Matt Turpin's China Articles - February 19, 2023
Friends,
PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken met yesterday on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. It appears that the meeting took days to organize and, true to form, Beijing sought to portray the United States as desperate for the meeting by claiming that Wang only agreed to do it “at the request of the U.S. side.”
Given my experience with PRC diplomats, I suspect the opposite is true.
Lots of material this week, I hope you find it helpful.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Getting Personal with State Propaganda
David Bandurski, China Media Project, January 25, 2023
A new university research center in Jiangxi province with the stated intent of exploiting international exchange students to further China’s external propaganda goals should alert universities around the world to the dangers of the CCP’s transactional view of friendships and exchanges.
Imagine you are a member of the international recruitment team at the University of Worcester in the UK, responsible for managing exchange programs with universities from China; or, alternatively, you are the president of the University of Northern Iowa, which has actively developed exchanges with Chinese universities. In either case, you would naturally expect your partners to engage in international exchanges, including yours, in good faith. You would expect them to uphold basic ethical and academic standards.
Now consider: How would you respond if you discovered that a Chinese university you partnered with had launched a specialized research center in partnership with that country’s Central Propaganda Department, whose purpose was to actively utilize foreign exchange students as “resources” for global propaganda?
Audacious though it may seem, such a scheme is already underway in China. It is one of the more egregious examples of how a range of actors in the country — including high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) bodies, state media, local governments, and universities — are responding to the top-down mandate from the CCP leadership to pursue greater “discourse power” around the world as a whole-society effort.
International Resources
Last month, Nanchang Aviation University (南昌航空大学), located in China’s southern Jiangxi province, announced that it had launched the “Jiangxi International Communication Research Center” (江西国际传播研究中心) in cooperation with the China Media Group, the state media conglomerate formed in 2018 directly under the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department. According to coverage by China Education Daily, a newspaper directly under the Ministry of Education, the new center is an experiment in combining central CCP media and universities (央媒+高校) to carry out international communication by using the “overseas student resources” (留学生资源) of the university.
Nanchang Aviation University has so far established cooperation with more than 70 universities in 20 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine. It reports that it currently has more than 1,600 international exchange students studying on campus in China. But the existence of the new center, and its exploitation of programs undertaken in the spirit of exchange, could also mean that Chinese students in programs overseas — like those in Worcester and Iowa — are enlisted for state communication work having no relation to their studies.
According to the China Education Daily report, the university had “taken the initiative in cooperating with the ‘international communication national team’ of China Radio International to invest lasting power in the university’s efforts at international communication capacity building.”
China Radio International (CRI) is China’s state-owned international radio broadcaster, which has now branched out into the production of multimedia content for the country’s external communication objectives. In order to achieve what Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called “telling China’s story well” (讲好中国的故事), enhancing the CCP’s influence on public opinion globally, CRI has partnered with local media abroad, and in some cases has sought to covertly influence content.
2. Chinese mobile masts loom over the Munich Security Conference
Louis Westendarp, Antoaneta Roussi, and Laurens Cerulus, Politico.eu, February 13, 2023
Huawei kit is set up around the venue, highlighting a sore point in Germany’s security ties with the US and allies.
As the world’s security elite gathers in Munich this week, they’ll be connecting their mobile phones to Chinese telecoms equipment surrounding the venue.
Heads of state, security chiefs, spooks and intelligence officials head to Germany on Friday for their blue-riband annual gathering, the Munich Security Conference. On the event’s VIP list are U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron and hundreds more heads of state and government, ministers and foreign dignitaries.
The gathering takes place at the five-star Hotel Bayerischer Hof. From its ice-themed Polar Bar on the hotel’s rooftop, you can overlook the city's skyline, spotting multiple telecommunications antennas poking between church steeples. Some of these antennas, within 300 meters of the hotel, are equipped with hardware supplied by controversial Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, POLITICO has learnt through visual confirmation, talks with several equipment experts and information from industry insiders with knowledge of the area’s networks.
One mast, on top of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof building itself, is also potentially equipped with Huawei gear, talks with two industry insiders suggested.
The question of whether to allow Chinese 5G suppliers into Western countries in past years became a bone of contention between Berlin on the one hand and Washington and like-minded partners on the other. This week’s gathering also comes as the U.S. continues to call out Germany’s economic reliance on Beijing, with a new report showing the German trade deficit with China exploded in 2022, and amid sky-high tensions between Washington and Beijing over surveillance balloons hovering over the U.S., Canada and elsewhere.
