Friends,
This week’s title may seem a bit disjointed, but as an American historian and not what most would consider a traditional China Watcher, I’m bound to make connections like these.
For years, I’ve listened to Chinese Communist Party officials, and their surrogates, make arguments about Taiwan and its has made me think of other ways that figures in history have made important arguments and refuted them.
Two weeks ago, the Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA) hosted its annual conference in Tokyo. During its opening panel discussion, Professor Jia Qingguo, the former Dean of Peking University’s School of International Studies made an argument about Taiwan that I’ve heard many times after Kenichiro Sasae, former Japanese Ambassador to the United States and current President of JIIA, asked him a question about the likelihood of conflict (for the video of this exchange, start watching at minute 33:28 at the link above).
Kenichiro Sasae – Another question about Taiwan, since the former Commander in the Pacific stated in the year 2021 that China may try to attack Taiwan by 2027, there are a lot of debates about this contingency, but may I understand that neither the U.S. nor China wish to exchange the armed forces.
Do you think there is a tacit understanding between the two countries that they don't want to see the independence of [Taiwan], so that China don’t use armed force [against Taiwan]?
Is there a tacit understanding that China won't use armed force [against Taiwan] or a red line on the use of force, do you think that is shared?
Professor Jia Qingguo – Well certainly, China and the U.S. share one position: that is, we don't want to have a war or conflict between our two countries. It will be disastrous not only for the two countries but also for the world.
On Taiwan, I think both sides agree that we should oppose Taiwan Independence or at least not to support Taiwanese independence because Taiwan Independence activities can provoke the two countries into a military conflict.
I think whether we will see a military conflict in the Taiwan Strait has a lot to do with what's going to happen on the on the Taiwan Island.
Whether the DPP would push for aggressive measures for independence. If it's not, then we have a better chance for peace.
Whether the U.S., under the influence of certain hardliners would push for policies that that send the wrong messages to the Taiwan separatists on the island, if that happens then we have tension. If that can be restrained, then we have more chance for peace.
So, it all depends on what's going to happen in Taiwan and also in the U.S., whether we are going to have a military conflict or not.
From the Chinese perspective, we hope for peace [laughs nervously]. We hope that the world, especially the U.S., would let the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait resolve their problems through peaceful means.”
Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech
Professor Jia Qingguo’s response reminded me of a passage from Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech, the speech that propelled him to the presidency.
In February 1860, Abraham Lincoln had yet to declare himself a candidate for the Republican nomination and was just beginning his run for the election, perhaps the most consequential election in American history. The Young Man’s Republican Union had invited Lincoln to give a speech at a church in Brooklyn, but when he arrived in New York, he learned that the organizers had moved the event to the far larger Cooper Union in Manhattan.
On the night of February 27, 1860, Lincoln rose to address a crowd of 1500 people. At the start of the speech, few knew who this man was and most were not impressed with what they saw, but by the end, as historian Harold Holzer argues in his book, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The speech that made Abraham Lincoln President, Lincoln had become a political force.
At the time, Lincoln was an awkward and inexperienced politician in an upstart political party. While known in his native Illinois, he was a nobody in the Northeast. This speech, which focused on the most pressing issue of the day, slavery and the division between North and South, propelled him to the Presidency less than a year later and gave his audience a glimpse of his political genius.
The threat of secession and war was on everyone’s mind. Southern and Northern Democrats alike made the argument that if the country elected a Republican, a party closely tied to abolitionism, then Republicans would be responsible for the carnage and destruction that followed.
Lincoln’s old opponent, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the Democrat from Illinois (Lincoln lost to Douglas in the 1858 election for the Illinois Senate seat), was one of two leading Democratic candidates for the Presidency and had been one of the most vocal proponents of this argument. If secession and war happened, then it was the fault of Republicans and Northerners for provoking it.
After spending most of the speech dismantling Douglas’ arguments that the North and Republicans were pushing the country toward division and war, he turned to address the Southern people about their threat to succeed:
“In that supposed event, you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!
That is cool.
A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!"”
This is essentially same argument we hear from the Chinese Communist Party and its surrogates. Separatists in Taiwan are the ones responsible for any crime that takes place, they are responsible for undermining peace and stability. The Taiwanese people must either capitulate to Beijing’s demands or they will be responsible for the death and destruction that results.
What the Party seeks to obscure is its own culpability in launching a potential war of aggression and initiating the actual violence.
The Party constantly seeks to portray itself as desiring a “peaceful” outcome, just as long as the outcome is what the Party desires. The Party asserts that negotiation is their preferred approach, but this isn’t negotiation as we would understand it. This is negotiation under the not-so-hidden threat of violence.
Therefore, the act of defying Beijing becomes the act of violence and the breaking of the peace.
If the Taiwanese openly acknowledge their independence or if others openly recognize this independence, then those individuals are the ones committing the act of war.
Today we know this behavior as “gaslighting,” for those unfamiliar with the term, here’s a definition from Psychology Today:
“Gaslighting is an insidious form of manipulation and psychological control. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity. Over time, a gaslighter’s manipulations can grow more complex and potent, making it increasingly difficult for the victim to see the truth.”
Beijing seeks to convince the world that if not for the intransigence of a handful of “Taiwanese separatists” and “hardliners” in the United States, the people of Taiwan would happily agree to “peaceful reunification” with the People’s Republic of China. The false information is that the Mainland and Taiwan are one political entity.
Of course, none of the polling and decades of elections in Taiwan would lead anyone to believe that conclusion (the Taiwanese people clearly prefer their democracy to the alternative that is on offer from Beijing), but the Chinese Communist Party uses falsehoods to deliberately manipulate perceptions and feeds on the fears and avarice of others.
This technique starts with a false premise: everyone agrees that there is only “One China” and there cannot be a debate over this fundamental point.
That may be the premise the Party prefers and wants others to adopt, but it is not an accurate description of reality and there is significant disagreement.
The next premise is that the Chinese people cannot accept any division of this “One China,” therefore the Mainland and Taiwan must be reunited, and it is this imperative of history that compels the Chinese Communist Party to achieve this goal. Here the Party manipulates concepts of democracy to assert that 1.4 billion Chinese demand this outcome and therefore the votes of Taiwanese citizens, all 23 million of them, are irrelevant.
Based on these false premises, the Party seeks to paint all who question their position as warmongers.
Their logic goes something like this: since the Chinese people demand “One China” and cannot accept the independence of Taiwan, then anyone who defies their will and supports an alternative interpretation, must be an advocate for war and destruction.
Under this thinking, the Chinese Communist Party has no choice or influence on the matter, it is compelled to achieve the will of Chinese people. Beijing asserts that it would prefer a peaceful resolution, but that can only happen if the other side accepts all of Beijing’s demands. Under this interpretation, the Party is righteous and is only seeking to achieve a legitimate goal that everyone accepts and supports (aside from a handful of Taiwan separatists and American hardliners).
We see this same rhetorical technique applied to the PRC’s other acts of aggression and coercion:
If India refuses to surrender territory to Beijing’s demands, then it is Delhi that is creating the tension.
If citizens of Hong Kong want to maintain their civil and political liberties from being eroded by Beijing, then Hong Kongers are responsible for secession and troublemaking.
If the Philippines objects to Beijing’s annexation of their territory, then it is Manila who is at fault.
If Japan defends its territory against Beijing’s intrusions, then it is Tokyo that is being warlike and aggressive.
If Korea fields an American air defense system to defend themselves against North Korean missiles, then it is Seoul that is threatening Beijing.
If Australia seeks to prevent political interference inside their own country; then it is Canberra that is challenging the PRC.
If the United States reaffirms its security commitments to its allies, then it is Washington that is being hegemonic.
There is of course a common thread that runs through these disputes and tensions… a common thread that the Party and its surrogates refuse to acknowledge.
The threat to peace and stability originates primarily from Beijing. If war comes, it will happen because Beijing started it.
How others perpetuate Beijing’s gaslighting
To provide a sense of how effective this technique has been for Beijing, the next panelist pushed back on the framing of JIIA’s report and his own country’s Defense Strategic Review.
Justin Bassi, the former Australian National Security Advisor, and current Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, pointed out how folks have a tendency to define the threat to the region in terms of the “competition” between the United States and the PRC, as if both sides are equally culpable and that everyone else is a bystander.
JIIA’s report, “Strategic Annual Report 2023: A World in Turmoil: How Can We Rebuild International Security and Cooperation?” The report frames one of the main causes of global turmoil as “U.S.-China Competition,” as if the “competition” itself is the cause for turmoil.
This same framing is in the 2023 Australian “Defence Strategic Review” released by Prime Minister Albanese’s administration last year. Under the section titled “Australia’s strategic circumstances” on page 23:
“Intense China-United States competition is the defining feature of our region and our time. Major power competition in our region has the potential to threaten our interests, including the potential for conflict.”
Bassi seeks to dispel this misrepresentation:
In terms of the question around U.S.-China rivalry and the impact on Australia, you refer to recent defense policies in Australia last year, the Defence Strategic Review. In that review it stated that China-U.S. competition was the defining feature of our time and China's claims and actions in the South China Sea directly impact Australia and Australia's interests.
I completely agree with that aspect of the review, I'd only say though I'd probably prefer that Australia's policy outline that China's expansionism and revisionism is Australia's primary challenge, not simply in the context of U.S.-China [competition].
Because Australia, like all countries, develops our own policies based on our own values and interests and I think it's important to say that Australia’s interests and values lie in the US being active and fully engaged in our region.
In fact, the word that has been used this afternoon in terms of competition for me so long as we can continue talking about a competition, it's actually positive because it means the US is still here.
In my view Beijing would like there to be no competition and no United States in the region.
But Australia along with Japan and others has to carry our fair share of the burden. We have to do that also to incentivize the U.S. to be here to help deter Beijing and that's why groupings from AUKUS, to the Quad, to the trilateral including with Korea and Japan are so important.
China would like the context to be as you set out, about China-U.S. great power competition only and I think that's a problem for the region.
Too easily it allows countries in the region to say there is no issue other than the two Great Powers competing.
But we all have agency, we all have interests here. It is simply not the case that the only trouble we have is the US looking to contain China's legitimate rise.
That's a ruse in fact and that's why countries like Australia need to be consistent in terms of how we respond to actions regardless of the countries that carry them out.
Where there is a breach of international rules, we need to call it out. Otherwise, we're at risk in the name of diplomatic compromise to change without affecting any change in more aggressive parties and that's not a compromise in a mutual way, that's one party coercing the other.
While I have the microphone, if I could just also enter the U.S. discussion.
John [Hamre] mentioned that he thinks that both parties have been a bit of paranoia. I suppose my response would be that even if one is paranoid, it doesn't mean that people aren’t out to get you.
I think it's clear that in this region, China is looking to oust the United States and whether you call it paranoia or being focused on Beijing's actions, we wouldn't have the Quad regenerated, we wouldn't have AUKUS, and we wouldn't have the necessary strategic competition without it.”
The point Bassi makes is that it is wrong to frame the “problem” as simply the Sino-American rivalry or Great Power Competition, as if everything would be fine if the U.S. stopped being paranoid (as John Hamre, President of CSIS, ridiculously asserted earlier in the discussion).
The “problem” that is causing the turmoil, that is creating the potential for war, is an aggressive and coercive People’s Republic of China.
Beijing threatens its neighbors with war unless they capitulate to the Party’s demands.
In Bassi’s opinion, which I share, it is important for countries around the world to recognize where the threat to peace originates from and to resist falling into the rhetorical traps laid by Beijing.
Perhaps we need a 21st Century Cooper Union speech to dismantle the CCP’s gaslighting.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Making European Economic Security a Reality
François Godement, Institut Montaigne, March 15, 2024
Now is the time, when one considers Europe’s need for economic security. Russia’s war on Ukraine, China’s increasing acquisition of sensitive technologies, its coercive use of economic leverage are all threats to Europe’s security. Civil-military fusion, and critical technologies link economic security and defense concerns. Europe also faces the challenge of large US investment capacities and extraterritorial legislation – as well as their Chinese equivalent.
The Commission therefore created defensive rules, and launched a strategy in June 2023. Its January 2024 proposals mostly address the defensive side, with measures to "protect" while maintaining openness to like-minded countries on the "partner" side. The offensive and "promotion" side is less directly involved here.
Identifying supply chains or critical technology risks requires information not easily obtained. Companies beware of defensive measures that could hinder their outward exports and investments, and are reluctant to sharing sensitive information. Member States whose companies may suffer a backlash from defensive measures are also cautious. Some "frugal" states, including Germany, are reticent at EU budget expansion. Others, such as France, are unwilling to give more decision-making power to European institutions.
