissuade the Party from arbitrary detentions of foreigners, they have to believe there will be consequences. It is naïve to believe Beijing will act responsibility or that there is any ‘rule of law’ in Xi’s China.
19. Chinese dissidents cut off from families at Mid-Autumn Festival
Chen Zifei, Radio Free Asia, September 18, 2024
The authorities often use family separation as a way to punish critics of the ruling Chinese Communist Party.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is usually a time of family reunions in China, but the country's prisoners of conscience have scant hope of seeing their loved ones face-to-face any time soon, relatives told RFA Mandarin in recent interviews.
Chen Zijuan, the U.S.-based wife of rights attorney Chang Weiping, said that while her husband was released in July following a prison term for taking part in a gathering of dissidents in Xiamen in December 2019, he remains under a travel ban, and can't be with them.
Mid-autumn festival takes place around the autumn equinox in September, and involves family gatherings to eat mooncakes, light lanterns and admire the full moon. The moon also symbolizes togetherness for people forced to be apart, with countless poems dedicated to moon-viewing and feelings of loss or nostalgia.
Mid-Autumn Festival, traditionally a harvest celebration, starts on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, when the moon appears at its roundest and largest.
This year's Mid-Autumn Festival fell on Tuesday and coincided with worldwide viewing of the supermoon eclipse.
But not everyone in China is in a position to take part.
"In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has increasingly used family separation as a form of punishment for dissidents," Chen told RFA Mandarin ahead of the festival. "Even two years after his release, I'm not optimistic. I think they'll claim that his departure would endanger national security."
"It's very damaging for a family not to be able to see each other over a long period of time," she said. "They just want to make you suffer — it's also a way to intimidate everyone else in society."
For the spouses and children of political prisoners, national holidays, when everyone else is meeting up with loved ones, are the hardest and saddest times.
"I worry about him — he looks thinner and kind of sallow," she said of Chang. "He has lost his lawyer's license, and it's hard for him to get by now that he has lost his career."
COMMENT – What a bunch of paranoid thugs.
Chang Weiping and his family do not deserve this treatment.
Environmental Harms
20. Germany finds 45 irregular Chinese carbon-cut projects, begins review
Jens Kastner, Nikkei Asia, September 23, 2024
The German Environment Agency has begun a thorough review of its upstream emission reduction certificate scheme after it found 45 fraudulent projects in China, the body recently told Nikkei Asia.
An investigation of 56 climate projects in China so far has led the agency to reverse the issuance of those certificates to 45 suspicious projects, President Dirk Messner said in an online news conference earlier in the month.
COMMENT – This is totally shocking!!!
Can you believe that supposedly climate-friendly projects in the PRC are fraudulent?!?
Who could possibly have anticipated that?!?
I guess it is a bit like putting faith in audits that claim there in no slave or forced labor involved in PRC factories.
Outsourcing manufacturing and other industrial processes to a country that lacks the rule of law and a free press means that there will be violations of environmental and labor standards.
Anyone who believes otherwise wants to be deceived.
Foreign Interference and Coercion
21. Chinese Americans face discrimination amid U.S-China tensions, survey shows
Kelly Kasulis Cho, Washington Post, September 26, 2024
Roughly two-thirds of Chinese Americans said they experience discrimination regularly, according to a survey published Wednesday.
A study published by the NORC at the University of Chicago and nonprofit group Committee of 100 showed that 68 percent of Chinese Americans said they face at least one form of discrimination in an average month, while 65 percent said they think the state of U.S.-China relations negatively impacts how other Americans treat them. The survey also asked about mental health, and 43 percent of Chinese Americans said they felt depressed.
The researchers surveyed more than 500 Chinese Americans in their preferred language and explored how they feel they are treated in the United States, how they view their mental health and whether they expect to vote in the presidential election this November.
COMMENT – This is a really interesting article in the Washington Post.
It refers to a study supposedly done by NORC at the University of Chicago with the Committee of 100.
The link provided in the article sends the reader to a Press Release on the Committee of 100 website announcing the study and that it was done by NORC at the University of Chicago, “one of the largest independent social research organizations in the United States.”
That press release includes a link at the bottom to download the Executive Summary of “State of Chinese Americans 2024: Executive Summary,” which appears to be the whole study. The link to the pdf is also on the Committee of 100 website.
So, I was curious… I wondered what NORC, “one of the largest independent social research organizations in the United States,” said about this on their own website… surely, they must have their own Press Release and roll-out for this important study:
Interesting, apparently NORC doesn’t have any record of it.
Nor of any collaboration with the Committee of 100:
Next, I thought surely the three authors (Dr. Nathan Kar Ming Chan, Dr. Vivien Leung, and Dr. Sam Collitt) of the study must be associated with NORC in some way…that’s how this is a “study” done by NORC (the independent social research organization):
Nope, none can be found in NORC’s own search function.