“The dependence on Huawei components in our 5G network continues to pose an incalculable security risk,” said Maximilian Funke-Kaiser, liberal member of the German Bundestag and digital policy speaker for the government party Free Democratic Party (FDP).
“The use of Huawei technology in the mobile network here runs counter to Germany's security policy goals,” Funke-Kaiser said, calling the vendor’s involvement in German 4G and 5G “a mistake in view of the Chinese company's closeness to the state.”
COMMENT – Given that there are European and Korean (as well as Japanese and American) alternatives to Huawei, it remains mind-boggling why the German Government refuses to cut its ties to Huawei.
Four years ago, during a trip to Berlin for consultations with the German Government, I took this photo of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church… a church that was partially destroyed in 1943 by allied bombers and intentionally not repaired to serve as a memorial against war and destruction.
In the photo, the belfry is wrapped in a Huawei advertisement.
An apt illustration of the PRC’s influence over Germany:
Photo taken by the author on May 5, 2019 at the Monkey Bar overlooking Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin.
3. WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation
Smriti Mallapaty, Nature, February 14, 2023
The World Health Organization (WHO) has quietly shelved the second phase of its much-anticipated scientific investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing ongoing challenges over attempts to conduct crucial studies in China, Nature has learned.
Researchers say they are disappointed that the investigation isn’t going ahead, because understanding how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people is important for preventing future outbreaks. But without access to China, there is little that the WHO can do to advance the studies, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. “Their hands are really tied.”
In January 2021, an international team of experts convened by the WHO travelled to Wuhan, China, where the virus that causes COVID-19 was first detected. Together with Chinese researchers, the team reviewed evidence on when and how the virus might have emerged, as part of phase one. The team released a report in March that year outlining four possible scenarios, the most likely being that SARS-CoV-2 spread from bats to people, possibly through an intermediate species. Phase one was designed to lay the groundwork for a second phase of in-depth studies to pin down exactly what happened in China and elsewhere.
But two years since that high-profile trip, the WHO has abandoned its phase-two plans. “There is no phase two,” Maria Van Kerkhove, an epidemiologist at the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, told Nature. The WHO planned for work to be done in phases, she said, but “that plan has changed”. “The politics across the world of this really hampered progress on understanding the origins,” she said.
4. Decoupling is not deglobalization
Noah Smith, Noahpinion Substack, February 15, 2023
"Protectionism vs. free trade" is not a good way of thinking about the changes facing the world economy.
As the push for decoupling with China gains steam, a number of voices in the financial press and international economic organizations are sounding a note of concern — or even panic. For example, here’s James Bacchus, a former WTO official and current Cato Institute adjunct:
Inescapable nowadays is the cascade of commentary announcing (and often celebrating) the “death” of globalization. Economic globalization is variously described as in “decline,” in “retreat,” in “reversal” and at an “end.”
To hasten the fait accompli of this “deglobalization,” we are “decoupling,” “reshoring” and “friend-shoring” in ways that will further fragment the global economy and undermine global institutions. The…demise of globalization is increasingly treated as a foregone conclusion…
[But] two recent studies...cast considerable doubt on the certainty of this conclusion. One, by researchers for the McKinsey Global Institute, reminds us of how interconnected the trade of the world truly is, and, thus, how hard it will be to disconnect it. The other, by staffers of the International Monetary Fund, warns us of the significant negative economic consequences that could result from full-blown global economic fragmentation.
Martin Wolf of the Financial Times takes a more measured tone, but worries about many of the same things, and cites a 2021 paper by Cerdeiro et al. on the costs of decoupling. And Adam Tooze declares that “the folks in Washington are cooking up something weird”, and identifies deglobalization with his concept of “polycrisis”.
Now, I do think there are plenty of dangers associated with decoupling, and there are bound to be costs as well (though perhaps also some under-appreciated benefits). But the way that many of decoupling’s critics are thinking about the issue just seems kind of confused; they talk as if decoupling, deglobalization, industrial policy, friend-shoring, “Buy American”, reshoring, and every other alternative to the trade patterns of the 2000s and 2010s are all one and the same. They are not one and the same. We are faced with a large menu of possible replacements for the old order, and conflating these options is unhelpful. Instead of wringing our hands and wishing for the world of 2015 to come back, we need to think productively about what comes next.