Building on interviews with policymakers, this policy paper from François Godement deciphers European debates on de-risking, while laying down a realistic course for coordinated action between the EU and Member States. It suggests incremental steps rather than a choice between defensive and offensive measures. In the short term, consolidating the EU’s defensive toolbox requires Member States to put much more in common. The offensive side, involving innovation and industrial policies, requires a longer time frame and vast resources. A debate looms ahead with other competing goals: greening transition, defense, structural funds, welfare. In any case, cooperation inside the EU and with outside partners is unavoidable to diversify and innovate.
COMMENT – A great piece of research from François Godemont, I’m still going through it, but it shows that that we have some spectacular partners on the other side of the Atlantic thinking about these problems and how we can work together.
Hopefully, this gets into the hands of advisors at the Commission as well as officials across Washington, Tokyo, Seoul, Delhi, Canberra and Taipei.
I hope François can organize some events to bring partners together to discuss the issues he has raised… Paris is beautiful in the spring!
2. US private funds struggle to cash out from China
Sun Yu, Financial Times, March 15, 2024
US institutions with private fund investments in China are struggling to exit what were once among their most successful bets as the regulatory environment tightens and geopolitical tensions mount.
Four public pension plans with more than $4bn allocated to China-focused private equity funds told the Financial Times they were ready to delay redemptions from investments nearing the end of 10-year lifespans.
Their hesitation reflects fears that US initial public offerings of Chinese companies, an important avenue to exit private capital investments, will remain subdued following a plunge triggered by the Beijing-imposed delisting of Didi, a Chinese ride-hailing app, from the New York Stock Exchange in 2022.
Their concerns have been exacerbated by the launch this month of US legislation that would require ByteDance, a leading Chinese technology group backed by more than a dozen private funds, to divest or face a ban of its popular TikTok video-sharing app.
“China has been a place where you could deploy capital, but getting it out is harder,” said Allen Waldrop, director of private equity investments at the $81bn Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, which has exposure to China. “Now it is a much more severe issue.”
US-backed private funds have for much of the past decade been among the most active investors in China’s burgeoning consumer and internet sectors, as the likes of Sequoia Capital and Silver Lake financed some of the country’s most successful start-ups such as Alibaba and Meituan.
3. Americans Invested Billions in Chinese Companies. Now Their Money Is Stuck.
Lauren Hirsch and Michael J. de la Merced, New York Times, March 16, 2024
TikTok’s turn in geopolitical cross hairs highlights the narrowing paths to liquidity for investments in Chinese companies.
When investors talk about “zombie” companies, they’re usually referring to distressed start-ups that are hobbling along, unable to grow and unlikely to ever return the money they’ve raised.
But as deal makers feverishly debated efforts this week by lawmakers to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app, they talked about a new version: China zombies.
China zombies may have booming businesses, but they’re unlikely to provide investors with any immediate return because they’re stuck in geopolitical cross hairs.
It’s not just the investors in ByteDance who, after handing it more than $8 billion, are stuck. What looked like a mammoth growth opportunity just a few years ago — inspiring investors to pour money into companies like Ant Financial, PingPong and Geekplus — has turned hostile.
COMMENT – I think its also apt to describe these investments as ‘stranded assets’… the capital controls that the PRC put in place at the end of 2015 make it very difficult for investors and corporations to get their money out.
Anyone with a fiduciary responsibility who wants to invest the money of their clients into the PRC should have to explain to their clients and shareholders how they might get their money out of the PRC should the need arise.
Don’t be surprised if you hear some deep teeth sucking when you ask that question.
4. How Does Russia Make Missiles?
Kamil Galeev, Olena Smolina, et al, Rhodus Intelligence Report, March 2024
The Russian military doctrine is missile centric. Missiles serve as the principal element of the nuclear/non-nuclear deterrence system as well as a means of conventional warfare. In particular, the Russian ability to deliver the weapons of mass destruction and, therefore, to execute the nuclear blackmail relies upon the long range ballistic and cruise missiles. Their manufacture and maintenance continuing despite the unprecedentedly wide sanctions, suggests that both the targeting and implementation of sanctions is inefficient in undermining the Russian war production. With this report we propose a new look into the Russian missile industry’s chokepoints, specifically in its manufacturing equipment and production processes.
There's less continuity between the Soviet and the Russian military production than most presume. By the moment of its dissolution in 1991, the Soviet Union was going through an early stage of transition from manual to computer control. Its military industry was still primarily equipped with the manually controlled conventional machines. With the fall of the USSR, the Russian military production collapsed, many of the supply chains and knowledge ecosystems that supported it being effectively wiped out. By the end of decade, Russia had neither the Soviet machine tool industry, nor the Soviet labor capable of producing precise components manually.
In the 2000-2010s, Putin brought the military production back from the dead by replacing the machinist labor with the computerized equipment from Western Europe and to a lesser degree from the developed East Asia. As these supplies formed the manufacturing base of the Russian missiles industry, its capacity to execute the Soviet designs of weaponry, now relies upon the continuous import of spare parts and expendables from the U.S. allies. Contrary to the popular view, many of these supplies are difficult or impossible to substitute with the Chinese manufacture. Limitations of Chinese capabilities explain the otherwise strange invisibility of Chinese machines at the Russian missile producing plants until 2022.
Resurrected from the ashes of the 1990s, the Russian missiles industry developed over reliance on the integrated manufacturing solutions. As the post-Soviet collapse interrupted the continuity of Russian manufacturing tradition, modern Russia ended up with the military industrial workforce of highly uneven (generally low) quality. As every decision taken in the production process presented a potential point of failure, the most sophisticated military producers in Russia were forced to minimize the human decision making to improve consistency. Consequently, they ended up excessively reliant upon the one single company in the world that could provide the foolproof, all-in-one hardware and software solutions largely excluding the human factor from the factory floor.
Based on the Russian official self-estimates, we can describe the pre-war state of the Russian machine tool market with the 90/90 formula. Over 90% of machine tools were being imported, and over 90% were being purchased by the military producers. At this point we can assume that every metalworking machine, part and expendable shipped to Russia can and will be used for the military production purposes as there are no sizable non-military producers left. Therefore, there is no need to prove a connection between a specific Russian machine tool importer and a specific military producer. For the same reason, we can presume that all the foreign-provided technical and software support is currently supporting the military production processes.
Our investigation is based on a broad range of documental and visual sources along the supply chain, ranging from the official TV propaganda to the HR job postings. Integrating and cross-examining the data, we have constructed a representative picture of the Russian missiles industry’s manufacturing base, its bottlenecks and chokepoints, allowing for an efficient targeting and implementation of sanctions. Furthermore, we have developed the instruments and methodology for tracking the supply and maintenance chains for independent researchers to use. Based on the database of military industry’s procurements we have compiled, researchers, journalists and public bodies will be able to track and analyze the economic activities of the Russian missiles industry. This will serve to obstruct the missile industry’s supply lines and undermine Russian war production.
The Rhodus Intelligence report “How does Russia make missiles?” is based on our investigation of the 28 ballistic, cruise, anti-ship and air defense missile-producing facilities belonging to or associated with the four corporations of Roscosmos, Tactical Missiles Corporation, Almaz-Antey and Rostec. While far from exhaustive, this sample allows us to construct a comprehensive picture of the manufacturing base supporting the Russian nuclear/nonnuclear deterrence system as well as its strategic chokepoints. Whereas this report is focusing on the missiles production, our methodology is applicable to investigating the entire Russian military industrial complex, including the missiles, the nuclear weaponry, the aircraft, the navy, and the land army weaponry production.
COMMENT – This is a detailed report and exactly the kind of investigative research we need more of as our rivalry with Moscow and Beijing shifts into the commercial, industrial, and technological domains.
It is impossible to do effective targeting for sanctions, export controls, and investment restrictions without this kind of data and analysis. It is one of the principal reasons why the PRC is imposing significant restrictions on the access to data that might make similar revelations about their our defense industrial base.
5. Chinese billionaire pleads guilty to straw donor scheme in New York and Rhode Island
Jake Offenhartz, Associated Press, March 18, 2024
A Chinese billionaire pleaded guilty Monday to violating U.S. election laws by funneling illegal straw donations to a New York City official, a member of the U.S. House and a congressional candidate.
Hui Qin, a Chinese film magnate with homes in Manhattan and Long Island, admitted to using his fortune to recruit and reimburse people who made political donations on his behalf, beginning with a New York City race in 2021.
Court papers filed Monday by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn don’t identify the candidates backed by Qin. But there were only a handful of citywide races in New York that year, including the election of Mayor Eric Adams.
When asked, an attorney for Adams, Vito Pitta, said: “As the federal government made clear today, the campaign had no knowledge of a straw donor scheme — and no member of the campaign has been charged with or accused of any wrongdoing.”
Qin was previously included on the Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion from his stake in film and entertainment companies, including the Honk Kong-based SMI Culture. He has been in U.S. custody since his arrest last October on charges of using a fake identification.
6. AUDIO – National Security with Chinese Characteristics: A Conversation with Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens
Bonny Lin and Sheena Chesnut Greitens, CSIS China Power Podcast, March 15, 2024
In this episode of the ChinaPower Podcast, Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens joins us to discuss one of President Xi Jinping’s signature priorities: China’s national security. She delves into Xi's “Comprehensive National Security concept,” emphasizing its broad scope with over 20 different components, covering everything from border security to food security. Dr. Greitens discusses Xi Jinping’s preventive rather than reactive approach to security threats, in an attempt to treat what the CCP views as root causes to security issues rather than just the symptoms. Finally, Dr. Greitens explains how China’s views of national security influences how it exerts control at home and uses force abroad.
Dr. Sheena Chestnut Greitens is Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where she directs UT’s Asia Policy Program. Her research focuses on security, authoritarian politics, foreign policy, and East Asia. Currently, Dr. Greitens is on leave to serve as a Visiting Associate Professor of Research in Indo-Pacific Security at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute. She is also concurrently a Nonresident Scholar with the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
COMMENT – Sheena does a great job analyzing Xi Jinping’s all-encompassing security state.
So, I think that social unrest has long been a real concern from the standpoint of political security for the CCP. I see less of a change in the underlying concern about social unrest and more adaptation in how the CCP thinks it should address those issues.
And there I would identify a couple of changes in how the approach has evolved.
First, Xi Jinping’s approach is highly preventative.
So, we rarely hear the language of stability maintenance, but there was actually some discussion at one point among the internal security officials and it was implied that stability maintenance was too reactive.
Instead, you often hear this language of prevention and control, and the need to treat root causes, not just symptoms when it comes to challenges to domestic security or to political security.
So, I think the first change in the approach is that it has become highly preventative. We see a lot of medical metaphors, particularly around the time of the mass reestablishment of re-education camps in Xinjiang on an expanded scale.
The other thing is that this is often the justification for these technologies. In 2015, a year after Xi Jinping promulgated the “comprehensive national security concept,” the State Council and CCP Central Committee issued a directive that included a phrase about aiming for multidimensional information-based prevention and control system for public and social security.
This is kind of a mouthful, but is shorthand for not only the surveillance state but also the backend platforms for human and technical surveillance to pull it in and make it useable in governance.”
As I nodded along while I listened to Sheena talk, my mind went to this clip from Season 1, Episode 4 of Andor:
Major Partagaz of the Imperial Security Bureau to his roomful of subordinates:
What do we do here? What is our purpose? I open the question to the room: What do we do in this building and why are we here? Anyone?
…
Security is an illusion!
You want security? Call the navy, launch a regiment of troopers.
We are Health Care Providers!
We treat sickness, we identify symptoms, we locate germs whether they arise from within or have come from the outside.
The longer we wait to identify a disorder, the harder it is to treat the disease.
I can imagine that Xi and his cadres see themselves as the same sort of health care providers. They see their duty, like a doctor, lies with protecting their patient and making that patient healthy. In this case, their patient in the Chinese nation and a healthy patient is one that shares their conception of who should rule China (them) and how it should be done (from Beijing outwards).
For the Party, ideas that challenge those conceptions, and their hold on power, are the most important threats. Under this logic, these are malignant ideas that resemble infection and contamination and must be treated in a similar manner. These malignant ideas can arise from inside the Chinese body politic or from the outside, particularly from countries where these harmful ideas fester and spread.
I’m sure the experience with the pandemic cemented and expanded these concepts of preventative security, but they also predate COVID-19.
Once the Party adopted this concept of preventative security, it is difficult to set boundaries on national security: everything becomes a vector for these malignant ideas. To protect the patient, the Party must continuously eradicate these ideas from the inside. But that will never guarantee long-term health, to do that, the Party must adopt concepts of a public health official and root out these malignant ideas where they fester and form.
Peaceful coexistence and Win-Win solutions are not compatible with this expansive interpretation of “comprehensive national security.”
Overtime and as the Party develops the capabilities to take action outside of the PRC, the Party will view these breeding grounds of malignant ideas as existential threats to themselves.