Maybe NORC just has a really bad search function…
Or, perhaps, this is really just a Committee of 100 study.
Why might I suspect that?
Well, none of the authors claim to be associated with NORC and one of the three authors (Dr. Sam Collitt) is listed as “Research and Data Scientist, Committee of 100” with his LinkedIn page showing him as a full-time employee of the Committee of 100.
So, what is the “Committee of 100”?
Or here’s a 2019 OpEd on the organization in the Hong Kong Free Press, a media outlet well-versed in the efforts of the CCP to exert influence:
How the ‘Committee of 100’ is doing Beijing’s bidding in the US, Mark Simon, Hong Kong Free Press, May 1, 2029
Let’s go back to that Washington Post article.
I have no doubt that there is discrimination of Chinese-Americans in the United States and reporting on that discrimination is not only appropriate, but also necessary in a free society.
This issue I have with WaPo’s article is that it provides zero context for the organization that appears to have commissioned the “study” and seems to have had a strong hand in writing it.
Given the well-documented evidence that the Chinese Communist Party exerts pressure on, and employs groups in the United States to sway public opinion and paint American society as hostile to Chinese-Americans, I think WaPo’s responsibility is to point that out to its readers.
If NORC is completely comfortable with the methodology employed in this “study,” then I think they should say so, and at the very least WaPo should ask NORC leadership about their views, rather than simply getting quotes from the Committee of 100.
22. The British travel bloggers ‘sugarcoating’ China’s Uyghur problem to the delight of Beijing
Nicola Smith, The Telegraph, September 21, 2024
23. Another step in Beijing’s Bid to Reshape World Order
Carice Witte, SIGNAL Group, September 19, 2024
24. China urges ‘calm, rational’ response from Tokyo after fatal stabbing of Japanese boy
Laura Zhou, South China Morning Post, September 24, 2024
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi tells Japanese counterpart last week’s attack in Shenzhen was an ‘individual’ case and should not be ‘politicised’.
China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, called for Tokyo to remain “calm and rational”, following the fatal stabbing of a 10-year-old Japanese boy in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen last week, adding that the attack should not be politicised.
In talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Monday, Wang reiterated that the stabbing was an “accidental and individual” case.
“China will investigate and handle the case in accordance with the law, and will, as always, ensure the safety of all foreign nationals in China … while the Japanese side should see the case in a calm and rational manner, avoiding politicisation and amplification,” Wang said, according to China’s foreign ministry.
The attack last Wednesday, in which a boy was stabbed while on his way to his Japanese school, has widened division between the two countries, which are at odds over long-standing issues such as wartime history and territorial disputes, as well as Japan’s increasing alignment with the US.
It was the second attack against a Japanese pupil in China within three months, and has ignited a wave of anger in Japan that critics blamed on anti-Japanese sentiment in China through the education system and state-controlled media.
COMMENT – I find this deeply hypocritical… The Chinese Communist Party has been “politicizing” hatred of Japan and the Japanese people for years to distract the Chinese people from criticizing their own government.
I think we can be pretty certain that if the shoe were on the other foot (a 10-year-old Chinese boy had been stabbed in Osaka after years of Japanese Government propaganda convincing Japanese citizens that the Chinese were evil), Beijing would NOT be urging a “calm, rational” response, they would be encouraging Chinese citizens to overrun the Japanese Embassy and burn down Japanese businesses.
The Chinese Communist Party must be made to confront the consequences of its own race-based hyper-nationalism. Until that happens, we will continue to see crimes like this and foreigners will not be safe in the PRC.
See this from exactly 12 years ago:
“Chinese employees of Japanese businesses caught in crossfire,” South China Morning Post, September 20, 2012
25. Former US Secretary Kerry calls for new trade rules, cooperation with China on climate
Georgina Mccartney, Reuters, September 18, 2024
Summary
Kerry criticizes rising use of tariffs to manage global trade
Urges cooperation with China on climate despite trade disputes
Calls for streamlined US permitting for clean energy projects
Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday urged a new look at global trade rules, calling the existing mediator of trade disputes, the World Trade Organization, "neutered."
Kerry, who stepped down as President Joe Biden's climate envoy earlier this year, also urged cooperation with China on climate in wide ranging comments on trade, tariffs and the energy transition from fossil fuels at the Gastech energy conference in Houston.
“We need an understanding among nations, which China and the U.S. could help lead, about fair processes within the trading structure of the world," said Kerry.
The Geneva-based WTO "has become somewhat neutered, I think it is fair to say," he added.
The former Biden campaign worker took issue with the rising use of tariffs on Chinese imports that Biden and former President Donald Trump have relied on to rebuild U.S. industry and encourage clean energy businesses such as solar panels, batteries and electric cars.
“I’m not big on tariffs at all. I think historically tariffs have proven to be very problematic for the marketplace and countries," Kerry said. “I'm more believing in creating incentives for the things you want to do."
