Matt Turpin's China Articles - August 27, 2023
Friends,
At the BRICS Summit this week, the PRC steamrolled India by pushing through an expansion of the group by six countries: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. It is unclear why Prime Minister Modi caved to Xi’s pressure and gave Beijing a significant win after Indian policy watchers signaled that Delhi would not support BRICS expansion.
Xi also pocketed a diplomatic win in his stand-off with Modi by having a face-to-face meeting with him in Johannesburg (Modi has distanced himself from Xi since the Chinese military attacked and killed dozens of Indian troops along their shared border in the summer of 2020).
It doesn’t appear that Modi got anything from the PRC for these capitulations and it makes him look even weaker at home. Something that is head-scratching since Beijing’s economic woes should have emboldened Modi to take a stronger leadership role.
All this suggests that Delhi has no clear vision for what it wants the international system to look like and is being pushed along by Beijing and Moscow, who have effectively employed ‘anti-Western’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ tropes that Delhi feels powerless to resist. (My hats off to Ashley Tellis for predicting these developments a few months ago in his Foreign Affairs piece, “America’s Bad Bet on India: New Delhi Won’t Side with Washington Against Beijing.”)
India’s influence in BRICS will degrade as these additional members enter the organization and Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran use it to remake an international system that disadvantages India. For example, Pakistani-Iranian relations have been steadily growing stronger (Pakistan represents Iranian interests in the U.S. through the Pakistani Embassy) and while Pakistan did not join BRICS, the Beijing-Tehran-Islamabad triangle will only grow stronger.
***
My colleague, Liza Tobin, and her team at SCSP (Special Competitive Studies Project) put together a useful Traveler’s Guide to CCP Doublespeak, it’s a great chart for everyone to put in their back pocket.
[From SCSP’s 2-2-2 Newsletter… if you aren’t a subscriber on Substack to their publications, you should be]
***
The Chinese Communist Party stepped up its propaganda campaign against Japan this week. The Party is trying to paint Tokyo’s release of treated water into the ocean from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant (damage that took place in March of 2011) as an environmental crime and catastrophe.
As the release of water began this week, the PRC employed a tool from its playbook of economic coercion by announcing a ban on Japanese seafood. Within hours, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emmanuel, announced he would publicly eat fish from Fukushima to debunk Beijing’s disinformation campaign.
All of this is just another example of the political warfare that Beijing wages against liberal democracies.
Beijing has targeted its messages to appeal to environmental groups and other left-leaning progressives in Japan and across the world. As well as South Korea, to drive a wedge between Tokyo and Seoul, making it difficult for Korean President Yoon to continue his efforts to repair the Korea-Japan relationship. Internationally, Beijing seeks to portray Tokyo as irresponsible and to make it more difficult for Japan to persuade other countries in the region to pursue a ‘free-and-open Indo-Pacific.’ The Party also seeks to sow divisions within Japan by stoking anti-nuclear sentiment and furthering divisions within Japanese society, for example amplifying tensions between Okinawans and the national government in Tokyo.
All of this is reminiscent of Soviet ‘active measures’ during the Cold War. For more check out Thomas Rid’s 2020 book, Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare.
Of course, Beijing’s own track record on releasing water from nuclear power plants contaminated by tritium is far, far worse and Beijing does everything in its power to conceal its actions while Tokyo invited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect and monitor its plans (see July 2023 press release by the IAEA, “IAEA Finds Japan’s Plans to Release Treated Water into the Sea at Fukushima Consistent with International Safety Standards.”)
[“N-plants” = Nuclear power plants]
Don’t hold your breathe that the IAEA will be invited in to do similar appraisals of PRC nuclear power plants.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Delusions of Détente: Why America and China Will Be Enduring Rivals
Michael Beckley, Foreign Affairs, August 22, 2023
Why America and China Will Be Enduring Rivals
With U.S.-Chinese relations worse than they have been in over 50 years, an old fairy tale has resurfaced: if only the United States would talk more to China and accommodate its rise, the two countries could live in peace. The story goes that with ample summitry, Washington could recognize Beijing’s redlines and restore crisis hotlines and cultural exchanges. Over time and through myriad points of face-to-face contact—in other words, reengagement—the two countries could settle into peaceful, if still competitive, coexistence. Talk enough, some analysts contend, and the United States and China might even strike a grand bargain that establishes stable spheres of influence and something akin to a G-2 to solve global problems such as climate change and pandemics.
From this perspective, the dismal state of U.S.-Chinese relations is not an inevitable result of two ideologically opposed great powers clashing over vital interests. Rather, it is a mix-up between partners, blown out of proportion by the United States’ overreaction to counter China’s overreach, as Susan Shirk, a Sinologist and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state, has put it. For the past two decades, the thinking goes, China has simply been doing what rising powers usually do: flexing its muscles and demanding a greater say in global affairs. Although many of China’s actions, such as its menacing of Taiwan, worry advocates of reengagement, the main target of their critique is the United States—specifically, its relentless pursuit of primacy and the self-serving actors behind it.
In this dark imagining, grandstanding politicians, greedy defense contractors, sensationalizing pundits, overzealous human rights activists, and belligerent bureaucrats fan the flames of rivalry for profit, creating an echo chamber that crowds out different perspectives. Some individuals are supposedly repeating hawkish narratives to protect their careers. The result, the journalist and author Fareed Zakaria has argued, is that “Washington has succumbed to dangerous groupthink on China.” The fact that most Americans also hold hawkish views on China just provides more evidence of how irrationally aggressive U.S. policy has become. “The problem today isn’t that Americans are insufficiently concerned about the rise of China,” the historian Max Boot has insisted. “The problem is that they are prey to hysteria and alarmism that could lead the United States into a needless nuclear war.”