We often see folks challenge the idea that the PRC poses an existential threat to the United States or other democracies. They claim that the PRC is not like the Soviet Union seeking to spread its ideology around the globe.
But that framing misses the point: the CCP views the United States and other democracies as existential threats… these are the breeding grounds for the malignant ideas that challenge the Party’s hold on power.
7. Chinese professor at Japan university missing after visiting homeland
Japan Times, March 19, 2024
A Chinese professor at Kobe Gakuin University in Japan has gone missing after visiting his homeland last summer, the university said Monday, sparking fears that he has been detained by Chinese authorities.
Hu Shiyun, professor of Chinese language at the school, became unreachable after arriving in China following the end of summer school courses in August last year. Hu's family told the university in late September that they had not heard from him, the school said.
Earlier this month, the university asked the Chinese Consulate General in Osaka whether Hu is safe in China, but has not yet received a response to its inquiry.
His disappearance has come to light as Beijing strengthens its efforts to safeguard national security, leading to a number of people, including foreign nationals, being detained on suspicion of engaging in spying activities.
Hu was in charge of Chinese language courses at the university's faculty of global communication and formerly headed the section. Substitute teachers have been filling in for the professor since he went missing, according to the university.
Professor Hu Shiyun
COMMENT – No one has heard from him for eight months.
This must be terrifying for any overseas Chinese who might get crosswise with an increasingly paranoid Chinese Communist Party.
I read a lot from certain corners about how Chinese scholars and students are scared of being questioned when entering the United States (here, here, here, here, and here)… I hear almost nothing from those same groups about the fate of people like Professor Hu Shiyun.
AUTHORITARIANISM
8. U.S.-China doomsday scenario 'not likely to happen': Nvidia's Jensen Huang
Yikan Yu, Nikkei Asia, March 20, 2024
Jensen Huang, CEO of American AI chip giant Nvidia, said Tuesday that he does not expect a "doomsday scenario" in U.S.-China relations and that the company will continue working closely with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. despite geopolitical tensions.
Like many U.S. chip design houses, Nvidia relies heavily on TSMC, the world's largest contract chipmaker, to produce advanced chips, including the just-announced Blackwell graphics processing unit.
COMMENT – Jensen Huang MUST believe this for his company’s business model to work… if it isn’t true, then the valuation of Nvidia is much, much less.
We should not confuse what a business leader WANTS to believe and what he WANTS his shareholders to believe (even a very successful business leader), with what is likely.
9. Nvidia expands ties with Chinese EV makers including BYD, Xpeng, as auto AI race heats up
South China Morning Post, March 19, 2024
10. VIDEO – Sparks: China's Underground Historians and Their Battle for The Future
Ian Johnson, Glenn Tiffert, and Orville Schell, Hoover Institution, March 18, 2024
Sparks: China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future describes how some of China's best-known writers, filmmakers, and artists have overcome crackdowns and censorship to forge a nationwide movement that challenges the Communist Party on its most hallowed ground: its control of history.
The past is a battleground in many countries, but in China it is crucial to political power. In traditional China, dynasties rewrote history to justify their rule by proving that their predecessors were unworthy of holding power. Marxism gave this a modern gloss, describing history as an unstoppable force heading toward Communism's triumph. The Chinese Communist Party builds on these ideas to whitewash its misdeeds and glorify its rule. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping's signature policies is the control of history, which he equates with the party's survival. But in recent years, a network of independent writers, artists, and filmmakers have begun challenging this state-led disremembering.
Using digital technologies to bypass China's legendary surveillance state, their samizdat journals, guerilla media posts, and underground films document a regular pattern of disasters: from famines and purges of years past to ethnic clashes and virus outbreaks of the present--powerful and inspiring accounts that have underpinned recent protests in China against Xi Jinping's strongman rule.
Based on years of first-hand research in Xi Jinping's China, Sparks challenges stereotypes of a China where the state has quashed all free thought, revealing instead a country engaged in one of humanity's great struggles of memory against forgetting—a battle that will shape the China that emerges in the mid-21st century.
COMMENT – Great session from my colleagues at Hoover.
These are the kinds of “malignant ideas” that terrify the Chinese Communist Party.
11. How China, Russia and Iran are forging closer ties
The Economist, March 18, 2024
12. Implications of Article 23 Legislation on the Future of Hong Kong
Eric Y.H. Lai, China Brief, March 1, 2024
Hong Kong’s Article 23 legislation will integrate the PRC’s national security framework into Hong Kong’s legal system, impacting the city’s rule of law and foreign business interests.
Broad and vague definitions of national security will create challenges for Hong Kong’s common law system. It will likely contribute to the erosion of legal certainty and judicial independence.
Proposed offenses such as “theft of state secrets” and “espionage” are ambiguously defined, creating uncertainty. This may cause issues for foreign businesses collecting information for due diligence and will further chill freedom of expression in the city.
The legislation aims to isolate Hong Kong further from the liberal democratic world, granting extensive powers to the government for political control and undermining public oversight and due process rights.
Chris Lau, CNN, March 20, 2024
14. Hong Kong passes tough new security law
Financial Times, March 20, 2024
Times of India, March 20, 2024
“We need to have such tools which are effective in guarding against ‘black violence’ and colour revolution… we no longer need to worry about people destroying public infrastructure with the new law,” City Leader John Lee told the South China Morning Post.
COMMENT – If Hong Kong’s government simply protected its citizens’ civil and political liberties, it would not have to worry about color revolutions.
Chris Lau, CNN, March 20, 2024
17. EU chamber warns of ‘slow-motion train accident’ with China, says something needs to change
Luna Sun, South China Morning Post, March 20, 2024
18. Chinese envoy meets Hamas chief Haniyeh after first visit to Israel since Gaza war began
Simone McCarthy and Wayne Chang, CNN, March 19, 2024
Chinese diplomat Wang Kejian met Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar, China’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday, the first meeting between a Chinese and Hamas official publicly acknowledged by Beijing since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
The meeting follows visits from Wang to Israel and the occupied West Bank – making him the first known envoy Beijing has sent to either location since Hamas’ deadly October 7 attacks and the ensuing Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
Wang and Haniyeh “exchanged views on the Gaza conflict and other issues” during their meeting Sunday, according to a brief readout from China’s Foreign Ministry Tuesday.
Haniyeh stressed in the meeting “the need to quickly stop the aggression and massacres,” for the Israeli military to withdraw from Gaza, and “achieve the political goals and aspirations of establishing an independent Palestinian state,” according to a press release from the Hamas government media office. Chinese Ambassador to Qatar Cao Xiaolin was also present at the meeting, the statement said.
Haniyeh “praised the role played by China in the Security Council, the United Nations, and the International Court of Justice,” the Hamas statement said, referring to Beijing’s recent diplomacy related to the war.
The militant group also said they had met with Cao late last month in Qatar. China’s Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Qatar did not release any information about that meeting.
Wang’s visit comes as Beijing aims to step up its profile as a peace broker and has become increasingly vocal in its opposition to the Gaza war.
Wang, a former ambassador to Lebanon, has been in the region since at least March 10 when he met with counterparts in Egypt, before traveling to the West Bank, Israel and Qatar as part of a previously unannounced trip in which the war in Gaza has been high on the agenda.
Fighting began on October 7 when Hamas carried out a deadly attack on Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to Israel. Israeli forces have since launched months of ongoing bombardment and ground operations in the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza, where the death toll stands higher than 31,000, according to the Ministry of Health in the strip.
Beijing did not name or condemn Hamas in the wake of the October 7 attacks. Since then, it has condemned the war and been a vocal proponent of an immediate ceasefire and the implementation of a “two-state” solution.
Photo provided by the Hamas Media Office, Chinese Envoy Wang Kejian meeting with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Qatar.
COMMENT – The Chinese Communist Party provides political support for one of the world’s most horrific terrorist groups.
Despite decades of close relations with Israel, Beijing has abandoned Jerusalem and provides rhetorical and material support to Hamas and the Iranian regime.
This should serve as an important lesson for any democracy, when push comes to shove, Beijing will side with anti-liberal, anti-democratic forces.
19. China Raises Fines on Mintz Due-Diligence Firm
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2024
China imposed more fines on the Beijing arm of Mintz Group, saying the New York-based due-diligence firm failed to respond to earlier penalties meted out over allegedly unapproved statistical work.
The increased fines came about a year after authorities raided Mintz’s Beijing office and detained all five Chinese nationals working there—a move that fueled international concern over a broadening security crackdown on companies that collect and manage data in China and the heightened risks of doing business in the world’s second-largest economy.
As a due-diligence firm, Mintz offers services such as background checks and investigations on potential business partners, rivals, and new hires.
COMMENT – If foreigners have no way to investigate their potential business partners in the PRC, then they won’t invest.
20. Standing Up to China, Philippine Leader Courts New Network of Partners
Sui-Lee Wee and Camille Elemia, New York Times, March 16, 2024
21. American CEOs Get Ready to Go to Beijing. But Who Will Receive Them?
Lingling Wei and Liza Lin, Wall Street Journal, March 19, 2024
China is opaque about which leader will attend business gathering.
It is the time of year when throngs of Western corporate chieftains and big-name investors descend on Beijing to pay homage to China’s leadership. This time, the focus will be just as much on who is there to greet them.
Chief executives including Tim Cook of Apple, Cristiano Amon of Qualcomm, Albert Bourla of Pfizer and Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, as well as Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, are expected to attend the annual government-sponsored China Development Forum that starts on Sunday in Beijing, according to people familiar with the matter.
Insurer Chubb’s CEO, Evan Greenberg, will co-chair the event with a representative for the Chinese organizer, the people said.
COMMENT – These CEOs look like chumps; they would never accept this kind of behavior from their own Government.
22. Apple to Pay $490 Million to Settle Lawsuit Over Tim Cook’s China Comments
Joseph De Avila, Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2024
Plaintiffs said Apple misled investors in 2018 by hiding weak China demand; company denied wrongdoing.
23. Nationalist Vitriol Toward China’s Richest Man Sparks Worry for Business Climate
Wenxin Fan, Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2024
24. China loses strategic waters in the South China Sea
Gregory Poling, East Asia Forum, March 15, 2024
25. How can China maintain 5% GDP growth with 'new productive forces'?
Silva Shih, CommonWealth Magazine, March 13, 2024
China's annual plenary sessions of the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), commonly referred to as the "Two Sessions", kicked off in Beijing on March 4th.
However, before Premier Li Qiang had even presented his initial work before the congress, the NPC announced on the first day that it was scrapping a tradition of thirty years: The premier's press conference, which usually takes place after the two sessions, will not be held for the foreseeable future.
For observers who were looking forward to getting a glimpse of the inner workings of the often opaque Chinese economy, this setback leaves them with no numbers to analyze except for those on the official reports.
The sessions are dull and scripted affairs. But in the past, the premier could be expected to go off script under the barrage of questions and reveal some nugget of nuance.
Whether it's ex-Premier Li Keqiang's telling "there are 600 million people who barely make 1,000 (RMB) a month" or Wen Jiabao's off-the-cuff "reforms to the economic institution cannot be carried to completion unless reforms are made to the political institution," these press conferences were always a gold mine of quotes for the outside world to dissect.
"The power of the Chinese State Council has been steadily undermined by the Communist Party. They are sending a loud and clear signal by abolishing the press conference," opines Wang Hsin-hsien, director at National Chengchi University's Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies.
The removal of the press conference leaves the work report as the only official document disclosing the Chinese government's internal deliberations, by which the outside world might augur the vital signs of the superpower's slowing economy.
According to statements made by Premier Li Qiang on March 5th, China's forecasted GDP growth in 2024 will hold steady at 5%, which is higher than the IMF's prediction of 4.6%.
But 2023 offered a little leeway due to the post-pandemic recovery. This year, China is facing an unsolved housing bubble and tanking consumer confidence. Just how does the central government intend to stand fast at 5%?
Based on what Beijing has decided to reveal, the road to reaching its target will be arduous indeed.
26. Decoding Xi’s New Catchphrase Aimed at Reviving China’s Economy
Bloomberg, March 17, 2024
Slogans matter in China. From “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to “common prosperity” the adoption of new catchphrases can herald profound shifts in policy.
So, when “new productive forces” was listed as the top task in the government’s annual statement of priorities published March 5, it set off a scramble to decode what the elevation of the phrase – coined by President Xi Jinping last September — meant. Since 2014, there’s only been one other occasion where an industrial policy slogan has taken top billing. Typically, that slot has gone to pledges about macroeconomic policy.
27. Three Top China Executives Depart Consulting Firm Control Risks
Bloomberg, March 15, 2024
South China Morning Post, March 19, 2024
The London-based fund house is planning to lay off 20 of the 120 staff it employs on the mainland.