“Globalization” does not mean “Made in China”
One mistake I see the critics of decoupling make is that they almost instinctively equate globalization with the sourcing of production in China. Even Tooze seems to conflate these two things:
And trade trends between China and the rest of the world and between Emerging Markets hardly suggest a sudden stop to globalization. That dynamic of integration continues…
You can cleave to the old religion that economics always wins. In which case you dismiss the talk of deglobalization as journalistic hype…You could, for instance, cite the recent FT analysis which shows just how hard it is proving for Apple to disentangle itself from its Chinese supply chains.
Other commentators often do the same.
But although we might have gotten used to mentally equating globalization with “made in China” over the past two decades, those are obviously different things. If Apple moves an iPhone factory from China to India, and keeps selling the phones in the U.S, has the world “deglobalized” at all? No, not one bit. You still have the same amount of foreign direct investment and the same amount of trade. The only thing that changed is that now the factory is in India instead of China.
Decoupling doesn’t have to mean deglobalization, nor should it.
5. AUDIO – Are China and America heading towards a dangerous new era?
David Rennie and Alice Su, The Economist’s Drum Tower Podcast, February 14, 2023
Sino-American relations have been blown off course after the downing of a Chinese balloon.
The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, David Rennie, and our senior China correspondent, Alice Su, explore whether China and America are heading towards a stand-off and what needs to be done to avoid any escalation.
The historian John Delury unearths the roots of distrust between the two superpowers. And, Da Wei, director of Tsinghua University’s Centre for International Security and Strategy, weighs up whether Xi Jinping and Joe Biden are serious about managing their relationship.
COMMENT – The short answer to the question in the title of this podcast episode is: yes and we are already there.
6. Disengaged
Bob Davis, The Wire China, February 12, 2023
When an American missile punctured a Chinese spy balloon last week, it was a dramatic symbol of what many have long suspected: the U.S. policy of engagement with China has collapsed as completely as that balloon.
Engagement — the idea that if the U.S. wrapped China in a cocoon with Western economies a more liberal China would emerge — had a hell of a run and scored some big victories over the last half century. China’s economic reforms have lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and made the country a manufacturing powerhouse whose inexpensive exports helped slash the shopping bills of American consumers. China even worked with the U.S. to oppose the Soviet Union and limit the spread of nuclear weapons, after its fall.
But engagement ultimately failed to produce the political change and respect for human rights in China that American politicians and business leaders had all but promised it would. American leaders believed that engagement would weaken the Chinese Communist Party by building a middle class that demanded reform, while Chinese leaders saw engagement as a way to strengthen allegiance to the Party as the guarantor of prosperity.
COMMENT – Bob Davis, who co-authored the book Superpower Showdown with Lingling Wei, does a great job summarizing the state of U.S.-PRC relations. He does a much better job than the commentators who lazily trot out the “China Hawk” trope.
7. Italy is against altering ‘status quo’: minister
Kayleigh Madjar, Taipei Times, February 16, 2023
There must be no temptation to repeat elsewhere what Russia has done in Ukraine, Antonio Tajani said ahead of the arrival of Wang Yi.
Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Antonio Tajani on Tuesday said that his nation is aligned with the EU and NATO in opposing changes to the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, after China announced a diplomatic trip to Rome.
COMMENT – Just as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to arrive in Rome, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister announced publicly: “I want to be very clear: Taipei must remain as it is,” and “China is a strategic competitor.”
Just four short years ago, Rome was breaking with Brussels and Washington to sign a Belt and Road agreement with Beijing… now Wang Yi is in for a difficult visit. (See Silk Road opens a rift in Italy’s government)
8. The Many “One Chinas”: Multiple Approaches to Taiwan and China
Chong Ja Ian, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 9, 2023
Beijing says that over 180 countries accept its “one China principle” regarding Taiwan, but the reality is more complicated.
The past year saw yet more heated debate over definitions of what “one China” means. Beijing asserts that there is widespread international acceptance of and agreement with its “one China principle,” which sees Taiwan as part of a Chinese state represented by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The PRC accuses the United States of departing from what it claims is Washington’s long-standing acceptance of the PRC position, given U.S. efforts to improve cooperation and contact with Taipei. In reality, the United States’ “one China policy” states that Washington does not take a position on Taiwan’s sovereignty and merely “acknowledges” the existence of a Chinese position even as Washington officially recognizes the PRC as the government of China. The United States reserved the right to maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan as it sees fit. Taipei’s official position is that it is already independent as the Republic of China (Taiwan), whose jurisdiction covers Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen, Matsu, and other outlying islands.