Nations need to find a way to cooperate with China on climate even as trade disputes grow, he said.
“I advocate working with China on climate because China is 30% of all emissions on the planet and is now the biggest producer of some of these (energy transition) technologies."
COMMENT – My apologies to anyone who admires John Kerry, but I think he is just terrible on the most important geopolitical issues. The WTO has been “neutered” because we allowed a non-market economy into a rules-based system that requires everyone to be a market economy. We gave the PRC a 15-year grace period to become a market economy and when that time was up (December 2016) and the PRC was continuing to backslide as a state-driven economy, the WTO and its members shrugged their collective shoulders.
Because China doesn’t play by the same rules (and the WTO has no authority or capability to enforce those rules), our global trading system is collapsing and reforming itself into regional blocs. Either we remove China from the WTO (withhold the benefits it gets from being a member of a free trade club) or we accept a regional trading system (aka GATT 2.0).
I put this article under the “Foreign Interference and Coercion” section because John Kerry has for years acted as a ‘useful idiot’ for Beijing by privileging the mirage of climate cooperation over the more critical interests of the United States and its allies.
No one did more to derail the Rebalance to Asia and undermine the shift in U.S. China policy towards strategic competition than John Kerry as Secretary of State.
26. As Exxon Pumps Guyana’s Oil, China Is Winning Battle for Influence
Collin Eaton and Kejal Vyas, Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2024
Chinese companies are investing heavily in the South American country, home to the largest oil find in a generation.
More than 100 miles off the coast of Guyana, Exxon Mobil is pumping hundreds of thousands of barrels every day from a gargantuan oil discovery that is transforming the sparsely populated South American country.
Back onshore, much of the transformation is being undertaken by China. Chinese companies are building waterside hotels, bridges, roads and shopping centers. They mine for bauxite and manganese in the remote areas of the country’s Amazon region. The main international airport was renovated with a $150 million loan from China’s Export-Import Bank.
Outside of the oil project, Chinese companies are edging Western rivals out of major projects with aggressive terms, and ushering in large groups of Chinese workers. Shipping containers turned into makeshift lodging for Chinese laborers are sprouting up at new construction sites across the country.
“The Chinese are slowly owning this country, through and through,” said cabdriver Raphael Singh, echoing a popular refrain from Guyanese citizens.
That trend has some U.S. diplomats and lawmakers concerned that China’s investments—which go back more than five decades—are translating into political clout in the resource-rich country, as it has in other parts of South America.
“We need to show up,” said Geoff Pyatt, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for energy resources. Pyatt has visited Guyana twice since taking the role and said the U.S. is closely watching China’s activity in Guyana. “[Guyana’s leaders] want the U.S. to be their partner of choice and we want to be their partner of choice.”
While China has doubled down on its investments in Guyana, the U.S. has been more selective in the projects it supports. In 2022, the Biden administration rejected a $180 million Inter-American Development Bank debt consolidation for a Guyanese port servicing the oil-and-gas industry, though the U.S. Export-Import Bank is now backing a project to use Guyana’s natural gas in the country’s power plants.
COMMENT – Big mistake by the Biden administration back in 2022.
The kneejerk hostility to the oil-and-gas sector is incredibly unwise and has severely worsened our geopolitical position. The obsession carbon targets has enriched our adversaries, harmed our friends, and encouraged other countries to seek out support from Beijing and Moscow.
In 2022 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we should have been massively expanding oil-and-gas production and distribution to push down the price and rob Moscow of the revenues from that sector which kept them in the fight and able to put their economy on a war footing. By not doing so, we have tied the Global South to Moscow more closely. Countries in the Global South care far more about economic development (which needs massive amounts of energy), than finger wagging from Americans and Europeans about carbon emissions.
Had we been able to push the price of oil down to less than $45 a barrel, Russian oil would likely have been more expensive to produce than the price they could sell it at (it would have had the added benefit of reducing the price of gas at the pump for everyone as well, which would likely have made American voters far more excited about Biden’s economic policies and guaranteed his reelection).
By aggressively inducing artificial limits on oil and gas production (what American and European leaders have been doing to make solar and wind more competitive, and to hasten an energy transition that will disproportionally benefit the PRC), they have poured money into Moscow’s coffers, enabling Russia to expand and lengthen the war.
I’m reminded of that famous quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
27. Democrats and Republicans Press China on Abuse of Muslim Minority
Julian E. Barnes and Karoun Demirjian, New York Times, September 25, 2024
Democrats and Republicans are stepping up pressure on the Biden administration to strengthen its stand on China’s oppression of its Uyghur minority but are using different tactics.
This week, Representative Ritchie Torres, Democrat of New York, sent a sharply worded letter to Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, chastising the administration for failing to deliver a report on China’s treatment of the Uyghurs.
On Wednesday, the House passed a Republican-led measure that attempts to force the Biden administration to prohibit contacts with Chinese officials involved in the oppression of the minority group.