29. China’s Youth Jobless Rate Edges Higher After Methodology Change
Wall Street Journal, March 20, 2024
China’s youth unemployment rate rose in February, another data point signaling weakness in the country’s economic recovery.
The youth unemployment rate rose to 15.3% for February, compared with 14.6% for January, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. The country’s overall jobless rate was 5.3% for February, according to data released Monday.
China’s statistics bureau had suspended the release of the jobless rate among 16- to 24-year-olds after the figure climbed for six straight months to a record high of 21.3% last June.
It resumed releasing the data in January with a new methodology that excludes students in schools, reporting the youth unemployment rate at 14.9% for December.
30. About 40% of Americans see China as top US enemy in new poll
South China Morning Post, March 19, 2024
31. China's National People's Congress 2024
MERICS, March 14, 2024
Prioritizing tech, Beijing offers little substance on how it will fight current woes
This year’s National People’s Congress (NPC) showed Beijing’s conviction that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) knows best. However, the leadership offered domestic and foreign audiences little explanation about how it intends to balance the competing goals of realizing long-term strategic ambitions and addressing current economic woes.
China’s national legislature sent clear signals about ambitions to drive economic recovery – symbolized by an ambitious economic-growth target of five percent for 2024. This leaves the leadership with a mountain of homework: The government has to deal with a real-estate and stock-market downturn, stagnating incomes, unemployment, gaps in the social security and pension systems, and in parts stifling local government debt. A year after the end of the Zero-Covid restrictions, the country’s economy is still sluggish and business and consumer confidence weak.
In his “work report” to the assembled delegates, premier Li Qiang pledged to respond to the “expectations” of citizens and enterprises alike. But a closer reading of the blueprint for the coming year and beyond reveals what the main priority will be. “High quality growth” and “new productive forces” are the current buzzwords (see graphic). Li focused on the potential of technology to become China’s main driver of growth, making his pledges to create jobs, safeguard the livelihood of citizens, ease internal migration restrictions and ensure basic social welfare seem more like afterthoughts. All of these will be difficult to achieve in a labor market transformed by increasing technology adoption – and will require additional funding to materialize.
Despite paying lip service to reform and opening, the focus on party steering and decreasing responsiveness was illustrated by two procedural items. The NPC’s revision of the State Council Organic Law strengthened the party’s power over policymaking. And the Chinese government’s scrapping of its annual media briefing at the end of the NPC extended a recent trend of government information disappearing from public view and new legal barriers to information gathering, such as the newly revised State Secrets Law.
32. The story behind Chinese leaders' unspoken words
Katsuji Nakazawa, Nikkei Asia, March 14, 2024
33. China Officials Apologize After Guards Halt News Report
Bloomberg, March 13, 2024
34. China may be facing too many economic obstacles to hit its ambitious growth target for 2024
Peter Hannam, The Guardian, March 14, 2024
35. China’s Food Security: Key Challenges and Emerging Policy Responses
Kevin Dong, Mallie Prytherch, Lily McElwee, Patricia Kim, Jude Blanchette, and Ryan Hass, CSIS, March 15, 2024
State Armor, March 2024
71% of Americans would pay between 5% and 25% more for goods that are manufactured in the United States or an allied nation rather than China.
82% of Americans support or strongly support their state government paying more to purchase products manufactured by America and its allies, rather than products from China.
COMMENT - This undermines the arguments of folks at the U.S.-China Business Council who tell U.S. politicians all the time that Americans would never accept the economic sacrifices that would come from lesser reliance on PRC manufacturing.
37. The National People’s Congress Exposes Xi Jinping’s Problems
Willy Wo-Lap Lam, China Brief, March 15, 2024
38. Six more years of Putin will worry many countries. But not China
Simone McCarthy, CNN, March 18, 2024
For leaders across the West, Vladimir Putin’s inevitable landslide win in an election without true opposition was a reminder of his tight control over Russia’s political arena as his war against Ukraine grinds on.
But Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and other leaders benefiting from Putin’s rejection of a Western-led global order, will be cheering his victory.
With 99.8% of ballots counted, Putin amassed 87.3% of the vote, according to preliminary results reported Monday morning by Russia’s Central Election Commission.
Xi congratulated the Russian leader in a call that day, saying his re-election “fully reflected the support of the Russian people,” Chinese state media reported. He also pledged that China would promote the “sustained” and “in-depth” development of the two countries’ strategic partnership, the report said.
Xi has staked much on his relationship with Putin since the start of the Kremlin’s war more than two years ago, refusing to back away from the “no limits” partnership he declared with the Russian leader weeks before the invasion, while strengthening trade, security, and diplomatic ties.
China has paid a price for this. While it claims neutrality, its refusal to condemn the invasion as the US and its allies united to sanction Russia piqued European suspicion about its motivations. It also drew attention to Beijing’s designs on the self-ruling democracy of Taiwan. An annual NATO report released Thursday reflected the bloc’s hardening line on China, with chief Jens Stoltenberg saying Beijing does “not share our values” and “challenges our interests,” while pointing to its increasing alignment with Moscow.
But China’s stance enabled Xi to stay focused on deeper goals: he sees Putin as a crucial partner in the face of rising tensions with the US and in reshaping a world he believes is unfairly dominated by rules and values set by Washington and its allies. A stable relationship with Moscow, too, allows Beijing to focus on other areas of concern such as Taiwan and the South China Sea.
“Xi sees Putin as a genuine strategic partner,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, ahead of the Russian election results, adding that anything less than a landslide win for Putin would be “a disappointment” for Beijing.
Xi, who has centralized control over his own nation like no Chinese leader since Mao Zedong, won’t be alone among leaders applauding Putin’s renewed grip on power.
39. Why Mainland Chinese Flocked to Hong Kong’s New Global Visa
Joy Dong, New York Times, March 20, 2024
To some foreign expatriates, Hong Kong has lost its appeal as an international city and no longer feels like home since Beijing took a heavier hand in its governance. But for many former mainland Chinese like Angelina Wang, it has become a more attractive place to live and work.
Ms. Wang, in her early 30s, was feeling stuck in her job at a state-owned finance company in Shenzhen, a mainland city just across the border, when she read about a Hong Kong visa for professional workers. She quickly applied. As soon as she landed a job in Hong Kong — at higher pay — she told her boss that she was quitting and moved there.
Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post, March 18, 2024
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
41. China Carbon Watch: Trading Plummets as Compliance Deadline Passes
Bai Bo, Caixin, March 21, 2024
Trading in China’s national carbon emissions allowance (CEA) market in January and February registered 3 million and 2.4 million tons, respectively.
This marks a significant drop from the monthly average for the August-December period of 40.2 million tons. During that period, trading was active as covered entities bought up CEAs for the second compliance cycle that ended on Dec. 31.
42. The Unseen Costs of China’s Fishing Dominance
Maria Fara Causio, OWP, March 20, 2024
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
Sebastian Rotella and Kirsten Berg, ProPublica, March 14, 2024
44. China protests Taiwan minister's role at Seoul summit backed by U.S.
Reuters, March 18, 2024
China rebuked South Korea on Monday for Taiwan's participation in a U.S.-backed democracy summit in Seoul, where the island's Digital Minister Audrey Tang delivered an unannounced video message.
Tang told the third Summit for Democracy that Taiwan suffered disproportionately from concerted cyberattacks and the democratically governed island was willing and able to work with all stakeholders to ensure AI develops safely and sustainably.
COMMENT – It is really none of Beijing’s business where Taiwanese Government Ministers go, who they meet with, or whether they speak in public.
The PRC needs to stop interfering in the affairs of other states.
45. China Turns on the Charm for Foreigners but Its Allure Has Faded
Liza Lin and Yoko Kubota, Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2024
Beijing is increasing flights and easing visa rules, but business executives and diplomats say trust could be hard to rebuild.
China’s government is rolling out a charm offensive to lure back foreigners, part of an effort to shed years of pandemic-induced isolation that is sapping the world’s second-largest economy.
It’s a tougher sell than it used to be.
In recent months, China has made it simpler and cheaper for business travelers and tourists to get visas, and scrapped visa requirements for some entirely. It has extended tax incentives to make life for foreign residents more appealing. Chinese Premier Li Qiang pledged further moves to rebuild the “Invest-in-China” brand at the country’s annual legislative meetings earlier this month.
The campaign marks an effort to restore the global ties that helped power China’s decades of record-breaking growth, which Beijing severed during the pandemic as Chinese leader Xi Jinping elevated security above all else.
Now China is trying to regain its allure for foreigners in a different era, with a slowing economy and tightening social controls. A rising chorus in Washington portrays engagement with China as suspect. And there is lingering distrust in the country’s government stemming from the zero-Covid policies and a nationwide anti-espionage campaign.
One U.S. business executive said he was unsettled in mid-2023 when a group of nine police officers showed up at his door in Beijing one evening, demanding to examine his passport and confirm his employer, as one of the officers recorded the interaction with a smartphone. The officers didn’t give a reason for the visit, he said.
46. How Pro-Russia Influencers Framed Taiwan’s Elections on Telegram
Levi Bochantin, The Diplomat, March 15, 2024
An investigation into pro-Kremlin Telegram users reveals Russia’s influence operations regarding Taiwan’s sovereignty and democracy.
Taiwan’s national elections on January 13 led to a clear victory for the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s presidential candidate, Lai Ching-te, but a split legislature. According to Doublethink Lab, Taiwan was the target of frequent information operations that likely stemmed from China in the lead-up to the election. Particularly, Chinese state actors amplified stories that exacerbated internal conflict within Taiwan in the pre-election period, such as alleged scandals of DPP politicians, and completely fabricated stories closer to election day.
Doublethink Lab also investigated how pro-Kremlin Russian Telegram users with a substantial following framed discussions about the Taiwanese elections. With the help of a large Telegram database previously compiled by our partners at Mantis Analytics, we conducted a thematic analysis to investigate narratives circulating among widely-viewed Russian Telegram accounts. However, we likely only scratched the surface of Russian Telegram discussions surrounding the Taiwanese elections.
47. Europe’s far right uses TikTok to win youth vote
Clothide Goujard, Elisa Braun, and Mark Scott, Politico, March 17, 2024
48. Fiji to stick with China police deal after review, home affairs minister says
Ivamere Nataro, The Guardian, March 14, 2024
49. AUDIO - Liberals cry 'racism' to cover up another Chinese interference scandal: Full Comment podcast
Brian Lilley, Phil Gurski, and Michael Chong, National Post, March 18, 2024
The Trudeau government didn’t just fight for years to hide the embarrassing truth about two scientists caught leaking secrets from Canada’s highest-risk pathology laboratory to China. As former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski and Conservative MP Michael Chong discuss with Brian Lilley this week, the Liberals tried painting concerns about Beijing’s interference as bigoted, just as they have whenever warnings have been raised about Chinese infiltration.
As Chong and Gurski discuss, it points to an alarmingly blithe attitude about national security, which has demoralized our intelligence agencies and unnerved our allies, who wonder whether Canada can still be trusted. (Recorded March 14, 2024.)
COMMENT – The more I listen to and read about what’s happening in Ottawa, the more convinced I am that Beijing has fundamentally compromised Canadian democracy. Its ruling Liberal Party, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in particular, appears unable to cope with these challenges because doing so would call into question their own hold on power.
I suspect that Beijing concludes that its success at undermining Canadian democracy and manipulating Canadian policy-making provides them with a playbook they can use in other democracies, thus making this interreference more likely in other countries.
50. China urges Australian caution on ‘third-party’ disruption of relationship
Financial Times, March 20, 2024
51. Australia, China foreign ministers to manage differences 'wisely'
Sophie Mak and Shaun Turton, Nikkei Asia, March 20, 2024
Beijing's top diplomat Wang Yi says wine tariff decision due by end of month.
Australia wants "a stable, productive and mature" relationship with China, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Wednesday after a "frank" discussion in Canberra on trade, regional security and human rights with her Chinese counterpart.
In the highest-ranking political visit from a Chinese official since 2017, China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi held talks with Wong in the Australian capital as part of ongoing efforts to "stabilize" and improve relations between the countries.
COMMENT – The Australian Government has done an awful lot to accommodate Beijing (for example, the Albanese Government has fallen silent on Taiwan issues compared to its predecessors, something I’m sure pleases Beijing).
52. Chinese police officers may appear in Hungarian cities
Pottery Palm, Szabad Európa, March 6, 2024
53. TikTok Is Its Own Worst Enemy
Kevin Roose, New York Times, March 14, 2024
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
Adrian Zenz, China Brief, February 14, 2024
Higher-level policy and state planning documents indicate that coercive Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) employment and poverty alleviation policies are to continue at least through 2025. XUAR state and media sources document that these policies continue to be implemented.
The Poverty Alleviation Through Labor Transfer program continues to expand and represents a non-internment state-imposed forced labor mobilization system. Forced labor transfers for 2023 exceeded those from the previous year and surpassed state-mandated quotas.