For those advocating reengagement, the solution to this cycle of hostility is straightforward. First, defuse tensions through vigorous diplomacy, commerce, and people-to-people exchanges. Next, create a new forum where officials from each country can meet regularly to hash out agreements. According to the historian Adam Tooze, regardless of the exact structure of negotiations, the basic objective is the same: “accommodation of China’s historic rise.” For some advocates of reengagement, accommodation would merely entail reducing trade barriers to China, a move U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen proposed earlier this year. Other observers, however, favor more drastic concessions. The political scientist Graham Allison, for example, has urged in these pages that the United States accept China’s traditional sphere of influence in Asia. Presumably, that would mean giving Beijing greater freedom in the South China Sea, letting go of Taiwan, and relinquishing American power in the region.
It is an enticing vision. The world would certainly be better off if great powers could settle scores through diplomacy rather than by squaring off in a security competition. Yet the history of great-power rivalry, and of U.S.-Chinese relations in particular, suggests that greater engagement is unlikely to mend ties between the countries and, if performed hastily, could actually catalyze violent conflict. Of the more than two dozen great-power rivalries over the past 200 years, none ended with the sides talking their way out of trouble. Instead, rivalries have persisted until one side could no longer carry on the fight or until both sides united against a common enemy. For example, the United States and China paused their rivalry to ally against the Soviet Union during the latter half of the Cold War, a contest that ended only when the Soviet Union sputtered into terminal decline. In every case, shifts in the balance of power were preconditions for sustainable settlements. Before those shifts, periods of détente were usually just chances to regroup and reload for the next round of competition. In some cases, such as when the United Kingdom sought to improve relations with Germany from 1911 to 1914 and again in 1938, pursuing détente paved the road to war.
The United States and China are unlikely to buck this pattern. Their vital interests conflict and are rooted firmly in their respective political systems, geographies, and national experiences. Many of the connections binding the countries together, such as their extensive trade, are also driving them apart by giving policymakers additional reasons to fight and pressure points to exploit. Neither side can make major concessions without exposing itself. And after decades of dealing with each other, both governments have accumulated long lists of grievances and view the other with deep mistrust. The United States tried to work with China repeatedly from the 1970s to the 2010s, yet top Chinese leaders consistently viewed U.S. outreach, especially the American attempt to integrate China into the U.S.-led liberal order, as an insidious form of containment—a plot designed to weaken the grip of the Chinese Communist Party and lock China into economic dependence and political subservience to the West. American outreach to China during this period was more extensive than the proposals being seriously considered by U.S. policymakers today. Nevertheless, these overtures failed to fundamentally change Chinese assessments of American intentions or dissuade efforts by the CCP to dominate East Asia and beyond.
The fact is that the U.S.-Chinese rivalry is unlikely to wind down without a significant shift in the balance of power. The United States needs to make policy choices based on this reality and not get caught up in a fantasy. This does not mean cutting off diplomacy or shutting down talks completely, but being clear eyed about what that type of engagement can realistically achieve. There are reasons to hope for a medium-term mellowing of Chinese power that might open space for a real diplomatic breakthrough. To get there, however, the United States and its allies must deter Chinese aggression in the near term and avoid concessions that disrupt favorable long-term trends.
COMMENT – Great piece by Michael Beckley. I hope Commerce Secretary Raimondo has a chance to read this on her long flight to Beijing.
2. Chinese Sanctions Enforcement Just Got Even Harder
Aaron Glasserman, Foreign Policy, August 15, 2023
A new campaign is blurring the lines of what’s implicated in forced labor.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) is the centerpiece of Washington’s response to the slew of repressive measures enacted by the Chinese state, sometimes in collaboration with private Chinese companies, against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim peoples in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region—including forced labor, mass internment, family separation, and according to some reports, forced birth control and sterilization. Signed into law in December 2021 and in effect since June 2022, the act establishes a “rebuttable presumption” that all goods produced entirely or in part in Xinjiang are implicated in forced labor and bans their import unless importers can demonstrate otherwise.
According to the official UFLPA statistics dashboard, as of August 2023, more than 4,600 shipments valuing a total of $1.64 billion have been stopped for inspection under the UFLPA, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection claims has already produced an “observable shift in supply chain practices to avoid sourcing from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.”
However, the ban’s broad terms pose challenges for implementation, as described in multiple congressional investigations and hearings. Within China, it can be difficult and even dangerous for businesses to try to determine where products and parts come from and whether their supply chains are linked to forced labor or any sanctioned entities. Chinese government raids on the offices of multiple international consulting firms in recent months and a sweeping new anti-espionage law have heightened foreign companies’ fears about carrying out due diligence research.
At the same time, even the imports that are clearly linked to sanctioned entities can enter the United States undetected by passing through third countries or in packages valued below the de minimis threshold for reporting and inspection.
A new state-led campaign in China is poised to make enforcement of these sanctions even more difficult. Launched in January, the Private Enterprise Advances to the Frontier (PEAF) initiative aims to integrate China’s frontiers into the national market by promoting investment, trade, and exchange between coastal and central provinces and the relatively underdeveloped border regions. As a result, more Chinese firms, including ones that export to the United States or do business with U.S. companies, will have supply chains linked to Xinjiang and other peripheral provinces. Frustrating UFLPA implementation is not the point of the campaign—the goal of national economic integration is far older and more ambitious than that—but Beijing is likely to view it as a welcome, if unintended, outcome.