The U.S. government declared China’s actions against the Uyghurs to be a genocide in 2021 and passed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which imposed sanctions on China related to human rights violations.
COMMENT – I’m hearing that the NCUSCR (National Committee on U.S. China Relations) and the USCBC (U.S.-China Business Council) has been organizing a big push on Congress to advocate watering down measures that hold the PRC accountable.
It is being conducted in coordination with businesses that have manufacturing footprints in China, as well as certain high-profile investors (and donors) who have significant holding in the PRC.
28. China threatens sanctions on Calvin Klein owner over Xinjiang cotton boycott
Juliana Liu, CNN, September 25, 2024
29. Beijing Threatens to Block Calvin Klein Owner’s Access to China
Chun Han Wong and Austin Ramzy, Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2024
30. An Assessment of the Audit of Volkswagen’s Controversial Factory in Xinjiang
Adrian Zenz, Jamestown Foundation, September 19, 2024
31. 'From hell to limbo': Michael Kovrig describes more than a thousand days as China's prisoner
Peter Zimonjic, CBC, September 23, 2024
32. Beijing’s Transnational Repression of Dissidents: From Bad to Worse
Marco Respinti, Bitter Winter, September 26, 2024
The chilling story of a Uyghur reporter exiled in the US is the sad tip of a shivering iceberg.
That the repression exerted by the Beijing’s communist regime on Uyghurs has extended beyond the borders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), employing a strategy of transnational repression to target the diaspora communities worldwide, is today a known fact.
This involves a variety of tactics aimed at silencing, intimidating, or surveilling abroad individuals who are critical of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policies or who advocate for Uyghur rights.
Recently, Paris-based international human rights organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) shared the testimony of a Uyghur journalist exiled in the United States whose friends who are still in the PRC were detained in retaliation for his work.
The exiled journalist’s story illustrated the transnational repression carried out by the CCP to extend censorship beyond its borders. International news reporter Kasim Abdurehim Kashgar, who left China for the US in 2017 due to the Chinese regime’s intense repression in the XUAR, said Uyghur journalists like him find no escape from the CCP, even in exile. According to the report by RSF, following Kashgar’s emigration, those in his entourage in the PRC were interrogated and, in some cases, imprisoned.
“The Chinese authorities wanted me to stop my investigations and work for the regime’s propaganda. In the months following my refusal, at least twelve people with whom I had worked in a language school were arrested and questioned about me. Some were even sentenced to up to seven years in prison,” the exiled journalist, who investigates crimes committed against Uyghurs for the American public media Voice of America (VOA), explained. The journalist said one of his friends was sentenced to nine years in prison, while four of his former colleagues were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on obscure charges, and only one was released, while the fate of the others remains unknown.
Working under a pseudonym for many years, the journalist revealed his identity in the documentary “From Fear to Freedom: A Uyghur’s Journey” broadcast by VOA in June last year. As per the RSF report, that reporter’s mental health suffered as his close circle was targeted by the Chinese authorities. “After learning about their detention, I developed anxiety and depression,” Kashgar said. “I am asking the authorities to release them because they have nothing to do with my work,” he added.
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
33. China Tries to Jolt Ailing Economy
Jason Douglas, Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2024
Central bank cuts interest rates and dangles loans for stock-market investors as concerns around world’s second-largest economy intensify.
China’s central bank announced a blitz of measures to support the country’s weakening economy and energize its moribund stock market, an unusually broad package that signals growing unease in Beijing after a run of downbeat numbers on jobs, spending and inflation.
Economists said that while the blast of support is welcome, it won’t be enough to pull China’s economy out of a low-growth rut marked by falling prices, a festering real-estate crisis and spiraling tensions over trade.
Instead, Beijing needs to get a firmer grip on the real-estate downturn and take robust steps to boost consumption if it is to spark a durable revival in the economy, many economists said.
The People’s Bank of China said Tuesday that it would cut its benchmark interest rate and lower the amount of cash that banks need to hold in reserve—a bid to free up more resources for lending. It also said it would cut the interest rate payable on existing mortgages and lower down payments for second homes.
At a press conference in Beijing, PBOC Gov. Pan Gongsheng said further easing is in the pipeline, with another reduction in bank reserve requirements expected before year-end.
The central bank also announced it would offer 500 billion yuan in loans, equivalent to roughly $70 billion, to funds, brokers and insurers to buy Chinese stocks as part of an effort to lift the country’s ailing stock market. It said it would put up another 300 billion yuan to finance share buybacks by listed companies.
…
Borrowing costs are already low, yet credit data suggests households and businesses aren’t that interested in borrowing. Consumer confidence is near record low levels, reflecting anxiety over jobs in a weak economy and the cost of the meltdown in property. Barclays estimates that the property crunch since 2021 has incinerated some $18 trillion in household wealth, equivalent to around $60,000 per family.
Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics at Capital Economics in Singapore, said the measures were a step in the right direction, “but are not really enough to drive a turnaround in the economy.”
What is missing is more aggressive fiscal support, he said. Weakening activity is hitting tax revenue and local governments are struggling to spend their borrowing quota on viable infrastructure projects. The central government in Beijing needs to borrow and spend more to drive up growth and inflation, he said, and should give its local counterparts more freedom to use their borrowing quotas to support consumption.
Above all, the housing market remains China’s biggest economic problem. Rather than trim rates to prop up already-weak demand for homes, many economists say the government needs to let home prices fall further and take bolder steps to clear an enormous backlog of unfinished homes to restore confidence in the market. Consumer spending will only get back to prepandemic rates of growth if households see light at the end of the tunnel after more than three years of real-estate pain, they said.
COMMENT – China’s cheerleaders will gush (or at least give it moderate praise while crowing about cheaply priced Chinese equities to get their clients to pour more money into their mutual funds and ETFs), but I suspect this won’t be anything to close to enough.
Xi does not know how to address this problem and does not care to solve it. He and his cadres believe that intimidating and coercing legitimate economists while falsifying China’s economic statistics is all they have to do.
34. China Market Support May Fizzle Out If Key Issues Remain Unsolved
Sherry Qin and Jiahui Huang, Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2024
China’s over $100 billion push to bolster its stock markets has stirred optimism, but begs the question of whether investors and businesses will take the bait amid lingering doubts about the economy’s underlying weakness.
In an unprecedented move, the People’s Bank of China vowed to invest 800 billion yuan of liquidity, equivalent to $113.77 billion, into Chinese stock markets through new swap and loan facilities, a move cautiously welcomed by analysts.
While the measures are an “absolute positive,” the key will be in the implementation, Morgan Stanley analyst Laura Wang said in a note.
Under the liquidity facility, 500 billion yuan will be available in the first phase for funds, brokers and insurers to buy Chinese stocks, while an additional 300 billion yuan will go toward financing share buybacks by publicly listed companies.
Analysts say some challenges that are likely to arise during implementation include the ability and willingness of investors to take risks, and the gestation period it takes for the support to positively affect economic data points, which will signal whether the Chinese economy’s fundamental challenges have been addressed.
COMMENT – I’m not entirely sure how this injection of liquidity by the PBOC into China’s capital markets will work, but I suspect short term speculators will see an opportunity to make a quick buck and then retreat… as they have done for years.
Screenshot from Google’s Market Summary App.
Here’s a snapshot of China’s benchmark index, the CSI 300 (a composite of the top 300 stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges), over the past five years. It is down nearly 4% since 2019 and lost about 40% of its value since its all-time high in February 2021 during the COVID lockdowns.
Let’s compare that to the benchmark index for the United States, the S&P 500, over the past 15 years or from the time of the Global Financial Crisis.
Screenshot from the WSJ Markets App.
The CSI 300 is the line in blue and the S&P 500 is the line in black.
Consider that this same time period covered what many regard to be an “economic miracle” in China and a period of relative stagnation in the United States. It also covers the entire rule of Xi Jinping.
I’m not much of a financial wizard, but that chart doesn’t make me confident in China’s growth prospects, the competence of its coporate leaders, or of its economic bureaucrats. Beijing does not seem able to set up an ecosystem where investors can have confidence in the growth and value of the companies in the country… this is supposedly the Top 300 companies in the entire country and there is essentially zero growth in value over 15 years?!?
35. China’s Market Marred by Glitches as Frenzy Grips Stocks
Bloomberg, September 26, 2024
China’s long-awaited stimulus measures may have been too much for the markets to handle.
With shares soaring and turnover reaching 710 billion yuan ($101 billion) in the first hour of trading on Friday, Shanghai’s stock exchange was marred by glitches in processing orders and delays, according to messages from brokerages seen by Bloomberg News. The Shanghai Stock Exchange is investigating reasons for delays, it said in a statement.
COMMENT – Unsurprising.