In 2023, Xinjiang significantly expanded the scale of the Pairing Assistance program, which facilitates cross-provincial labor transfers, aiming to increase transfers to other Chinese regions by 38 percent—levels exceeding those of any year since the mid-2010s. During his recent visit, Xi Jinping again endorsed this policy, which aims to reduce the “dominance” of the Uyghur population in their own homeland.
The “Unemployment Monitoring and Early Warning Mechanism” was expanded in 2023 to extensively track the income and work situations of the lower-income population.
Xinjiang’s government has intensified employment and training requirements, aiming to ensure employment for every able person, as mandated in the 14th Five-Year Plan.
Also in 2023, Xinjiang drastically expanded its skills training efforts. The state increasingly targeted groups traditionally not engaged in these programs, with a view to transferring individuals into work in sectors known to use forced labor.
Land use rights, covering up to 90 percent of land in some areas, are being transferred away from local farmers to state-run cooperatives, forcing the local population into wage labor through coercive labor transfers.
55. Hong Kong: New Security Law Full-Scale Assault on Rights
Human Rights watch, March 19, 2024
56. Australia Should Press on Rights When China’s Minister Visits
Daniela Gavshon, Human Rights Watch, March 17, 2024
57. Unshackling workers in China’s solar supply chain
Joseph Negrine, East Asia Forum, March 14, 2024
58. Catholic Church reassures Hong Kong flock over secrecy of confession despite security law
Financial Times, March 18, 2024
59. Yet Another Raid Against Fuyang Maizhong Reformed Church
Jiang Tao, Bitter Winter, March 20, 2024
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
60. Warehouse developers bet on India as companies look beyond China
Dhwani Pandya and Praveen Paramasivam, Reuters, March 18, 2024
Land is getting hard to find in a sprawling industrial park in southern India where workers are scrambling to build modern new warehouses and factories for companies betting on the country's economic boom or diversifying their supply chains beyond China.
"It is one of the most wanted places in India for European and American companies," said S. Raghuraman, an official of the Greenbase industrial park, near plants run by Apple supplier Foxconn, opens new tab and truckmaker Daimler.
Inquiries for leasing space in the park, run by Blackstone, opens new tab and real estate tycoon Niranjan Hiranandani, have gone through the roof, he added.
"We are in talks with at least three clients looking to shift their base from China."
To meet the burgeoning demand, Greenbase aims to invest $800 million to quadruple its industrial park space to 20 million sq ft (1.9 million sq m), a target it revealed for the first time.
COMMENT – If you wanted to find a metric that helped show just how much the world is shifting away from Beijing, this is as good as you can find.
Amanda Lee, South China Morning Post, March 15, 2024
62. Can China Shift the Foundations of Its Economy?
Cameron Abadi and Adam Tooze, Foreign Policy, March 15, 2024
63. How Much Do China’s Joint Venture Requirements Promote Knowledge Transfers to Domestic Firms?
Jie Bai, Panle Jia Barwick, et al, Stanford Center on China’s Economy and Institutions, March 15, 2024
64. China Urges EV Makers to Buy Local Chips as US Clash Deepens
Bloomberg, March 15, 2024
65. Brazil launches China anti-dumping probes after imports soar
Financial Times, March 18, 2024
66. Chinese Earth Krahang hackers breach 70 orgs in 23 countries
Bill Toulas, Bleeping Computer, March 18, 2024
A sophisticated hacking campaign attributed to a Chinese Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group known as 'Earth Krahang' has breached 70 organizations and targeted at least 116 across 45 countries.
According to Trend Micro researchers monitoring the activity, the campaign has been underway since early 2022 and focuses primarily on government organizations.
Specifically, the hackers have compromised 48 government organizations, 10 of which are Foreign Affairs ministries, and targeted another 49 government agencies.
67. With ‘made-by-China’ under US pressure, Mexican trade probes spark concerns over curbs
Kandy Wong, South China Morning Post, March 19, 2024
68. China Urges EV Makers to Buy Local Chips as US Clash Deepens
Bloomberg, March 15, 2024
The Chinese government has quietly asked electric-vehicle makers from BYD Co. to Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. to sharply increase their purchases from local auto chipmakers, part of a campaign to reduce reliance on Western imports and boost China’s domestic semiconductor industry.
The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology asked carmakers this year to expand their buying of homegrown components to accelerate the adoption of Chinese chips, according to people familiar with the matter. The country’s tech overseer previously set an informal target for automakers to source a fifth their chips locally by 2025, but has grown dissatisfied with the pace of progress, the people said.
69. China’s new retail and industrial data beat expectations — but signs still point to trouble ahead
Mary Hui, Quartz, March 18, 2024
70. China’s economic bright spots provide a warning
The Economist, March 14, 2024
71. Now Lawyers Are Suffering from China’s Deal Slump
Elaine Yu and Rebecca Feng, Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2024
China’s dealmaking slump has already hurt Wall Street banks. Now, lawyers are feeling the pain, with some of the world’s biggest law firms laying off staff in anticipation of a prolonged slowdown.
The world’s second-largest economy was once a major source of revenues for international law firms, who helped structure overseas share sales for Chinese technology companies and dollar bonds for property developers overloaded with debt. But deal flow from China has virtually collapsed, the result of a slowing economy, a series of policy shifts in Beijing, and an increasingly fraught geopolitical situation.
Kirkland & Ellis, Dechert, Norton Rose Fulbright and DLA Piper are among the multinational law firms that have recently made cuts. That followed earlier waves of layoffs in Hong Kong and mainland China over the past six months, which have particularly hit lawyers specializing in equity and debt capital markets.
Mayer Brown has laid off Hong Kong-based lawyers covering corporate clients, funds and capital markets in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. In late February, the firm fired at least 20 support staff including paralegals on its real-estate team, another market facing a downturn, according to one of the people.
COMMENT – Lawyers are suffering… oh the horror!
This deserves a few lawyer jokes:
What’s the difference between a lawyer and an onion?
You cry when you cut up an onion.
Why did God make snakes just before lawyers?
To practice.
It was so cold last winter ……………… How cold was it?
I saw a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets.
If you are stranded on a desert island with Adolph Hitler, Atilla the Hun, Osama Bin Laden, and a lawyer, and you have a gun with only two bullets, what do you do?
Shoot the lawyer twice.
72. How China Tried to Fix the Stock Market—and Broke the Quants
Weilun Soon and Rebecca Feng, Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2024
China’s biggest quant funds beat the market for years by applying complicated statistical models to stock picking. But they didn’t model a key factor—the government.
Quantitative funds, which use algorithms to chew masses of data and make trading decisions, have become a powerful force in the U.S., where funds such as AQR Capital Management, Renaissance Technologies and Millennium Management manage huge portfolios and provide an important source of liquidity for small investors. But the industry has at times been controversial, being accused of herd behavior that exacerbates periods of volatility.
China’s $200 billion quant fund industry is facing similar accusations, and the ramifications for the sector could be huge.
These funds lost billions of dollars last month when their bets on small companies’ shares went wrong. They have found themselves in the crosshairs of Chinese regulators, which are increasingly determined to end the stock market’s slide—whatever the cost.
COMMENT – Uninvestable
73. US solar manufacturers in ‘dire situation’ as imports soar
Financial Times, March 13, 2024
74. Shipbuilding: the new battleground in the US-China trade war
Financial Times, March 13, 2024
U.S. Department of Justice, March 19, 2024
76. U.S. Accuses Two Men of Stealing Tesla Trade Secrets
Jack Ewing, New York Times, March 19, 2024
A Canadian man who lives in China was arrested Tuesday and held in New York after he and a business partner were accused of trying to sell secret battery manufacturing technology belonging to Tesla.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn asked a judge to hold Klaus Pflugbeil without bail on a charge of theft of trade secrets. He was arrested after meeting with undercover agents Tuesday on Long Island and trying to sell them technology used to produce battery parts, the office of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York said in a statement.
The second man, Yilong Shao, 47, a Chinese citizen, remains at large, prosecutors said. A public defender representing Mr. Pflugbeil, 58, did not respond to requests for comment late Tuesday.
Court documents identified the company whose secrets were stolen only as “a U.S.-based leading manufacturer of battery-powered electric vehicles and battery energy systems.” That description and other details in court documents match Tesla.
77. How Google’s Alleged Thief Wooed Investors
Eliot Chen, The Wire China, March 17, 2024
The case of an employee at the U.S. internet giant who allegedly leaked artificial intelligence secrets raises questions for his Chinese backers.
It is one of the most brazen cases of intellectual property theft ever brought by the Department of Justice. Over 11 months, Chinese national Ding Linwei allegedly stole information related to cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) technologies being developed by Google, his then-employer, including designs for a next generation chip that hasn’t even been announced.
All the while, Ding held leading roles at two Chinese firms developing competing technology.
What’s more, these were no ordinary companies. Records reviewed by The Wire show that both firms received backing from powerful names in China’s tech sector, including a venture capital firm affiliated with Tsinghua University; and a prestigious incubator formerly affiliated with Y Combinator, whose limited partners include Hillhouse Capital and HongShan, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China.
To the U.S., the alleged theft is a brazen example of how China is tapping its citizens abroad to advance the country’s technological goals. The case is one of several brought by the DOJ’s year-old Disruptive Technology Strike Force, which aims to prevent “authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states” from acquiring sensitive technologies.
78. Evergrande’s Alleged $78 Billion Fraud Is Among Biggest Ever
Bloomberg, March 18, 2024
Reuters, March 13, 2024
80. Intel to receive $8.5bn in US funding for high-end chip manufacturing
Financial Times, March 20, 2024
Preliminary agreement includes $11bn loan as company expands capacity in Arizona and other states.
Intel will receive $8.5bn in direct funding and $11bn in loans from the US government to expand its capacity to make high-end chips, as it seeks to reinvent itself as a national champion in the sector and compete with the likes of Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung.
US President Joe Biden will travel to Intel’s site in Chandler, Arizona, on Wednesday to announce the package, which will go towards building new facilities for the company in the south-western state, as well as in Ohio, New Mexico, and Oregon.
81. China blocks use of Intel and AMD chips in government computers
Financial Times, March 23, 2024
Microsoft’s Windows and foreign database programs also sidelined as Beijing favours Chinese hardware and software.
China has introduced new guidelines that will mean US microprocessors from Intel and AMD are phased out of government PCs and servers, as Beijing ramps up a campaign to replace foreign technology with homegrown solutions.
The stricter government procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favour of domestic options. It runs alongside a parallel localisation drive under way in state-owned enterprises.
The latest purchasing rules represent China’s most significant step yet to build up domestic substitutes for foreign technology and echo moves in the US as tensions increase between the two countries. Washington has imposed sanctions on a growing number of Chinese companies on national security grounds, legislated to encourage more tech to be produced in the US and blocked exports of advanced chips and related tools to China.
COMMENT – Yet another example of how the world is splitting into two technology blocs… companies and investors don’t like this development, but it is happening. Companies and investors would be better off adapting to this change and establishing business models around these new conditions.
My advice to the Commerce Department: end the licenses that Intel has to sell chips and components to Huawei.
82. How China Could Swamp India’s Chip Ambitions
Megha Mandavia, Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2024
India is making a play for the semiconductor space—but fallout from U.S.-China tensions and China’s deep pockets could get in the way.
When India’s largest conglomerate, Tata Group, broke ground on a $11 billion semiconductor factory this week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the country was poised to become a world leader in the sector.
He might be in for a rude awakening.
Tata isn’t going it alone, which raises the probability of success. It will partner with Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing to make older-generation, mature-node chips, which have features measuring 28 nanometers or wider.
The problem is that China, whose ambitions in cutting-edge chips have been stymied by U.S. and European export controls, is pouring capital into legacy chip making on a breathtaking scale. That will compress margins for everyone—and make life especially difficult for new small-scale players.
China will add more chip-making capacity than the rest of the world combined in 2024, according to research consulting firm Gavekal Dragonomics: one million more wafers a month than in 2023—all mature nodes. Tata plans to make 50,000 wafers a month. Industry tracker TrendForce projects that China’s share of global mature-node production will grow from 31% in 2023 to 39% in 2027.
83. Nuclear fusion backers meet in US capital as competition with China looms
Tim Gardner, Reuters, March 20, 2024
84. Abu Dhabi fund offers to buy out investors fleeing China private equity
Kaye Wiggins and Mercedes Ruehl, Financial Times, March 18, 2024
Deal with Hong Kong-based PAG could provide exit at a discount for US pension funds.
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is seeking to capitalise on western investors’ retreat from China by offering to buy at a discount their stakes in funds managed by Hong Kong-based PAG.