The campaign is a collaboration between the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, which helps the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and government manage the private-sector economy, and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, which implements policies targeting the country’s 55 officially recognized “minority nationalities.” Under President Xi Jinping, the CCP has tightened its grip over both entities, formally subordinating the State Ethnic Affairs Commission to the United Front Work Department—the section of the party responsible for controlling and managing relations with non-Communist groups and leaders, historically including many business owners and ethnic minority elites—in 2018, and highlighting the importance of the commerce federation for extending party control over private enterprise since 2020.
Chinese officials and researchers have linked PEAF to the country’s broader economic goals—specifically, promoting economic development beyond the relatively wealthy and urbanized eastern coast as well as its “dual circulation” strategy. Announced in May 2020, dual circulation aims to reduce Beijing’s dependence on cheap exports by boosting domestic consumption (internal circulation) while enhancing manufacturing capacity for more valuable exports (international circulation). China’s western region, including Xinjiang, is crucial for overland trade and rich in strategic resources, such as oil and rare earth minerals, making it integral to this policy.
But this isn’t just an economic program—it is also an instrument of ethnic policy. For the past decade, and especially since Xi’s second term, the CCP has aggressively restricted minority nationalities’ expression of their identities and attempted to shore up national unity by, in official rhetoric, forging “a sense of the community for the Chinese nation.”
Ethnic policy in China has historically shifted between relatively assimilationist and multiculturalist orientations, but the Xi era has marked a hard swing toward assimilationism and a drive to “stabilize and secure” the country’s resource-rich and ethnically diverse borderlands. Recent years have witnessed attacks on minority cultures by central and local governments, including restrictions on use of minority languages in schools and displays of symbols deemed foreign, such as mosque domes and Arabic signage on halal restaurants. China’s leaders now identify “ethnic fusion” or “blending” as an urgent goal, referring to the elimination of different nationalities’ particular characteristics, and see economic policy as an instrument for realizing it.
In the CCP’s view, economic integration complements cultural assimilation and is a crucial step on the path to its goal of fusion. As Xi articulated in September 2019: “The reason why all the nationalities unite and fuse … originates in the fact that the nationalities are culturally eclectic, economically interdependent, and emotionally intimate; it originates in the innate force of the Chinese nation’s pursuit of unification.”
Officials invoke similar language in speeches and documents about PEAF, most notably in the official implementation program, which describes the campaign as “creating a vehicle and platform for promoting contact, exchange, and blending of different nationalities.”
COMMENT – A narrow implementation of UFLPA is unlikely to be successful, it will likely drive the U.S. to either give-up on enforcement (Beijing’s preferred outcome) or expand decoupling.
3. China, Russia Deliver Broadsides Against the West at BRICS Summit
Thomas Grove and Austin Ramzy, Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2023
Putin accuses the West of provoking the war in Ukraine; Xi rejects criticism of China’s political model.
Russia and China used a summit of countries known as the BRICS this week to air their grievances against Western powers, present themselves as defenders of developing economies and set out the case for an alternative international order.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, addressing the South African summit by video, accused the West of provoking everything from the war in Ukraine and global inflation to hunger in the world’s most vulnerable countries by hampering Russian grain and fertilizer sales through sanctions.
Leaders of BRICS nations Brazil, India, China and South Africa, gathered in Johannesburg with Putin—who faces an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes in Ukraine—joining by video.
“Our actions in Ukraine are dictated by only one thing, to bring an end to the war that was unleashed by the West,” he said, with the flags of other BRICS countries behind him.
COMMENT – Yet more evidence that the world is dividing into opposing blocs with incompatible worldviews.
4. China’s economy is in trouble. Beijing hopes Raimondo can lend a hand.
Phelim Kine and Doug Palmer, Politico, August 18, 2023
The Commerce secretary is likely to get an earful about how U.S. export and investment restrictions are kneecapping China’s economy.
When Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo lands in Beijing for an expected visit next week she’s likely to hear an unprecedented request from her hosts: Help us with our struggling economy.
Raimondo’s long-anticipated visit coincides with a worsening downturn in China’s financial health marked by plunging exports and foreign investment as well as soaring youth unemployment. The latest data suggest that the once-unstoppable economic juggernaut has finally hit a serious pothole.
That’s a diagnosis that both President Joe Biden and Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping agree on. Xi warned his senior leadership last month in notably frank terms that “China‘s economy is facing new difficulties and challenges.” Biden piled on earlier this month, hinting that China’s economic woes could pose domestic stability risks for Xi.
“China is in trouble,” Biden told donors at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Utah. “They have got some problems — that’s not good, because when bad folks have problems, they do bad things.”
Commerce Department officials did not immediately respond to a request to confirm the timing of Raimondo’s trip, which administration officials have said for months she was hoping to take.
“The relevant information will be released in due course,” Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told POLITICO when asked to confirm Raimondo’s upcoming Beijing visit.
The trip puts Raimondo in an awkward position. Biden’s Commerce chief will be promoting U.S. exports while likely being pressured by Chinese officials to ease up on long-standing trade restrictions and “de-risking” measures the administration has taken over the past year. They include export restrictions on high-end semiconductors rolled out in October and Biden’s executive order issued earlier this month curbing U.S. investment in sectors of the Chinese economy including quantum computing and artificial intelligence.
The visit will also be closely watched on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers are questioning whether Raimondo’s trip is even worth it given the scant returns of recent visits by her cabinet colleagues. They’re also warning her not to signal any softening of export restrictions aimed at cutting China off from U.S. technologies such as advanced microchips.
“We urge you, prior to your trip, to publicly clarify that U.S. export controls are non-negotiable, and that the PRC should expect more, not less, U.S. export controls moving forward,” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP; House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and other lawmakers wrote in a letter to Raimondo on Friday.