As the PRC becomes more insistent regarding its claims over Taiwan, Beijing is seeking to leave a clearer imprint of its preferences on the discourse over “one China.” PRC officials are increasingly couching other states’ positions in terms of its “one China” principle, at times claiming that originally stated differences are new deviations from or infractions on earlier understandings. By fostering an impression of broad agreement, Beijing’s claims establish a sense of legitimacy and a seeming moral high ground from where Beijing can highlight what it sees as inconsistencies or even betrayal by others. Given its greater ability and willingness to press its case, Beijing has encountered limited international resistance. For those interested in tracking developments in PRC policies and narratives, such evolving conditions mean greater importance in appreciating the range of stances states adopt toward PRC claims over Taiwan. They can provide a starting point from which to assess statements by predecessors or those of neighbors and partners, as well as any actual shifts in positions.
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Based on the PRC’s Foreign Ministry website, Lee’s original data, and official documentation from other states, 51 countries now maintain positions on “one China” that substantively approach or replicate the PRC’s “one China principle” rather than the 181 countries that Beijing claims. In addition, the European Union recognizes the PRC as the sole legitimate government of China but maintains that it has and will develop relations and close cooperation with Taiwan on areas of common interest within this policy framework. In compiling the list, I included states whose “one China” position the PRC Foreign Ministry does not describe, such as Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, but is available in official materials elsewhere. I excluded states whose “one China” stances could not be confirmed from official sources.
COMMENT – Fascinating report on the variety of opinions and policies that countries have towards the PRC and its assertion of sovereignty over Taiwan. It seems clear that international opinion isn’t as solid as Beijing pretends.
I predict that this is only going to become more problematic for the Chinese Communist Party. The Taiwanese people increasingly identify themselves as Taiwanese and as countries examine the behavior of the PRC in other areas, Beijing’s shrill declarations about “One China” are bound to be met with skepticism.
This whole façade of One China-ness is bound to come crashing down.
AUTHORITARIANISM
9. China goes on the offensive as balloon fallout threatens to damage credibility
Nectar Gan and Selina Wang, CNN, February 14, 2023
It’s been about two weeks since a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon entered American airspace late last month. In that time China’s response has shifted from conciliatory to indignant, and now, as the fallout continues, to outright confrontational.
While China’s increasingly hardline stance plays to its domestic audience, it’s also served to expose the inconsistencies and inherent contradictions in Beijing’s messaging – severely damaging its credibility, analysts say.
On Monday, Beijing accused Washington of “illegally” flying high-altitude balloons over its airspace more than 10 times since last year, calling the US the “world’s largest surveillance empire.”
The claim – made without any detail or evidence – was swiftly denied by the White House, which described the allegation as “the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control.”
The accusation marks a notable escalation in China’s response, and stands in stark contrast to its initial attempt at crisis management. Beijing offered a rare expression of “regret” soon after the discovery of the balloon over Montana, claiming the device was a civilian research airship blown off course.
But the political and diplomatic repercussions have prevented the balloon incident from drawing to a close as quickly as Beijing might have hoped.
10. U.S. Weighs Sanctions for Chinese Companies Over Iran Surveillance Buildup
Benoit Faucon and Liza Lin, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2023
Beijing’s exports of video recorders to Iran more than doubled in 2022 as protests swept the country.
The U.S. is considering new sanctions on Chinese surveillance companies over sales to Iran’s security forces, officials familiar with the deliberations said, as Iranian authorities increasingly rely on the technology to crack down on protests.
U.S. authorities are in advanced discussions on the sanctions, according to the officials, and have zeroed in on Tiandy Technologies Co., a surveillance-equipment maker based in the eastern Chinese city of Tianjin whose products have been sold to units of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a hard-line paramilitary group.
COMMENT – Evidence of yet another proxy battle between Beijing and Washington. Washington would like to see the downfall of Tehran’s thuggish regime and a color revolution in Iran and Beijing is desperate to prevent that from happening. Each side is cautious on how far it will commit itself to undermine or support the regime in Tehran, but make no mistake Washington and Beijing increasingly see this as an active front in their own cold war.