The move from Abu Dhabi’s main sovereign wealth fund, described by four people with knowledge of the matter, is a sign of how some Gulf investors are looking to snap up bargains as US-based investors cut their China exposure.
“It’s a transition from US investors who [previously] favoured China, towards Middle Eastern investors that don’t have the same concerns they do,” said a person briefed on the plans.
PAG, in which Blackstone has a minority stake, built a reputation for offering global investors access to deals in China, using connections forged by its chair Weijian Shan, who has a seat on Alibaba’s board.
PAG is one of Asia’s biggest private equity groups, managing more than $55bn. Its investors include state pension schemes in California, Texas, Florida and Iowa as well as investment funds in Canada, Australia and across Europe.
It has faced difficulties raising a new fund since Shan criticised Beijing in 2022. PAG filed for a $2bn initial public offering in 2022 in a deal that would have valued it at up to $15bn, but the listing has not materialised.
Four of PAG’s five largest deals since 2019 have been in China, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. They include investments in Dalian Wanda’s shopping mall operator, Zhuhai Wanda, and online video platform IQIYI.
COMMENT – Either the Emiratis are savvy businessmen, or this will be a disaster for them… time will tell.
Peggy Sito and Aileen Chuang, South China Morning Post, March 17, 2024
As China grapples with economic challenges, a growing number of Hong Kong family offices are following the global trend of diversifying their investments by turning their attention to India.
Their decisions come as analysts and global investors consider India a promising growth story in Asia, with expectations of significant economic expansion in the coming years and an influx of capital into equities and fixed income.
COMMENT – So are the Emiratis right… or wealthy families from Hong Kong?
86. Chinese police take 'measures' against staff at Zhongzhi
Nikkei Asia, March 16, 2024
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
87. 5 Things to Know About ByteDance, TikTok’s Parent Company
FDD, March 12, 2024
88. TikTok Ban Bill Spotlights Open Secret: App Loses Money
Jing Yang, Kate Clark, and Erin Woo, The Information, March 13, 2024
89. China Pledges to Speed Up Digital Infrastructure Build
Bloomberg, March 16, 2024
Ben Jiang, South China Morning Post, March 15, 2024
91. Printer Problems
Eduardo Jaramillo, The Wire China, March 17, 2024
92. PRC Pursues Chip Design Software Dominance
Michael Laha, China Brief, March 15, 2024
US-China technology competition is no longer confined to only leading-edge semiconductors but is now moving to also include older so-called mature-node or legacy chips.
Central and local level Chinese industrial and innovation policies have long pursued a goal of achieving self-sufficiency in not just the most advanced chips now submitted to US export controls but also to develop manufacturing capacity for legacy chips now the subject of a US Department of Commerce survey.
To accomplish this, the PRC erected new R&D institutions and offered generous tax exemptions and subsidies to domestic companies.
PRC progress in mature-node Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software self-sufficiency is a more likely prospect for the foreseeable future. Domestic companies in the PRC are publicizing initial successes but have not achieved a fully localized ecosystem of EDA products.
93. Chinese-Made Surveillance Cameras at Romanian Military Sites Raise Security Concerns
Ionut Benea and Reid Standish, Radio Free Europe, March 7, 2024
94. Chinese cellular (IoT) modules: Countering the threat
Charles Parton, Council on Geostrategy, March 19, 2024
95. Alibaba’s Damo Academy plans to launch latest version of its XuanTie RISC-V processor this year
Kelly Le, South China Morning Post, March 18, 2024
96. Tech war: ASML’s threat to expand outside the Netherlands is watched with interest in China
Che Pan, South China Morning Post, March 17, 2024
97. Russia Strengthens Its Internet Controls in Critical Year for Putin
Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur, and Aaron Krolik, New York Times, March 15, 2024
Facing an election this weekend and the fallout from Aleksei Navalny’s death and the war in Ukraine, Russia has intensified online censorship using techniques pioneered by China.
Russia is ratcheting up its internet censorship ahead of elections this weekend that are all but assured to give President Vladimir V. Putin another six years in power, further shrinking one of the last remaining spaces for political activism, independent information and free speech.
The Russian authorities have intensified a crackdown against digital tools used to get around internet blocks, throttled access to WhatsApp and other communications apps in specific areas during protests, and expanded a program to cut off websites and online services, according to civil society groups, researchers and companies that have been affected.
Russia, they said, is turning to techniques that go beyond its established practices of hacking and digital surveillance, taking a more systemic approach to change the way its domestic internet functions. In doing so, the country is using methods pioneered by China and Iran, forming an authoritarian model for regulating the internet that contrasts with the more open approach of the United States.
Russia “has reached a new level of blocking in the last six months,” said Mikhail Klimarev, a Russian telecommunications expert and executive director of the Internet Protection Society, a civil society group.
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
98. Why Taiwan Is Building a Satellite Network Without Elon Musk
Meaghan Tobin and John Liu, New York Times, March 14, 2024
The island democracy urgently needs an internet backup. Mr. Musk’s total control over his Starlink service, which dominates the market, left Taiwan wary.
In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX.
Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, such as an earthquake in Tonga and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
99. Blinken pledges closer U.S.-Philippine security ties ahead of trilateral summit with Japan
Gabriel Dominguez and Jesse Johnson, Japan Times, March 19, 2024
100. Taiwan war game exposes vulnerability of energy grid to a China attack
Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, March 16, 2024
Table top exercise by experts finds even basic power supplies could be knocked out by Beijing blockade or missile attack.
101. New Quality Combat Forces: More Than Meets the Eye
Arran Hope, China Brief, March 15, 2024
Conceptual framings from the military may be influencing how the CCP approaches its management of the economy.
The phrase “New Quality Combat Forces” predates the phrase “New Quality Productive Forces” by several years. Now they are being linked as mutually self-reinforcing constructs.
Both phrases refer to cutting-edge science and technology capabilities, enhancing efficiency through digitization, and cultivating and deploying highly trained talent in strategic sectors of the economy.
The phrase ties in to the PRC’s Military Civil Fusion Development Strategy and approach to “systems warfare,” whereby the CCP is increasingly dissolving the distinction between the military and the state.
102. White House to host first-ever US-Philippines-Japan summit to counter China
South China Morning Post, March 19, 2024
103. Iran may attack US water supplies, warns Biden administration
Rozina Sabur, The Telegraph, March 19, 2024
‘Lifeline-critical’ infrastructure systems face cyber security threat from Tehran and China, state governors told.
Iran is poised to attack US drinking water supplies, the Biden administration has warned, amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s national security adviser, sent a warning to state governors asking them to be on guard for potential cyber attacks on their critical infrastructure systems.
The warning letter was co-authored by Michael Regan, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency and made public on Tuesday.
In it, they cited ongoing threats from hackers linked to the governments of Iran and China and warned hackers associated with both states have previously attacked water systems.
‘Attractive target for hackers’
“Disabling cyber attacks are striking water and waste water systems throughout the United States,” the pair wrote.
They warned that drinking water and waste water systems were “an attractive target” for hackers because while they are “lifeline-critical” they “often lack the resources and technical capacity” to protect themselves from potential attacks.
“We need your support to ensure that all water systems in your state comprehensively assess their current cyber security practices to identify any significant vulnerabilities,” they told state governors.
They went on to request that each state exercises plans to prepare and recover from a potential cyber incident.
COMMENT – The title leaves out the PRC, which of course has far greater capability than Iran.
104. China-Taiwan Weekly Update, March 15, 2024
Dan Blumenthal and Fred Kagan, AEI, March 18, 2024
105. BeiDou And Strategic Advancements in PRC Space Navigation
Jemima Baar, China Brief, March 1, 2024
BeiDou enhances both the PRC’s strategic autonomy and its influence across the world. It has signed agreements with numerous countries to expand its use, including for military applications.
An interoperability agreement with the US government diminishes the strategic value of GPS by eliminating and altering the costs of switching over to BeiDou.
BeiDou could successfully insulate the PRC and partner countries in the event of a conflict scenario with the United States, while being instrumental in supporting the country’s counterspace capabilities.
The PRC’s BeiDou satellite navigation system is now perceived as superior to GPS. Xi Jinping has described the third generation of satellites as “one of the important achievements China has made in the past 40 years.”
106. Focus 2024: The Norwegian Intelligence Service’s assessment of current security challenges
Etterretningstjenesten (Norwegian Intelligence Service), February 27, 2024
Chapter 1: A changed security situation
Norway is facing a more serious threat environment now than it has in decades. As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, Russia is about to gain the military upper hand. The Russian military industry is running at full steam, and China, Belarus, Iran and North Korea are providing considerable materiel support. Russia is better positioned in the war than it was a year ago, and the Russian armed forces remain the main military threat to Norway’s sovereignty, its people, territory, key societal functions and infrastructure.
The relationship between Russia and the West is at a historic low point and can best be described as a clash of opposing values and security interests. The prospect of any genuine dialogue seems distant, and Russia’s policies towards the West and Norway are expected to become more unpredictable in the years to come. Thus far, Russia’s military conduct in the north has been restrained, but distrust of the West and of allied military activities in the Arctic could alter Russian military behaviour in areas close to Norway. This could increase the risk of misunderstandings, accidents and escalation.
Russia and China have a revisionist agenda in which they seek to reshape the international order to safeguard their own interests. These two countries share a belief that the United States is containing Chinese and Russian ambitions.
A less predictable neighbour
Russia refers to Norway as an ‘unfriendly country’ dictated by the anti-Russian policies of the great powers in the West.
The Russian authorities will seek to maintain those few remaining points of contact it has with Norway, such as Svalbard and the annual negotiations on fisheries. Nevertheless, Russia’s policies towards its neighbouring countries have become even more centralised. There are fewer bilateral points of contact between the countries, giving Russia less insight into Norway’s perspectives and policies. This, in turn, makes Russian policies towards Norway less predictable.
Russia has a continued interest in maintaining its presence and activity on Svalbard and a stated ambition to set up an international research and education centre at the former Soviet coal mining settlement Pyramiden. Russia could therefore choose to cooperate more with non-Arctic states on Svalbard.
Military positioning in the High North and Baltic Sea region
According to Russian military thinking, the High North and the Baltic Sea constitute a continuous area. With the NATO enlargement, one of Russia’s most important goals in the Baltic Sea has been lost, namely to preserve the region as a geographic and political buffer against the alliance. The enlargement reduces Russia’s military freedom of action in the region. For NATO, southern and central Norway have become more important for the ability to carry out operations in the Baltic Sea, which also means these areas have become more important to Russia.
At the same time, new Russian force dispositions could further alter the dynamics. The Kremlin has stated that it will respond to the NATO enlargement and plans to re-establish the Moscow and Leningrad military districts.
Russia’s behaviour in the Baltic Sea is somewhat confrontational, as it is in the Black Sea, and clearly aimed at allied activity. In the High North, Russia’s response to allied operations has mostly been reserved, though Russia is increasingly distrustful of allied activity in the north. This could lead to more belligerent Russian military behaviour and more persistent Russian intelligence operations.
Arctic powerplay
The Arctic is strategically important to both Russia and China. This region is especially important to Russia because of natural resources and the way Russia has shaped its nuclear deterrence capabilities. Defending the northern bastion and having access to the Atlantic will remain vital to Russia’s concept of security. Russia wants to be the dominant actor in the Arctic. At the same time, Moscow considers its position in the region to be more vulnerable than a few years ago.
Allied military activity in the Arctic and the High North has increased, while Russian authorities seek to counter political isolation by inviting in new actors on the civilian side, especially the BRICS countries. On top of Russia’s distrust of allied military activity, there is now a more complex set of actors entering the scene. This increases the risk of misunderstandings, accidents and escalation of conflicts.
Land forces from the Kola Peninsula have been redeployed to fight in Ukraine, significantly diminishing Russia’s land power on the Kola Peninsula. Following the attack on Ukraine, the Northern and Baltic Fleets have become more important to demonstrate Russia’s naval power in the north, as well as in the Atlantic and the Baltic Sea region. This means that the naval forces will have a more prominent role in Russia’s strategic and conventional deterrence and strategic communication towards NATO.
As Russia’s conventional land power is weakened, its strategic forces become more important. With its proximity to NATO’s core areas, the Northern Fleet has many of these in its possession.
China does not constitute a military threat to Norway, but it has an interest in establishing a political, economic and, in time, military foothold in the Arctic. Recent investments in polar capabilities, including icebreakers, have given China the opportunity to operate more independently in the region.
Developing the Northeast Passage for commercial traffic will save shipment time to European markets, reduce dependence on other traffic arteries and facilitate transport of raw materials. Chinese actors have shown an interest in developing infrastructure related to this shipping route in Norway as well.
The Arctic already plays an important role in China’s space programmes, both civilian and military. Beijing will continue to seek access to Arctic infrastructure in order to support its activities in space. Thus far, China has not conducted any military operations in the region, but developing the ability to carry out military operations is a long-term goal.