36. In China, resentment between classes is bubbling over
The Economist, September 23, 2024
37. Biden Administration to Prepare Ban on Chinese Car Software
David Welch and Mackenzie Hawkins, Bloomberg, September 21, 2024
38. The US led on nuclear fusion for decades. Now China is in position to win the race
Angela Dewan and Ella Nilsen, CNN, September 19, 2024
39. India rules out joining world’s largest trade deal, accuses China of 'very opaque' trade practices
Lee Ying Shan, CNBC, September 23, 2024
40. China Steel Mills Are Facing a Wave of Bankruptcies, BI Says
Bloomberg, September 22, 2024
41. BlackRock ‘Long Way’ From Investing More in China’s Real Estate
Low De Wei, Bloomberg, September 24, 2024
42. China local finance chief's killing sparks shock and speculation
Cissy Zhou, Nikkei Asia, September 21, 2024
43. International effort launched to crack China dominance of critical minerals
Shaun Turton, Nikkei Asia, September 24, 2024
44. Denmark-based Saxo Bank to join retreat from Hong Kong and China
Pak Yiu and Echo Wong, Nikkei Asia, September 24, 2024
45. Taiwan chip industry suppliers set sail for Japan's 'Silicon Island'
Yoshinaru Sakabe, Nikkei Asia, September 18, 2024
46. Mission Impossible: Germany’s bid to kill EU duties on Chinese EVs
Giovanna Coi, Douglas Busvine, and Koen Verhelst, Politico, September 24, 2024
47. Chinese investor steps in to block Paladin’s Fission Uranium buy
Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.com, September 16, 2024
48. China’s Two Largest Shipbuilders Set Stock Swap Terms For $38 Billion Merger
Li Rongqian and Denise Jia, Caixin, September 19, 2024
49. Mercedes, BMW Flash Warning Lights on China
Stephen Wilmot, Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2024
50. Western nations join forces to break China’s grip on critical minerals
Jamie Smyth, Myles McCormick, and Harry Dempsey, Financial Times, September 22, 2024
51. European steelmakers plead with Brussels to tackle flood of Chinese exports
Sylvia Pfeifer, Patricia Nilsson, and Andy Bounds, Financial Times, September 22, 2024
52. As China’s job market shrinks, graduates forced to scale back career ambitions
Luna Sun, South China Morning Post, September 22, 2024
53. EU challenges China's dairy product probe at WTO
Philip Blenkinsop, Reuters, September 23, 2024
54. China Is Striking Deals to Cement Its Role as Asia’s Trade Hub
Keith Bradsher, New York Times, September 24, 2024
55. Nanotech pioneer Wang Zhonglin leaves US to work in China ‘full time’
Victoria Belain and Dannie Peng, South China Morning Post, September 25, 2024
56. FBI probes whether Silicon Valley venture firm passed secrets to China
Tabby Kinder, Financial Times, September 24, 2024
Cyber & Information Technology
57. China Tech Firms at Risk as US Lawmakers Rebuff Lobbying Efforts
Steven T. Dennis and Alexander Ruoff, Bloomberg, September 18, 2024
58. China’s biggest AI model is challenging American dominance
Sam Eifling, Rest of World, September 23, 2024
59. On US visit, Dutch politician talks importance of ASML, China trade
Daphne Psaledakis and Toby Sterling, Reuters, September 23, 2024
Military and Security Threats
60. Deterring Taiwan conflict is top priority for Japan's ‘front-line’ mayor
Jesse Johnson, Japan Times, September 26, 2024
As the top elected official on Japan’s tiny “front-line” island of Yonaguni — just 110 kilometers from Taiwan — Kenichi Itokazu isn’t your typical small-town mayor.
Elected head of the Okinawan island’s local government in 2021, he’s been charged with ensuring the livelihood and security of its residents amid rising fears over the possibility of a war between communist China and democratic Taiwan, a conflict that some say would inevitably draw in Japan and the United States.
These responsibilities, he says, have at times left him as the odd man out in a prefecture long wary of both the heavy U.S. military and Self-Defense Forces presence there.
61. At the World’s Largest Shipyard, U.S. Courts an Ally to Face Up to China
Timothy W. Martin, Wall Street Journal, September 23, 2024
62. China Launched a Rocket with a Dummy Warhead into the Pacific
Chris Buckley, New York Times, September 25, 2024
63. FBI joint operation takes down massive Chinese botnet, Wray says
Tim Starks, AJ Vicens, and Christian Vasquez, CyberScoop, September 18, 2024
64. Video of Chinese jet’s apparent intercept with Australian defence plane ‘deeply troubling’ propaganda, Coalition says
Emily Wind, The Guardian, September 18, 2024
65. Did a Chinese University Hacking Competition Target a Real Victim?
Kim Zetter, Wired, September 18, 2024
66. CCP ON THE QUAD: How American Taxpayers and Universities Fund the CCP’s Advanced Military and Technological Research
Majority Staff Report, United States Congress, September 2024
67. VIDEO – The World’s Largest Shipyard Is Helping the U.S. Catch Up to China's Navy
Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2024
68. China’s growing military activity makes a shift to war harder to spot, warns Taiwan
Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, September 18, 2024
69. U.S. Research Aided Chinese Military Technology, House Republicans Say
Ana Swanson, New York Times, September 23, 2024
70. China tightens military-civilian export controls ‘just in time’, experts say
Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post, September 23, 2024
71. Taiwan and U.S. Work to Counter China’s Drone Dominance
Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, New York Times, September 25, 2024
One Belt, One Road Strategy
72. BRI sputters in South Asia
Amit Bhandari, Gateway House, September 19, 2024
Opinion Pieces
73. The key to Ukraine is in Beijing
Gabriel Elefteriu, Brussels Signal, September 26, 2024
…
In these conditions the scale of the resources needed (and Western political will) to turn the tide in Kyiv’s favour on all three counts is enormous even if Russia’s own war effort remains stagnant at current levels, i.e. if its military-economic mobilisation doesn’t increase in response to any extra pressure from Ukraine. And the fundamental reason why Russia is able to not only stay in this fight, but also expand its military capacity, is China’s help.