COMMENT – This visit to Beijing by Commerce Secretary Raimondo doesn’t make much sense.
The optics of her visit (American confidence in the Chinese economy and the need for Sino-American commercial ties) favor the PRC far more than it furthers U.S. interests.
Her time would have been far better spent in places like Tokyo, Seoul, Delhi, Jakarta, Singapore, or Kuala Lumpur to further the agenda of IPEF (Indo-Pacific Economic Framework). By going to Beijing, political and business leaders in IPEF countries must be scratching their heads… is the United States committed to “strengthening ties with allies and partners and tackling 21st-century economic challenges in the Indo-Pacific region” or is Washington looking for some sort of condominium with Beijing at their expense? Or is Washington simply confused and paralyzed, unable to pick a strategy and pursue it with vigor?
I suspect that Secretary Raimondo is under significant pressure from various special interests in the United States to conduct this trip, groups that are anxious to protect their own narrow financial interests in the PRC and who are deeply opposed to initiatives like IPEF. These “friends of China” have been working on behalf of the Party to shape the Administration’s policies to be more accommodative of the party’s interests (side-eye at Nvidia).
Hank Paulson, the former head of Goldman Sachs and Bush Administration Treasury Secretary, channeled the anxieties of these groups and spoke for the “friends of China” in his OpEd this week that called for ‘bailing-out’ the PRC economy (which has become ‘too big to fail’ in his opinion).
As I’ve written before, this ‘kaleidoscope strategy’ is extremely confusing as it seeks to be all things to all people. For those who think the United States should pull together an international coalition to deter and contain a growing Sino-Russian entente, there is AUKUS, the G7 Meetings, the Trilateral Summit, export controls and investment restrictions. For those who want détente with Beijing and a pseudo-G2, there are the speeches by Secretary Yellen which advocates a strong U.S.-PRC economic relationship, these visits to Beijing by economic policy makers, a refusal to expand defense spending, and efforts to narrowly constrain activities that might undermine the Chinese economy (‘small yard, high fence with many holes’).
While I suspect the Administration views this approach as a ‘Goldilocks’ strategy, the likely consequences of this approach are that we achieve little progress towards furthering U.S. interests and simply exacerbate our strategic problem. Our actions aren’t sufficient to reassure Beijing, nor are our actions sufficient to prepare for even more intense geopolitical rivalry.
At the very least, the Biden Administration should have insisted that Raimondo’s visit to Beijing (which Beijing will use to prop up domestic and international confidence in the Chinese economy more than it achieves any U.S. objectives) be predicated on the reopening of a dialogue between Defense Secretary Austin and his counterpart, General Li Shangfu – something the Administration has repeatedly said is “an absolutely critical way [for the two countries] to manage competition.”
To then capitulate on the reopening of Military-to-Military talks and proceed with Cabinet-level visits that Beijing desires (both Treasury Secretary Yellen and Commerce Secretary Raimondo) suggests that the White House has lost control of its China policy as individual Departments and Agencies pursue their own diplomacy.
5. Identifying potential emerging human rights implications in Chinese smart cities via machine-learning aided patent analysis
Joss Wright, Valentin Weber, and Gregory Finn Walton, Internet Policy Review, July 28, 2023
In this work, we investigate smart city technologies primarily through an examination of trends in patent filing. We apply machine learning methods both to explore the increasing rates of patent filing globally for smart city technologies, and also to identify the emerging topics on which companies are choosing to focus their efforts.
We focus particularly on deployed and emerging urban systems-of-systems in China, which represent a high proportion of patents filed for smart city technologies, with a view to their potential global impacts. As a leading source of innovation in the development of smart cities, Chinese patent filing exerts significant influence on similar technologies adopted globally.
Our global patent analysis highlights emerging trends in smart city innovations, and the increased adoption of technologies and processes that present significant human rights concerns, especially concerns to privacy, freedom of expression, and assembly.
COMMENT – Much more needs to be done to prevent these technical tools of repression from being adopted by ruling elites who are most susceptible to the CCP’s efforts to build a world that rejects liberalism.
See the next article…
6. In Tanzania, Beijing is running a training school for authoritarianism
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Axios, August 20, 2023
The Chinese Communist Party is teaching African leaders its authoritarian alternative to democracy at its first overseas training school — the strongest evidence yet that Beijing is exporting its model of governing in its push to challenge the Western-led world order.
Why it matters: The Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School in Tanzania is Beijing’s counter to efforts by the U.S. and other Western countries to shape African politics in a fight for influence on a continent rich in raw materials and energy. At the school, the CCP teaches how it fuses the ruling political party and the state, marking a clear departure from Beijing’s previous, more subtle attempts to peddle influence on the international stage.
Cultivating an authoritarian-friendly political bloc could help China reshape global institutions and guarantee markets as Western sanctions seek to isolate certain Chinese industries. Such a bloc would also help the CCP deflect criticism for its human rights record and gain international support for its core interests, such as its territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Chinese and African government officials and Chinese state media have presented the school as a way to promote Africa’s economic and social development, and they’ve cast the CCP’s approach there as a way to alleviate poverty and spur economic development through training effective leaders.
But behind the school’s closed doors, economics takes a back seat to political training. Chinese teachers sent from Beijing train African leaders that the ruling party should sit above the government and the courts and that fierce discipline within the party can ensure adherence to party ideology, Axios and Danish newspaper Politiken learned as the first Western news outlets to visit the school.
Through interviews with African officials who have participated in or observed the training, Axios and Politiken found evidence that the school’s program contradicts CCP officials’ repeated assertion — and many scholars’ views — that Beijing isn’t exporting its authoritarian model for governing.