The intelligence threat to Norway
The sanctions and limited diplomatic presence in Europe have left Russia with fewer platforms for interaction and contact with the West. Access to information about Western and Norwegian affairs rely more on Russian intelligence and security services than before. These services have been mapping out Norwegian targets for years, directing their activities at many sectors in the digital and physical space. Russian actors seek information about Norwegian politics, energy, the High North, allied activities and defence. Russia is also interested in Norwegian technology in areas they themselves want to develop.
Russia also employs a high number of civilian ships for intelligence operations. These ships have lawful access close to Norwegian infrastructure and the coast of Norway. Uncovering whether civilian ships are carrying out intelligence activity in addition to their lawful undertakings can be a challenging task.
Chinese intelligence services operate all over Europe. Their activities include political intelligence and industrial espionage, and cyberspace is the main gateway. Chinese intelligence services use a combination of actions to keep their activities and objectives concealed, such as commonly available tools and digital infrastructure that conceal the actor.
Chinese services also have source handlers in Europe. Chinese diplomats, travel delegations, private individuals, businesses and special interest groups regularly carry out assignments on behalf of Chinese services. There are close links between Chinese intelligence services and Chinese corporate entities.
Beijing has the institutional resources and legal framework to use Chinese businesses and individuals for government purposes. All Chinese companies and individuals are required by law to assist China’s intelligence and security services.
Iran has an unremitting intention of targeting people opposed to the regime around the world. Tehran could also seek to attack Israel-affiliated targets across the world, especially in times of heightened tension between Israel and Iran. This means there is a constant risk of Iranian intelligence and security services orchestrating attacks against opposition figures, especially in countries that are vocal in their criticism of Iran or give residence permits to dissidents.
Norway is not a country of special interest to Iranian security services. However, this could change if individuals targeted by Iranian services travel to Norway, or if Norwegian policies are perceived as more hostile towards Iran.
COMMENT – Always important to digest the strategic assessments of one’s allies.
107. Are China and the Philippines on a Collision Course?
Dean Cheng, Carla Freeman, Brian Harding, and Andrew Scobell, U.S. Institute of Peace, March 14, 2024
108. The Russian Military Has 'Nuclear' Plans to Stop an Invasion by China
Nikolas Gvosdev, National Interest, March 11, 2024
Despite the dramatic headlines, the leaked Russian military documents that discuss the conditions (including a Chinese invasion scenario) a beleaguered Moscow might resort to using nuclear armaments is not surprising. Nor should anyone be puzzled as to why the Russian military has contingency plans to cope with a possible Chinese invasion.
COMMENT – Apparently, even a ‘no limits partnership’ has limits.
109. Biotech trade association to split with China's WuXi AppTec
Karen Freifeld, Reuters, March 14, 2024
Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, March 14, 2024
Chinese scientists are combining electromagnetic launch and hypersonic flight to create a new way to send people into space. If the project is successful, the new technology could reduce launch costs to a fraction of the current price.
111. US Seeks to Revive Dormant Shipyards with Help from South Korea and Japan
Todd Crawford, Vision Times, March 13, 2024
112. China forges defense ties with India neighbors Maldives, Sri Lanka
Yukio Tajima and Satoshi Iwaki, Nikkei Asia, March 20, 2024
China's military is pursuing closer cooperation with the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal, all countries that border India, in a bid to strengthen its position amid an ongoing territorial dispute with New Delhi.
A delegation from the Chinese military this month met with Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu and held talks with defense representatives from all three countries, according to China's Ministry of National Defense. In addition to bilateral cooperation, the discussions covered shared regional security concerns.
COMMENT – Is the PRC being “contained” or is Beijing seeking to “contain” its neighbors?
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
113. ‘From Chancay to Shanghai’: Peru’s Strategic Role in PRC Maritime Strategy
Sergey Sukhankin, China Brief, March 15, 2024
Majority ownership by state-owned Cosco Shipping, and involvement of companies like ZPMC which is closely linked to China’s Military-Civil Fusion strategy, raises concerns about the dual-use nature of infrastructure projects and potential military implications.
The PRC has become Peru’s main trading partner and investor, exerting significant influence over strategic sectors like energy, mining, and construction, thereby amplifying security concerns.
Chancay megaport in Peru signifies a major shift in the region’s trade and infrastructure dynamics. President Xi Jinping’s upcoming visit underscores the strategic importance attached to this project.
The megaport mostly welcomed in Peru, where it will boost the country’s trade capabilities, create thousands of jobs, and improve its status as a regional hub.
Chancay megaport exemplifies China’s broader strategy of acquiring ports globally to enhance trade dominance and military presence, posing long-term challenges for regional security and stability.
114. China starts international manhunt with belt and road corruption in its sights
Sylvie Zhuang, South China Morning Post, March 20, 2024
Aaron McNicholas, The Wire China, March 17, 2024
116. China’s technical expertise touted as new vehicle for progress on embattled, global belt and road
Ralph Jennings and Mia Nulimaimaiti, South China Morning Post, March 17, 2024
117. Nepal political shakeup thrusts Kathmandu into India-China rivalry
Pranay Sharma, Nikkei Asia, March 16, 2024
A shock political shakeup in Nepal is set to push the Himalayan nation closer to Beijing, aggravating a bitter China-India rivalry as the giant neighbors jockey for influence across South Asia.
Nepal's prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, popularly known as Prachanda, surprised Indian observers last week when he ditched his Delhi-leaning coalition partner for staunch China ally K.P. Sharma Oli, head of the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist).
118. How China and Angola are redefining economic ties for a post-oil, post-loans era
Jevans Nyabiage, South China Morning Post, March 18, 2024
OPINION PIECES
119. Biden Weakens America’s Global Clout
Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2024
Step one for renewed respect is a serious defense budget. Step two: Kill some crows.
COMMENT – The Administration released its 2025 Defense Budget this week… for the third year in a row, the Biden Administration has asked for less money for defense procurement than the year before.
It is hard to take the Administration seriously about its rhetoric on threats to democracy and the liberal international order (especially the claims that the U.S. is the arsenal of democracy), when they refuse to ask for more resources or even replace the weapons being expended in two active war zones.
Meme from a month and a half ago but still relevant:
120. Critics of the TikTok Bill Are Missing the Point
Zephyr Teachout, The Atlantic, March 20, 2024
America has a long history of shielding infrastructure and communication platforms from foreign control.
Does congress really have the power to force a sale of TikTok? Last week, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would require TikTok’s parent company, the Beijing-based ByteDance, to sell the U.S. version of TikTok to an American buyer within six months or have the app blocked. The bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate, but its early momentum seems to have genuinely shocked and dismayed many people, who see it as a xenophobic provocation, a performative-messaging bill, or the first step in a dangerous unwinding of a global, free internet.
Underlying these somewhat confused critiques is a palpable sense of affront and bewilderment, a fierce instinct that something terribly wrong is afoot. In an era of globalization and free trade, the idea of the U.S. government blocking foreign ownership of a tech platform seems so extreme that there must be some darker explanation. But this intuition is mistaken. The idea that we must enact barriers to foreign-government surveillance and political interference is actually a very old one, embedded in both American history and the logic of democratic self-determination. Forbidding a hostile foreign power from controlling a major communication platform fits into a long and important tradition of American self-government.
Congress is worried about the Chinese government’s potential access to the personal data of TikTok’s 150 million U.S. users, and about its ability to influence American public opinion by shaping the content that those users see. ByteDance insists that it doesn’t share user data with, or otherwise do the bidding of, the Chinese Communist Party, but any Beijing-based company must ultimately answer to the Chinese government. The specific substance of these fears—data privacy, algorithmic manipulation—is distinctly modern. But the underlying concerns would have been familiar to American political leaders since the dawn of the republic.
During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Framers were quite worried that foreign powers would exploit America’s open form of government to serve their own interests. At the time, the United States was small and weak compared with the powerhouses of France and England, and the Framers feared that favors and financing could seduce officeholders. Alexander Hamilton cautioned that “foreign powers also will not be idle spectators. They will interpose, the confusion will increase, and a dissolution of the Union ensue.” The Constitution therefore forbids foreigners from running for Congress until they have been U.S. citizens for seven years, and famously prohibits anyone but a natural-born citizen from being president. Elbridge Gerry, the great champion of the Bill of Rights, argued at the Constitutional Convention that “foreign powers will intermeddle in our affairs, and spare no expence to influence them. Persons having foreign attachments will be sent among us & insinuated into our councils, in order to be made instruments for their purposes. Every one knows the vast sums laid out in Europe for secret services.”
Even the treaty-ratification rule in the Constitution, which requires a two-thirds congressional vote, was included in order to reduce “the power of foreign nations to obstruct our retaliating measures on them by a corrupt influence,” as James Madison put it. And as we all learned during the Trump presidency, Article I of the U.S. Constitution forbids federal officials, without a special dispensation from Congress, from receiving gifts or emoluments from foreign governments. (I was a lawyer on the emoluments lawsuit against Trump, which had overcome preliminary legal challenges when he lost reelection.)
After the Constitution was ratified, Congress regularly used limits on foreign ownership and influence as a mechanism of preserving sovereignty, democracy, and national security. The limits are most pronounced in areas that affect politics, elections, and communications. Foreign nationals who are not green-card holders cannot contribute to political campaigns. Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, lobbyists for foreign governments are far more strictly regulated than other lobbyists. The law, passed in the run-up to World War II, was strengthened after hearings in the 1960s revealed the degree to which foreign money was influencing domestic policy.
Other laws limit foreign control of different forms of infrastructure. The Defense Production Act authorizes the executive branch to block proposed or pending foreign corporate mergers that threaten national security. Vessels transporting cargo between two points in the United States must be U.S.-built and U.S.-owned. Certain defense contracts cannot be awarded to foreign-government-controlled companies unless specifically authorized by the secretary of defense. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission can issue licenses for constructing dams or transmission lines only to U.S. entities, and geothermal lessees have foreign-ownership limits. As the Vanderbilt University law professor Ganesh Sitaraman has argued, the body of law limiting foreign ownership in various sectors can mostly be understood through the lens of platform regulation: They prevent foreign governments from taking over core elements of infrastructure.
This includes communications infrastructure. Limits on foreign ownership have been a part of federal communications policy for more than a century. The Radio Act of 1912 was the first federal limitation on ownership of communications infrastructure, forbidding foreign ownership of radio stations. It expanded and set a blueprint for later communications rules—Rupert Murdoch, for example, had to become an American citizen to avoid Federal Communications Commission rules banning foreign owners of American TV networks—which were based on the twin fears of espionage and propaganda. TikTok, of course, falls right at the intersection of those fears.
Any effort to restrict a communication platform inevitably invites concerns about the First Amendment, but constitutional claims on behalf of foreign governments are extremely weak. In 2011, for example, a federal court rejected a challenge to the federal laws prohibiting foreign nationals from making campaign contributions. Then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the country has a compelling interest in limiting the participation of foreign citizens in such activities, “thereby preventing foreign influence over the U.S. political process.”
Some opponents of the TikTok bill argue instead that if the app is blocked in the U.S., that will restrict the free-speech rights of its users. The ACLU, for example, argues that a TikTok ban would be “a dangerous act of censorship on the free speech of so many Americans.” This is an argument that the ACLU and others might want to reconsider, because its boundless logic could swallow up any effort to regulate communication-based tech platforms. Suppose Congress passed a tough data-privacy law, for example, and Discord, unable to afford the cost of compliance, announced it would have to shut down U.S. operations. By the ACLU’s logic, the data-privacy law could be struck down as a violation of Discord users’ First Amendment rights. The free-speech argument against the TikTok bill is, in other words, a powerful and indiscriminate deregulatory weapon. (Although a federal court blocked Montana’s TikTok ban last fall, it did so largely on the grounds that a state, as opposed to Congress, lacked the power to legislate on the basis of national-security concerns.)
Critics of the TikTok bill also argue that it would do nothing to solve the fundamental problems posed by the biggest tech platforms. A U.S.-owned TikTok would not inherently be better for public dialogue, data privacy, or teen mental health than the current version. Even if China were cut off from direct control, it could still easily get data on Americans from commercial data brokers. Moreover, the bill would not touch the activities of Google and Meta, which have more users than TikTok and exert vastly more control over public discourse. “All of the social media platforms are information minefields, rife with deceptive content from state actors, corporations, paid influencers and others,” the tech journalist Julia Angwin wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “Their algorithms fuel our worst impulses by highlighting content that promotes anger and outrage. They strip mine our data to make money. Forcing TikTok to merge with another data-hungry social media platform won’t solve any of that.”