Perhaps the most misunderstood and under-discussed – relative to its vital importance – aspect of this war is the role of China. We find ourselves in a very curious situation. On the one hand, Beijing’s involvement in supporting the Russian economy as well as Putin’s military machine is well documented; on the other hand, it only appears as an afterthought in Western debates.
When the war began and Western sanctions hit, Russia effectively reoriented its economy – from energy exports to manufactured goods imports – towards China, to the point where it is now deeply dependent on it. The vast majority of the microelectronics and machine tools Russia needs for its advanced weapons now come from China; and the list goes on. In short, without Beijing’s help, Moscow could not keep up its illegal war.
Russia also receives substantial and essential military support – such as ammunition, drones and missiles – from Iran and North Korea. More broadly, it enjoys a significant degree of public opinion sympathy and even overt diplomatic support from the Global South. In all this, Russia’s “merit” is only partial. Much more significant – arguably, even decisive – is the pro-Russian signal sent from Beijing, which weighs heavily in the calculations of all these anti-Western (or, at best, “nonaligned”) actors. In the Global South most roads tend to lead to Xi’s court, as China acts as the lynchpin of the emerging so-called “alternative” to the US-led world order.
The Ukraine war is not, therefore, simply a contest between Kyiv and Moscow. Just as Ukraine depends on Western backing to survive and keep fighting, so does Russia depend on assistance from the Chinese-led Eurasian Axis and the broader Global South. This is a proxy war where the fates of both Ukraine and Russia, in different ways and to different degrees, hang on their bigger and stronger sponsors.
The West may increase its help to Zelensky; but then China and its fellow revisionist powers will increase their help to Putin. We have already seen this happen. Neither side can afford to let their ally fail, as the geopolitical consequences would be more costly for them, at the global level, than the price of continued support.
Until this reality is properly understood and accounted for in the international efforts to find a solution to this conflict, we will keep going in circles around self-referential “victory” plans that have little to do with what is actually feasible. It’s increasingly clear that the way to end the war and ensure a stable long-term peace is to look beyond Russia and act upon its support system. In other words, the key to the Ukraine war is in Beijing.
COMMENT – Perhaps it didn’t start this way, but Putin’s war on Ukraine has evolved into a proxy way between United States and the People’s Republic of China. Each power is supporting its proxy and matching each other’s escalations.
Until we fully link Beijing to Moscow and grapple with the implications of this globally, democratic leaders will find it very difficult to navigate.
74. China’s economy cannot be reformed with Xi in charge
Ian Williams, Spectator, September 25, 2024
His principal achievement since coming to power in 2012 is to put Deng’s reforms sharply into reverse.
It was presented as a bold stimulus to boost China’s ailing economy — but while it excited stock markets in Asia, Western economists were underwhelmed. At a rare press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, the usually gnomic governor of the People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, unveiled a range of measures designed to “support the stable growth of China’s economy” and see that it hits this year’s target of 5 percent growth.
There was a time when such measures, which included an interest rate cut and more funds to support the stock and property markets, would have quickened the pulse of investors. But this is unlikely to reverse their exodus. It merely confirms fears about China’s deep-seated problems and casts doubt over whether the Chinese Communist Party is capable of meaningfully reforming an economic model that is no longer sustainable.
The measures “indicated policymakers’ growing concerns over growth headwinds,” said Goldman Sachs. Liu Chang, macro economist at BNP Paribas Asset Management, meanwhile, said that though positive, “we think there is still a worrying lack of urgency behind their words around stimulus.”
The problem for Pan is that not only do few economists believe that 5 percent growth can be achieved, but China is widely believed to be cooking the books. Analysts have long used alternative gauges for measuring China’s economic activity, such as electricity consumption or energy imports, but their skepticism has increased as the country’s economic problems have mounted. Growth in [2023] may have been as low as 1.5 percent, according to an analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research organization, as supposed to the 5.2 percent claimed. This year has probably been tougher.
While President Xi Jinping has portrayed himself as China’s “supreme reformer,” the heir to Deng Xiaoping, his principal achievement since coming to power in 2012 is to put Deng’s reforms sharply into reverse. A property bubble continues to burst with slumping sales and prices, youth unemployment is soaring, and inward investment is plunging amid growing signs of social stress, including a spike in protests.
Beijing has reacted by restricting data about the economy and criminalizing pessimism. The Ministry of State Security, China’s main spy agency, has declared that gloom about the economy is a foreign smear and that “false theories about ‘China’s deterioration’ are being circulated to attack China’s unique socialist system.”