“There’s been a reluctance from a lot of scholars to say that China is clearly trying to export authoritarianism,” said Daniel Mattingly, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University whose research focuses on authoritarian politics in China. It’s “remarkable,” he said, that there are students who leave the school with the perception that “we need to move to a much stronger one-party state model.”
COMMENT – For years I’ve heard from some China experts that Beijing has no interest in “exporting” its ideology and does not want to undermine democracy (“Not since the days of Mao Zedong has China sought to export revolution or topple democracy.”). Some go so far to assert that there is scholarly consensus that Beijing rejects overturning the international system (“Instead, these documents pit the United States and other democracies against China by accusing it of deliberately striving to overturn the entire global order, a preposterous notion belied by the historical record and scholarly consensus.”). In many cases these “experts” simply channel their own desired worldview and take the Party’s propagandists at their word, rather than conduct any serious investigation of what the Party is doing.
Hopefully, on-the-ground reporting like this by Axios of ideological indoctrination can start to dispel these myths.
Anti-liberal ideology sits at the center of the Party’s domestic AND international activities.
7. Booming Trade with China Helps Boost Russia’s War Effort
Austin Ramzy and Jason Douglas, Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2023
Chinese exports to its neighbor have risen sharply, as Beijing sends everything from microchips to trench-digging excavators.
China is playing an increasingly important role in propping up Russia’s economy and helping boost its war effort, with recent trade data showing Beijing providing a range of goods, including some with potential military applications such as microchips and trench-digging excavators.
China has become the principal source of many of the goods and components Russia’s sanctions-hit economy needs, while also giving Moscow a buyer for its oil and gas. The growing economic relationship is a central piece of the efforts by the two countries to unite against what their leaders describe as Western efforts to contain them.
China’s total trade with Russia in the first seven months of this year jumped 36% from the same period a year earlier, to $134 billion, putting Moscow just behind Australia and Taiwan on the list of China’s biggest trading partners, according to trade data released last week. A breakdown of the data released Sunday showed that rising trade in energy, automobiles and electronics equipment has been driving the deepening economic ties.
COMMENT – Beijing provides Moscow with everything it needs to continue to prosecute its illegal war against Ukraine, all while providing enough ‘plausible deniability’ so that Europe, the United States, and Japan convince themselves that they are deterring Beijing.
Just as the West has come to conclude that aiding Ukraine won’t provoke an attack by Moscow on NATO, Beijing has come to conclude that aiding Russia won’t provoke meaningful sanctions on the People’s Republic. This allows Xi to avoid a painful dilemma.
If Washington, Brussels, and Tokyo could bring themselves to implement significant sanctions on an already weaken Chinese economy, it could push Xi and his cadres to re-evaluate their strategic calculus and force them to reconsider their support to Russia.
Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen as leaders in Western capitals have made it abundantly clear that they will NOT impose sanctions even if Beijing increases its material support for Moscow. Rather than deterring Beijing from aiding Moscow, Beijing has effectively deterred its rivals from imposing costs for its support to Moscow.
In the long run, this situation favors Beijing and Moscow.
Xi and Putin likely conclude that they can outlast the West, particularly as both Beijing and Moscow continue to wage well-resourced and mutually supporting political warfare campaigns against Washington, Brussels and Tokyo, seeking to accentuate partisan divisions and bring about cracks in G7 unity.
This does not bode well for us.
Authoritarianism
8. China investigates citizen accused of spying for CIA -security ministry
Reuters, August 21, 2023
9. Xi's apparatchiks will struggle to revive economy
Amy Chew, Nikkei Asia, August 19, 2023
President's inner circle lacks global trade and finance know-how, Willy Lam warns.
China's economy is unlikely to recover anytime soon because President Xi Jinping's inner circle is mostly filled with apparatchiks rather than technocrats with the know-how to revive sagging growth, warns noted China watcher Willy Lam.
The slowdown in the world's second-largest economy will likely be exacerbated by Xi's policy of prioritizing geopolitics and national security over economics in the face of rising competition with the U.S. and its Western allies, says Lam, author of the new book "Xi Jinping: The Hidden Agendas of China's Ruler for Life," which was released last week.
10. Don’t Count the Dictators Out
Lucan Ahmad Way, Foreign Affairs, June 20, 2023
11. Anti-Corruption Campaign in China’s Medical Sector: Unmasking the Hidden Agenda
Yanzhong Huang, Council on Foreign Relations, August 18, 2023
12. No explanation as Xi Jinping unexpectedly skips his speech at BRICS forum
Jevans Nyabiage, South China Morning Post, August 23, 2023
13. China urges BRICS to become geopolitical rival to G7
Joseph Cotterill, James Kynge and Michael Pooler, Financial Times, August 10, 2023
14. U.S., China Try to Draw Nations to Their Side as Divisions Harden
Peter Landers and Dasl Yoon, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2023
15. AUDIO - Drum Tower: For richer, for poorer
The Economist, August 22, 2023
16. Hong Kong Seeks Public Help in Purging Library Books
Cindy Sui, Voice of America, August 17, 2023
An invitation from Hong Kong authorities for citizens to report public library books that “endanger national security” has sent chills through the port city, analysts and some residents say. Some worry authorities are adopting tactics similar to those used in China and during the Cultural Revolution, others say the move will only further harm the city’s already tarnished image as a place that’s no longer free.
In 2021, Hong Kong Public Libraries (HKPL) began reviewing books for potential breaches of the national security law (NSL) imposed by Beijing in 2020 to restore order in the city, which was rocked by weeks of sometimes violent protests in 2019 against a proposed, then rescinded, extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be sent to China for trial.
In April, the government announced the library system had completed a preliminary review of its extensive collection, which has more than 15 million books and other items.