11. In China’s Covid Fog, Deaths of Scholars Offer a Clue
Pablo Robles, Vivian Wang, and Joy Dong, New York Times, February 5, 2023
After Covid ripped uncontrolled through China, the government announced that 80,000 people had died. But that is likely a vast undercount. We scoured obituaries of the nation’s top academics for clues about the true toll of the outbreak.
We examined the obituaries published over the past four years by the state-backed Chinese Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The academies’ members, who are drawn from research institutions across the country, help shape national policy and steer research priorities. The engineering academy currently has about 900 members, and the science academy about 800, according to their websites.
The obituaries did not specify the scholars’ causes of death beyond “illness,” and the academies did not answer requests for more specifics. But the spike late last year coincided with the coronavirus’s rapid spread across the country.
Infections had already begun rising in the fall, despite China’s strict “zero Covid” policy of lockdowns and mass testing. Then, after the government suddenly abandoned the policy in early December, amid a flailing economy and protests in multiple cities, cases soared.
During that chaotic period, hospitals turned away patients and funeral homes staggered under the number of bodies. The government’s accounting, however, did not reflect those tragic scenes — for weeks it reported just three dozen deaths — and it drew widespread criticism for a lack of transparency.
The government has released more data in recent weeks, saying it recorded about 80,000 deaths since it lifted Covid restrictions. Still, many experts say that figure is likely an undercount, as it includes only people who died in hospitals; some have estimated that the death toll in China could exceed 1 million people in the coming months.
On Chinese social media, users have pointed to the skyrocketing number of obituaries published by places like the two academies, to suggest that the true number of deaths is much higher than the official figure.
Any count is likely to be incomplete because the government has largely abandoned Covid testing, including in hospitals, said Jin Dongyan, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong. “The reality is that even the government might not know everything,” he said.
“It’s the government’s job” to gather and share accurate information, Dr. Jin continued. “But they’re not doing their job.”
The deceased included molecular biologists, nuclear physicists and experts in agricultural chemistry. One academy member, Ma Jianzhang, 86, was a wildlife scientist who specialized in Siberian tigers. He helped establish the country’s only college for wildlife and nature reserves, and led groups including the China Zoological Society and the China Wildlife Conservation Association.
Reached by phone, a relative of Professor Ma said that she did not know whether he had contracted Covid, because he had not been tested. He had other underlying diseases, she added.
“To the outside world, he may be someone with great achievements or influence,” the relative, Fu Qun, said. “To our family, he was more important as a sort of spiritual leader. We all respected him very much.”
The data drawn from the obituaries are far from conclusive. The institutions also did not answer questions about whether the obituaries — both during the outbreak and before — were exhaustive of all scholars who had died.
Still, obituaries published by other institutions showed similar spikes in late December and early January.
From 2019 to 2021, the Harbin Institute of Technology, one of the top engineering schools in the world, had published between one and three obituaries for professors and staff members in those months. Between December and last month, it announced 29 deaths.
COMMENT – A fascinating and disturbing piece of investigative journalism by the New York Times.
12. China’s elderly protest against health insurance reforms
Sun Yu, Financial Times, February 15, 2023
Tens of thousands of Chinese pensioners took to the streets on Wednesday to protest against health insurance reforms that were introduced as cash-strapped city governments sought to control spending in the aftermath of China’s costly zero-Covid policy.
Video footage obtained by the Financial Times showed the mostly elderly demonstrators facing off against hundreds of police in the central city of Wuhan and the north-eastern port of Dalian over the healthcare overhaul, which they argue will lead to reduced benefits.
The crowds chanted slogans such as “down with the reactionary government” and sang “The Internationale”.
The protests followed a similar demonstration last week in Wuhan, where retirees gathered to oppose the government's move to divert money from a mandatory health savings plan for workers to a state-controlled outpatient insurance fund. The reform took effect on February 1 in Wuhan.
The demonstrations highlight the financial challenges facing Beijing as it seeks to shore up China’s underfunded healthcare system and care for a rapidly ageing population that declined for the first time in decades last year.
COMMENT – Not a good optic for the Chinese Communist Party as it spends millions on Belt and Road vanity projects.
13. How China Dealt a ‘Knockout Blow’ to Its Opponents in Hong Kong
Tiffany May, New York Times, February 5, 2023
Beijing used a national security law to quash dissent. Now another warning is being sent, with the mass trial of what was once Hong Kong’s political opposition.