This is all true—it just isn’t a reason to oppose the current TikTok bill. I have long advocated for legislation to ban surveillance-based business models and hold platforms accountable for the content they promote, as well as for aggressive antitrust enforcement to break up the big homegrown tech monopolies. Forcing a TikTok divestiture would do none of those things. It would address one specific issue: control over a dominant communication platform by a hostile foreign superpower with a well-documented interest in influencing domestic politics in the U.S. and other countries. Yes, Congress should do so much more: pass comprehensive privacy reform, impose regulations on dominant tech platforms, and strengthen competition laws. But a law that solves only one problem is a lot better than nothing. And for those who think that restricting a Chinese app will create a new era in a deglobalized internet, China already blocks Instagram, Google, YouTube, WhatsApp, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook, and a number of Asian countries have banned or limited TikTok within their borders on grounds similar to the proposed American legislation.
In fact, passing piecemeal legislation might be the first step toward Congress rebuilding the legislative muscle to pass those other more sweeping laws. Since the 1980s, American policy has largely treated nonmilitary interactions with foreign states as a subset of supply-side economics, with the goals of maximizing production and efficiency while tearing down barriers to trade. As both Democrats and Republicans lionized the free flow of capital as the most urgent priority, we focused less on traditional, unquantifiable concerns, such as democracy and sovereignty.
The basic premise of democratic self-government is the idea that people collectively make the rules of their community and collectively direct their laws. That promise may be more honored in the breach, but it remains the right aspiration for liberal democracy. Self-rule requires a closeness between the people who are governed and the institutions of power. Could American corporations or individuals wreak just as much havoc on public discourse as the Chinese government? Yes. But on some level, that is part of the democratic bargain. Members of this political community must have unique rights to shape the institutions that coerce and constrain their behavior—rights not afforded to people, corporations, or governments outside the community. The U.S. has a sorry history of meddling in other countries’ elections. It is not a history we should hold up proudly, or rely on to allow foreign meddling in our own elections. We should instead affirm the historic norm that countries have the right to protect their communications, politics, and private data from foreign governmental control.
COMMENT – A very strong argument that all of us should consider.
121. Hong Kong's loss can be Tokyo's gain if it plays its cards right
Benjamin Qiu and Sam Goodman, Nikkei Asia, March 20, 2024
Japan holds advantages over Singapore in drawing interest from wealthy Chinese.
According to a joke circulating on the Chinese internet, it took America 100 years to turn New York into an international financial center but it took China just three years to turn Singapore into one.
Singapore, of course, was already an important regional financial hub before 2021, but it has surged ahead as Hong Kong has lost ground with its independent institutions losing their autonomy and its freedom of the press deteriorating.
This has caused wealthy Chinese, ever footloose and willing to arbitrage, to look for a new place to securely park their money.
Many of China's best entrepreneurs and investors have taken up Singapore residency, including Neil Shen, co-founder of what is now Trip.com and an early investor in leading technology companies including ByteDance and Pinduoduo.
Tokyo could be well placed to compete with Singapore. Urban Chinese love traveling to Japan and spending time there, probably more than Singapore, which also happens to be a longer flight from Shanghai. Many envy Alibaba founder Jack Ma, now a Tokyo College professor at the University of Tokyo.
At any rate, China's wealth and talent, and an opportunity to influence the country's future, are now up for grabs due to Hong Kong's rapidly declining attractiveness.
The city looks set to take a further blow this week as lawmakers have rushed through a new security law covering offenses such as treason and espionage. Chambers of commerce representing foreign companies had expressed concerns about broad, vague provisions regarding state secrets, but the bill also has created new offenses around colluding with foreign forces and publishing misleading information and hints at the possibility of Chinese-style internet censorship.
COMMENT – The joke at the start of this article bears repeating:
It took the United States 100 years to turn New York into a global financial center, but it took China just three years to turn Singapore into one.
The combination of the Sino-American rivalry with the turn towards authoritarianism in Beijing has done more than anything to lift the economic prospects of Singapore, Japan, Korea, and countries across South and Southeast Asia. As investors sour on the PRC, they look for opportunities elsewhere.
Far from being the grass that is trampled on by the two elephants, as Singaporean officials are fond of saying, those countries stand to benefit greatly from the rivalry. (If you listen to the Singaporean FM Balakrishnan, he refers to the problem being the “rivalry” between the US and the PRC, in other words that Great Power Competition is the threat… see my comments in the opening essay).
122. West must wake up to China’s software surveillance threat
Richard Dearlove, Times of London, March 19, 2024
Your car, in this instance your bargain-priced Chinese electric car, is a computer on wheels — a mix of astounding technology, built-in redundancies and real vulnerabilities. Most of us don’t know what the manufacturer has put under the bonnet and we probably don’t care.
How many of us are aware that Chinese-manufactured cellular internet of things modules (CIMs) are in the controls of our “computer cars” and act as a gateway, and an invisible trap door, to malign forces? That the modules themselves are transmitting data back to the manufacturer and can be remotely accessed and overridden at any moment?
123. Pope Francis Waves a White Flag at Vladimir Putin
George Weigel, Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2024
The leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church visited Washington this month to make the case for continued U.S. aid to their beleaguered but unbroken country. The bishops used rational arguments for national self-defense that drew on just-war theory, the ancient tradition of Christian moral realism that first took systematic form with St. Augustine in the fifth century. Major-Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halyč and Archbishop Borys Gudziak—the head of the Ukrainian church and its senior U.S. prelate, respectively—also explained why Russia’s defeat in Ukraine is essential to peace in Europe and vital to the American interest.
Shortly after these serious adult conversations took place, Pope Francis erupted in another off-the-cuff interview, instructing Ukraine to have the “courage” to seize the “white flag” and negotiate with Russia: “When you see that you are defeated, that things are not going well, you have to have the courage to negotiate.”
In the interview, there was evidently no papal call to Russia to cease its aggression, which has cost tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives and done a trillion dollars worth of damage. There was no papal demand that Catholics be allowed to worship freely in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, where Catholic rites are now banned. There was no papal insistence that Russia release the tens of thousands of kidnapped Ukrainian children who are being “re-educated.” There was no papal condemnation of Russian war crimes in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol and elsewhere. Nor did the pope denounce the Russian Orthodox Church’s relentless campaign of disinformation in support of Vladimir Putin’s war.
Pope Francis seemed wholly unaware of the carefully reasoned, just-war-informed statement the Ukrainian episcopate had issued a few days before the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion, in which the bishops summoned their people to continued sacrifice in defense of their freedom and sovereignty. The bishops also noted that Russia’s violation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum the Kremlin had signed—in which Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees of its territorial integrity—made any thought of “negotiations” with Mr. Putin’s regime risible. By contrast, the pope seemed to place the entire burden of finding a path to peace on the victim, not the aggressor.
Moral myopia of such severity should be beneath the dignity of the papacy. Yet the fecklessness Pope Francis urged on Ukraine is of a piece with his own practice of raising white flags when dealing with thuggish regimes. That weakness is most prominently embodied in the pope’s dealings with Mr. Putin’s “dear friend,” Xi Jinping. Thanks to the Vatican’s 2018 deal with Beijing and its subsequent extensions, the Communist Party exercises de facto control over the appointment of Catholic bishops in China.
124. Defang TikTok Before It’s Too Late
Michael Sobolik, The Dispatch, March 20, 2024
125. Beijing Is Gaslighting the Philippines on the South China Sea
Karishma Vaswani, Bloomberg, March 14, 2024
126. Europe needs an endgame for its China policy
Ben Bland, Politico, March 19, 2024
127. The elephants in the room at the foreign interference inquiry
Terry Glavin, National Post, March 14, 2024
You’ve got to feel at least a twinge of pity for Justice Marie-Josée Hogue. She’s the head of the public inquiry into foreign interference that is only now getting off the ground, 16 months after leaked intelligence first revealed that Beijing ran elaborate election-interference operations to the benefit of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party in 2019 and 2021, and the government knew it but did nothing about it.
Among the questions Hogue has to properly sort out, this one rarely gets a proper look-in: when we say “foreign” interference, what do we mean by “foreign,” exactly?
At stake is Hogue’s credibility and the already-battered credibility of the entire Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, which was established last September only after the House of Commons forced it on Trudeau’s minority Liberal government.
Hogue’s inquiry took over from the total collapse of credibility that “special rapporteur” David Johnston brought upon his appointment to look into China’s election interference operations, which had been Prime Minister Trudeau’s substitute for the public inquiry the Opposition was demanding. But the same dark cloud has been hovering above Hogue’s exertions ever since.
You could say that at least she’s trying. On Monday, without any public announcement, Hogue buckled to pressure and finally granted full standing to the Conservative party, the New Democrats, the Bloc Québécois and former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, who the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says was specifically targeted for defeat by Chinese diplomats and by Beijing’s Canadian proxies during the 2021 federal election.
During his election campaign in 2021, O’Toole had offered an extensively detailed 180-degree turn away from the Trudeau government’s “win-win” approach to Beijing and the prime minister’s own kowtowing to Beijing’s powerful Canadian friends. Working in close consultation with expatriate Hongkongers, Canadian Muslims from China’s viciously persecuted Uyghur minority and veteran democracy campaigners among Canada’s Chinese diaspora, O’Toole proposed restraints on Chinese state-owned enterprises, closer relations with Taiwan, the establishment of a foreign agents registry and so on.
Also directly targeted for election monkey-wrenching were O’Toole’s shadow foreign minister Michael Chong, Steveston-Richmond East Conservative Kenny Chiu and Vancouver East New Democrat Jenny Kwan. Until Monday’s reversal, Hogue’s inquiry had restricted the involvement of O’Toole and Canada’s Opposition parties to the same lesser standing that Hogue had granted the distinctly Beijing-friendly senator Yuen Pau Woo, one of the first senators Trudeau appointed after coming to office in 2015.
Along with full formal standing granted to Beijing enthusiast and Liberal kingmaker Michael Chan, and to Han Dong, the Don Valley North MP who resigned from the Liberal caucus to sit as an independent last March after a flurry of controversies and allegations involving Beijing’s determination to win him his seat, Hogue had granted Woo intervenor status for a purpose that speaks for itself. Woo is well-suited to the status owing to his role “advocating for a community that risks being stigmatized or negatively impacted by counter-interference measures, whether proposed or put in place.”
It was because of the status granted to Woo, Chan and Dong that the Uyghur Rights Action Project and the Canadian Friends of Hong Kong pulled out of the inquiry entirely, arguing that the proceeding risks becoming a tool of the malign foreign influences it was ostensibly established to expose. To no avail, Justice Hogue has attempted to assuage the fears of the Hongkongers and the Uyghurs with various privacy and confidentiality guarantees.
To his credit, Woo has been quite candid about how he sees his role in the inquiry’s proceedings. In a submission to the inquiry last week, he confirmed that he’s there to defend the politically hyperactive, Beijing-aligned Mandarin bloc that is so closely associated with the Beijing regime’s threatening presence in the Chinese-Canadian community. Woo says the bloc’s interests should be privileged with the same assurances of protection that Hogue has held out to the victims of Beijing’s Canadian interference and influence-peddling operations.
Among the questions Woo wants the inquiry to consider: Why should we take the CSIS view of what constitutes malign foreign influence? How was Chinese diplomats’ open preference for the Liberal party’s electoral successes any different from U.S. president Barack Obama saying nice things about Trudeau on Twitter?
Woo does have a point when he refers to the fine line between diplomacy and foreign interference, which CSIS defines as activity “detrimental to the interests of Canada and are clandestine or deceptive or involve a threat to any person.” Setting aside the obvious, which is that there’s a big difference between Canada’s democratic allies and the brutal slave state run by Supreme Leader Xi Jinping, what are Canadians to make of policies that are detrimental to the interests of Canada but are openly, happily and unapologetically counselled by that powerful China-friendly cohort in the country’s economic and political establishment?
128. Der Verkauf von Tiktok ist der einzig richtige Schritt [Selling Tiktok is the only right step] – ORIGINAL IN GERMAN
Nicole Bastian, Handelsblatt, March 17, 2024
GOOGLE TRANSLATE - Such an influential online medium should be removed from the control of the Chinese state. Europe would also benefit from the legal push by the USA.
More than a billion people worldwide use the Tiktok app every month. For more than a third of the 170 million US users, Tiktok is one of, if not their primary, source of news. The platform for short videos from the Chinese parent company Bytedance has left all US competitors behind in terms of distribution and influence.
Such a powerful medium owned by a Chinese corporation, which would have to pass on all user data to the Chinese state at the behest of Chinese law, is dangerous. The FBI speaks of “significant security concerns” in the USA . Also because the algorithms and Chinese influence are so difficult to understand.
It is therefore only logical that the members of the US House of Representatives passed a law with a large majority. Bytedance is now faced with a choice: Separate yourself from your daughter Tiktok so that it is removed from Beijing's access - or the app is banned in the USA.