No data was provided on how many books had been removed, but hundreds of titles are reported to have been gotten rid of according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper, which has been tracking the purge.
In July, the government took the campaign one step further by inviting library users to help rid shelves of books violating the security law and setting up new channels for such reporting, including through emails and online or paper forms.
The law penalizes secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces, with penalties as severe as life imprisonment.
17. China Punishes U.S. Due-Diligence Firm Mintz Over Statistical Work
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2023
18. China casts a shadow over opening of Biden’s Japan-S.Korea trilateral summit
Phelim Kine, Politico, August 18, 2023
19. South Korea, India rebuke Beijing over South China Sea claims
Ryo Nakamura, Nikkei Asia, August 21, 2023
South Korea and India have joined the U.S., Japan and European countries in supporting the Philippines in its maritime disputes with Beijing in the South China Sea, as China's recent use of water cannon against a Philippine resupply ship creates a global backlash.
20. ‘I want to open my eyes’: more Chinese students join rat race to study abroad
Beata Mo, South China Morning Post, August 21, 2023
21. China targets Taiwanese mangoes in latest import suspension
Reuters, The Asahi Shimbun, August 21, 2023
Environmental Harms
22. VIDEO - Abandoned EVs Start to Pile Up in Cities Across China
Daybreak Asia, Bloomberg, August 18, 2023
23. China Must Pay a Price for Climate Inaction
Thom Woodroofe, Foreign Policy, August 18, 2023
24. China’s Nickel Plants in Indonesia Created Needed Jobs, and Pollution
Peter S. Goodman, New York Times, August 18, 2023
Foreign Interference and Coercion
25. Don’t say hostile state, Foreign Office tells staff
Matt Dathan, Times of London, August 21, 2023
The Foreign Office has told government officials not to use the term “hostile state” in case it upsets China.
Use of the phrase has been effectively banned in government documents and routine internal communications on email and WhatsApp between civil servants, ministers, and advisers.
A government official in another department had a recent submission knocked back by the Foreign Office and asked for an explanation. The Foreign Office told the official: “States aren’t inherently hostile themselves, they just do hostile things.”
The change in language is understood to be part of an effort to improve diplomatic relations with China. However, it has also meant that the government no longer refers to Russia, North Korea, or Iran as “hostile states”.
COMMENT – This is just incredibly foolish.
26. Chinese Consulates task Chinese students in aggressive intelligence ops: Canadian intelligence
Sam Cooper, The Bureau, August 17, 2023
The Bureau's exclusive investigative series finds Chinese student associations are a dominant force in Beijing's election interference and attacks on political figures.
Beijing’s top diplomats in Canada are tasking and likely funding Chinese student associations in aggressive intelligence operations that include “monitoring and coercing” other students and university officials, Canadian intelligence documents allege.
According to CSIS investigations, these operations include a Consul General tasking Chinese students to investigate and gather intelligence on the family of an alleged Chinese economic fugitive.
The allegations are disclosed in a June 2019 “Canadian Eyes Only” draft report for Prime Minister Trudeau produced by NSICOP, a bipartisan intelligence review body.
The document, reviewed exclusively by The Bureau, describes how Chinese diplomats in Canada have deeply infiltrated campuses, cleverly leveraging the protected spaces of higher education to attack the nation’s democratic and economic institutions.
“They seek to utilize the open and innovative features of these institutions to further their own objectives, which include interference activities but also other actions with hostile intent (e.g. espionage and intellectual property theft),” the NSICOP report says.
Russian officials are also interfering in Canada, NSICOP says, using “proxies” in universities to foster narratives in support of Moscow’s aggressions against Ukraine.
But the report’s most significant revelations, add greater clarity to an emerging picture of the co-conspirators and organization Beijing is employing to subvert elections and threaten politicians on Canadian soil, while underlining The Bureau’s findings, that Trudeau’s administration has long known of China’s increasing threats, without countering the damage.
Foreign interference, according to Canada’s intelligence and that of Australia and New Zealand, mainly works by targeting diaspora communities and using proxies to complete hostile tasks that undermine democracies.
In Canada, unfortunately, Chinese students have become a major proxy force in Communist Party schemes.
The June 2019 NSICOP document says the “state actors” in Beijing’s hybrid attacks on Canada include Chinese diplomats, military and intelligence operatives and United Front Work units, but also "non-government assets” including “the media, Chinese student associations, academics.”
27. The Battle to Ban TikTok and the Man at the Center of It
Meghan Bobrowsky and Stu Woo, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2023
28. Triads, Snakeheads, and Flying Money: The Underworld of Chinese Criminal Networks in Latin America and the Caribbean
Leland Lazarus and Alexander Gocso, Florida International University, August 2023
29. China’s blueprint for an alternative world order
James Kynge, Financial Times, August 22, 2023
30. Wall Street’s China Dreams Slip Away
Jack Pitcher and Rebecca Feng, Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2023
31. Japan’s release of radioactive water from Fukushima angers China
Chan Ho-him and Kana Inagaki, Financial Times, August 22, 2023
32. Hong Kong to ban some Japanese seafood from Aug 24
Reuters, August 22, 2023
33. The AIIB’s former communications chief on why he blew the whistle
The Economist, August 17, 2023
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
34. EV battery imports face scrutiny under US law on Chinese forced labor
Nichola Groom, Reuters, August 20, 2023
35. The Real Risks of Doing Business in China
Benedict Rogers, Foreign Policy, August 17, 2023
36. U.S. to Sanction Chinese Officials for Forcible Assimilation of Tibetans
James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2023
37. Sinicization Attacks Mosques in Beijing as Well
Chen Tao, Bitter Winter, August 21, 2023
The famous Doudian Mosque and the Songyu Mosque have lost their trademark Islamic features and now look like non-Muslim Chinese temples.