The announcement of these stimulus measures coincided with reports that Zhu Hengpeng, a prominent economist at one of China’s top think tanks has disappeared after criticizing Xi’s management of the economy in a private groupchat. Zhu, who for the past decade has been deputy director of the Institute of Economics at the state-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has been placed under investigation, detained and removed after making comments about the flagging economy and referring to Xi’s mortality, according to the Wall Street Journal.
An economic model that for four decades relied on cheap exports and massive, wasteful state-led investment in property and infrastructure is no longer sustainable. It produced dizzying rates of growth but has also led to soaring debt and diminishing returns, with China littered with ghost cities, containing 60 to 100 million empty or incomplete homes, while companies accounting for 40 percent of China’s home sales have defaulted.
It is widely agreed that China needs to rebalance its economy and that consumers need to spend more, since private consumption accounts for just 39 percent of the economy — extremely low by world standards (the figure in the US is 68 percent). But there is no consumer confidence, with 80 percent of family wealth tied up in property and no meaningful social safety net.
Xi hopes renewable energy technology can replace property as a new motor of growth, and mouth-watering subsidies have been thrown at industries ranging from solar panels to electric vehicles and batteries. This has lead to massive overcapacity and vicious price wars. Yet the benign global environment that accompanied China’s earlier export splurges has gone: the world is much more wary.
Xi’s longer term goal is to build a world-beating “innovation” economy driven by domestic tech, but the most effective way of achieving this — giving more sway to the market and to private companies — runs counter to everything he stands for. Xi has prioritized security and CCP control, even over the economy. He has hobbled China’s most innovative technology companies, which have faced tightening restrictions. With the CCP increasingly in every lab and boardroom, the country’s startup scene i”s on its knees, with one executive recently telling the Financial Times, “The whole industry has just died before our eyes… The entrepreneurial spirit is dead. Last year, China led the world in the number of millionaires leaving the country, according to the Henley Wealth Management Report.
This is the background against which Pan wheeled out his stimulus, hinting that further measures might be in the pipeline. It had more than a hint of desperation about it and came days after Beijing announced it was raising the retirement age — a measure that was also widely criticized as inadequate to fend off a fast-approaching demographic crisis.
The CCP has long cultivated the myth of the technocrat, claiming that its officials have risen through a meritocratic system and are superior to those in the West because they can plan rationally for the long term. That was always a highly tenuous claim and ignores the reality that even the most gifted technocrat can make little real difference in an autocratic system where ultimately the only thing that matters is the opinion of the leader. Indeed, such a system encourages fraud as underlings clammer to tell the emperor what he wants to hear or face the consequences of voicing unwelcome opinions — as the economist Zhu did.
Pan is perhaps the embodiment of that hapless technocrat. He is no doubt aware that China’s troubled economy has peaked and may go sharply into reverse, but unable to mutter the unspeakable — that it is unreformable as long as Xi Jinping remains in charge.
75. Why US-China bipolarity is good for Asia
Hervé Lemahieu, Lowy Institute, September 20, 2024
76. China’s Maritime Grey Zone Tactics Are Evolving
Brent Sadler, Heritage Foundation, September 24, 2024
Key Takeaways:
Back in May, Beijing responded to Taiwan President Lai Ching-te’s inauguration speech by quickly ordering a large-scale military demonstration: Joint Sword 2024A.
Flush with confidence, China has also recently increased military activities with Russia in new and noteworthy ways.
From the East to the South China Sea, and soon the South and Central Pacific, a militarily confident China is on the march. It is time to respond.
COMMENT - Great piece by Brent Sadler!
77. Russia and China’s purely pragmatic love-in
Owen Matthews, Spectator, September 12, 2024
78. Australia must be wary of Beijing’s ears and hands in consumer goods
Alastair MacGibbon, Australian Financial Review, September 24, 2024
The US is banning Chinese-made EVs with internet connections for fear they will be used for surveillance or sabotage. Australia will need to step up too.
On Monday, Washington moved to effectively ban Chinese electric vehicles from the US market in a decision that should fundamentally reshape how we view the national security risks posed by internet-connected consumer technology.
New proposed rules announced by US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will restrict access to Chinese software and hardware for vehicles with in-built internet connections.
79. TikTok’s Bad Free-Speech Case
The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2024
80. How China is becoming the Saudi Arabia of renewables
Andy Xie, South China Morning Post, September 19, 2024
81. Exploding Pagers and the Tech Race with China
Mike Gallagher, Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2024
82. It’s no longer glorious to get rich in China — it’s dangerous
Ruchir Sharma, Financial Times, September 22, 2024
83. China’s working population is declining, but immigration is not considered
Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, September 23, 2024
84. How America can defeat the world's most formidable information warrior
Amanda Bennett, Washington Post, September 23, 2024