38. Massive Campaign Against “Xie Jiao and Illegal Religion” Targets Children in Guangxi
Liang Changpu, Bitter Winter, August 18, 2023
Rongxian County, in Guangxi province, with a population of 700,000, witnessed between June and July 2023 a massive effort to indoctrinate primary and middle school children against “xie jiao and illegal religion.” What started by illustrating the harms of the “xie jiao” (movements banned for spreading “heterodox teachings,” sometimes less correctly translated as “cults”), quickly extended to denouncing “illegal religion” and criticizing religion in general as “anti-scientific.”
Children in some cases as young as six were led to repeat slogan hailing “science” and denouncing “feudal superstition.” Games, exercises, lectures, and even nursery rhymes were mobilized to impress the pupils.
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
39. China's property downturn spreads to trophy office buildings
Echo Wong, Ck Tan, and Peggy Ye, Nikkei Asia, August 21, 2023
40. Beijing hints at changing trade pact with Taiwan amid probe into tariffs
Josephine Ma, South China Morning Post, August 18, 2023
41. Arm’s IPO filing is riddled with anxieties over China
Faustine Ngila, Quartz, August 22, 2023
42. Ex-Goldman Head John Thornton Joins Lenovo Board
Kelsey Cheng and Zhang Erchi, Caixin, August 21, 2023
U.S. businessman and China expert John Thornton has joined Lenovo Group Ltd. as an independent non-executive director and a member of the company’s Nomination and Governance Committee, the Chinese computer-maker said.
“John brings a wealth of global leadership, insight, and perspective built up over a distinguished career across many different industries, including financial management, merger and acquisition, international business, global partnerships, and risk management and government and regulatory affairs. His extensive global experience and relationships will prove invaluable to Lenovo,” said Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing in a company statement Friday.
COMMENT – John Thornton has been a key player in helping Beijing influence U.S. policy in Washington for years. His endowment to the Brookings Institution, one of the most illustrious think tanks, of a China Center with his name is just one example.
For those who are interested, you might watch Thornton give a lecture at the University of Texas in May 2023… the Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs, JR DeShazo, an environmentalist, serves up a bunch softball questions and indulgences Thornton at every turn as he praises the PRC’s leaders as wise and dedicated to bettering the lives of their people and then blames America for everything wrong in the world.
Thornton has most of his career trying to help Beijing create an international environment that is favorable to the Chinese Communist Party… under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, he likely qualifies as a “foreign agent.” The video is almost an hour-long string of Party talking points.
It is a nauseating video when one considers how wealthy Thornton has become as a shill for the Party and his deep antipathy for those who suffer under the brutality of the Chinese Communist Party.
43. China’s Japanification
Robin Wigglesworth, Financial Times, August 18, 2023
44. Popeyes takes on KFC, McDonald’s with major expansion drive in China
Daniel Ren, South China Morning Post, August 21, 2023
45. China urgently needs to address economic uncertainty - EU business group chief
Laurie Chen, Reuters, August 22, 2023
46. Chinese Officials Meet with Foreign Firms to Ease Data Law Fears
Sarah Zheng, Bloomberg, August 17, 2023
47. Ant Group Will Cut Foreign Investors Out of Fast-Growing Database Business
Jing Yang, The Information, August 22, 2023
48. Nike Eyes Record Losing Streak on China Concern, Inventory Woes
Katrina Compoli, Bloomberg, August 22, 2023
49. Advancing Indo-Pacific Economic Cooperation: DFC, JBIC, and Korea Eximbank Sign MOU to Collaborate on Infrastructure Investments
U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, August 18, 2023
50. Investors Fear a Financial Contagion in China
Rebecca Feng and Weilun Soon, Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2023
51. China’s 40-Year Boom Is Over. What Comes Next?
Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2023
The economic model that took the country from poverty to great-power status seems broken, and everywhere are signs of distress.
For decades, China powered its economy by investing in factories, skyscrapers and roads. The model sparked an extraordinary period of growth that lifted China out of poverty and turned it into a global giant whose export prowess washed across the globe.
Now the model is broken.
What worked when China was playing catch-up makes less sense now that the country is drowning in debt and running out of things to build. Parts of China are saddled with under-used bridges and airports. Millions of apartments are unoccupied. Returns on investment have sharply declined.
Signs of trouble extend beyond China’s dismal economic data to distant provinces, including Yunnan in the southwest, which recently said it would spend millions of dollars to build a new Covid-19 quarantine facility, nearly the size of three football fields, despite China having ended its “zero-Covid” policy months ago, and long after the world moved on from the pandemic.
Other localities are doing the same. With private investment weak and exports flagging, officials say they have little choice but to keep borrowing and building to stimulate their economies.
Economists now believe China is entering an era of much slower growth, made worse by unfavorable demographics and a widening divide with the U.S. and its allies, which is jeopardizing foreign investment and trade. Rather than just a period of economic weakness, this could be the dimming of a long era.
“We’re witnessing a gearshift in what has been the most dramatic trajectory in economic history,” said Adam Tooze, a Columbia University history professor who specializes in economic crises.
COMMENT - The recent economic problems in the PRC have convinced many in Washington that our geopolitical problem with the PRC will solve itself. This is deeply naïve.
52. German minister proposes tougher rules on Chinese foreign direct investment
Laura Pitel, Financial Times, August 20, 2023
53. As China Falls into Deflation, the Mood Turns Dark
Li Yuan, New York Times, August 21, 2023
54. State lawmakers move to ban Chinese land ownership near military bases
Kimberly Kindy, Washington Post, August 21, 2023
55. What China’s economic troubles mean for the world
The Economist, August 22, 2023
56. China’s cathode billionaire targets US battery market via South Korea IPO
Edward White, Christian Davies, Song Jung-a, and Gloria Li, Financial Times, August 22, 2023
Cyber & Information Technology
57. Huawei Building Secret Network for Chips, Trade Group Warns
Ian King and Debby Wu, Bloomberg, August 23, 2023
58. China leads in research on next-generation solar cells
Toru Tsunashima and Tamaki Kyozuka, Nikkei Asia, August 20, 2023
59. Chinese tech could break barrier to crucial defence and aerospace material
Zhang Tong, South China Morning Post, August 23, 2023
60. Russia’s Moon Failure a Dent to Its Space Partnership with China
Bruce Einhorn, Bloomberg, August 21, 2023
61. Beijing is coming for the metaverse
Gian Volpicelli, Politico, August 20, 2023
62. Is China a Leader in Quantum Technologies?
Brian Hart, Bonny Lin, Samantha Lu, Hannah Price, Yu-jie (Grace) Liao, Matthew Slade, China Power, August 14, 2023
63. Why China remains hungry for AI chips despite US restrictions
Richard Waters and Qianer Liu, Financial Times, August 21, 2023
Military and Security Threats
64. US transforming Guam into a missile defense fortress
Gabriel Honrada, Asia Times, August 14, 2023
65. Inside STRATCOM, the core of U.S. nuclear deterrence
Ken Moriyasu, Nikkei Asia, August 23, 2023
66. U.S. nuclear boss says China's arms program not slowing down
Ken Moriyasu, Nikkei Asia, August 18, 2023
67. Exposed: The Chinese spy using LinkedIn to hunt UK secrets
Fiona Hamilton, Times, August 23, 2023
68. South China Sea: Philippines resupplies Spratlys shoal troops
BBC, August 22, 2023
69. The United States and its allies must be ready to deter a two-front war and nuclear attacks in East Asia
Markus Garlauskas, Atlantic Council, August 16, 2023
70. Chinese Defense Minister Pushes Beijing's Global Security Blueprint During Trip to Russia, Belarus
Reid Standish, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, August 18, 2023
71. Militant Attack In Pakistan's Balochistan Targets Chinese Engineers
RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, August 13, 2023
72. These technologies could defeat China’s missile barrage and defend Taiwan
Jim Mitre and Ylber Bajraktari, Breaking Defense, August 22, 2023
73. China deploys swarm of satellites to monitor military exercises in Australia
Andrew Greene, ABC News, August 17, 2023
74. Pentagon biodefense review points to Chinese, Russian threats
Cate Cadell, Washington Post, August 17, 2023
75. Intelligence Agencies Warn Foreign Spies Are Targeting U.S. Space Companies
Julian E. Barnes, New York Times, August 18, 2023
76. China Launches Military Drills Near Taiwan After Vice President’s Stopovers in U.S.
Joyu Wang, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2023
77. A Defense Agreement Likely to Deepen Chinese Rancor
David Pierson and Olivia Wang, New York Times, August 19, 2023
78. China, U.S. Test Intelligent-Drone Swarms in Race for Military AI Dominance
Alastair Gale, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2023
79. Water Cannons and Lasers: South China Sea Standoff Around World War II-Era Ship Heats Up
Feliz Solomon, Wall Street Journal, August 17, 2023
One Belt, One Road Strategy
80. China Tries to Increase Its Clout in Africa Amid Rivalry with the U.S.
David Pierson and Lynsey Chutel, New York Times, August 23, 2023
81. Chinese-backed port project in Peru to be the 'gateway from South America to Asia,' official says
Franklin Briceño, AP News, August 23, 2023
Opinion Pieces
82. GOP Presidential Candidates Need to Talk About China
Mike Gallagher, Wall Street Journal, August 21, 2023
83. U.S.-China De-Risking Will Inevitably Escalate
James Crabtree, Foreign Policy, August 20, 2023
84. How to Kill Chinese Dynamism
Yasheng Huang, Project Syndicate, August 18, 2023
85. China: A slowdown sends tremors worldwide
The Week, August 19, 2023
86. Four key questions for US China policy
Denny Roy, Asia Times, August 18, 2023
87. China’s ‘whack-a-mole’ economic playbook leads to confusion
Stephen Roach, Financial Times, August 21, 2023
88. China is too big for a Soviet Union-style collapse, but it’s on shaky ground
Larry Elliot, The Guardian, August 20, 2023
89. One Summit, Three Allies, and a Very Important Message for China
Daniel Russel, New York Times, August 17, 2023
90. A lesson from China’s disappearing data: Nobody hides good news
Catherine Rampell, Washington Post, August 20, 2023
91. What just happened: Storm clouds loom for China’s economy
Sebastian Mallaby, Catherine Rampell, Lawrence H. Summers, Max Boot, Josh Rogin, David Ignatius, and Keith B. Richburg, Washington Post, August 18, 2023
92. Biden’s Success in North Asia . . .
The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2023
93. In Wuhan, doctors knew the truth. They were told to keep quiet.
The Editorial Board, Washington Post, August 22, 2023
94. Don’t Expect Big Tech to Bail Out China’s Economy
Tim Culpan, Bloomberg, August 20, 2023
95. A deep crisis in China would pose a choice for two leading powers
Henry M. Paulson Jr., Washington Post, August 21, 2023
96. China Is Acting More Like a Scrooge Than a Champion of Socialism
Minxin Pei, Bloomberg, August 14, 2023