Vaguely worded and broad in scope, the law was crafted and enacted from Beijing. It quickly transformed life in Hong Kong.
Boisterous demonstrations all but disappeared. Newsrooms were raided and shuttered. Labor unions, pro-democracy coalitions and other civil society groups disbanded, one after another.
Chinese officials have used the national security law, as it is called, to crack down on dissent in Hong Kong, essentially discarding the “one country, two systems” pledge that guaranteed the city a high degree of autonomy after Britain gave it back to China. In the last two years, more than 200 people have been arrested under the law, and more than 3,000 have been prosecuted on other charges over their roles in antigovernment protests.
Virtually all of Hong Kong’s opposition figures, longtime advocates for democracy, were detained on a single day in 2021. Forty-seven of them were charged with subversion under the new law, accused of conspiring in a plot to disrupt the local Beijing-backed government. Now, with most of the defendants having spent nearly two years behind bars, their trial begins on Monday, a stark reminder of how dangerous any kind of organized dissent has become.
COMMENT – The Chinese Communist Party has all but made political opposition in Hong Kong illegal… the conditions that made Hong Kong successful have been dismantled.
14. Hong Kong’s Pro-Democracy Leaders Held an Election. Now They’re on Trial.
Tiffany May and David Pierson, New York Times, February 6, 2023
Forty-seven defendants, including well-known figures like Joshua Wong, are charged with subversion under the national security law that China imposed in 2020.
15. The 47 Pro-Democracy Figures in Hong Kong’s Largest National Security Trial
K.K. Rebecca Lai, David Pierson, and Tiffany May, New York Times, February 6, 2023
Forty-seven pro-democracy figures in Hong Kong have been accused of a conspiracy to commit subversion in a landmark political case. Many of the defendants have been in jail for nearly two years while awaiting trial.
The case highlights the sweeping power of a national security law China imposed to tighten its grip on the city after massive anti-government protests. These are the politicians, academics and activists who are now facing prison sentences.
16. AUDIO – Hong Kong's biggest national security trial to date kicked off this week
Emily Feng, National Public Radio, February 7, 2023
The 16 activists are going to trial after they tried to organize a primary poll. It was meant to gauge how much political support they had before heading into legislative elections that were ultimately postponed. And that effort was seen as treasonous under a national security law Beijing pushed into action in 2020.
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The arrest of the political figureheads from many of these parties means that the limited multiparty governance of Hong Kong is over, and the law can be used to enforce the will of just one party - that of Beijing.
COMMENT – Independent civil society, independent media, and political opposition in Hong Kong are now gone.
17. China Weather Bureau Shake-Up Draws Scrutiny After Balloon Furor
Bloomberg, February 5, 2023
Official removed just after US said balloon was over country.
COMMENT – It would suck to be an official inside the Chinese Communist Party system… in order to maintain a fiction, this official get sacked and there’s no recourse. Zhuang Guotai, the now “former” chief of the national weather agency will likely never publish a tell-all book or get interviewed by independent journalists to tell his side of the story.
18. Optimization: Another Word for Messy
China Media Project, February 2, 2023
Over the past two months, the CCP leadership has sought to downplay the problems stemming from its sudden decision to dismantle rigid Covid control measures, insisting that all is going according to plan. State media have actively pushed the narrative that this has all been a skillful re-tooling of existing policies.
China’s sudden about-face on its rigid “zero Covid” policy in early December, which resulted in a tidal wave of infections across the country, was a public embarrassment for the Chinese Communist Party leadership. Accounts of hospitals and emergency rooms overwhelmed with severe cases, pharmacies cleaned out of basic fever-reducing medications like Ibuprofen, and bodies piling up at funeral homes pointed to a woeful lack of preparation — in spite of the coercive and all-consuming controls applied since the pandemic began.
The stark and often irrational contrasts in China’s Covid story prompted one internet user to muse wryly in a year-end recap:
Professional matters were handled with bullshit.
Bullshit matters were handled with professionalism.
Good things were done atrociously.
Atrocious things were done seamlessly.
How does an image-obsessed political system deal with the fallout after so many months of insisting that the costs of strict lockdown must be borne by all with a sense of sacrifice? Deny and reframe.
Over the past two months, the CCP leadership has sought to downplay drug shortages and other problems, insisting that all is going according to plan. State media have actively pushed the narrative that the sudden dismantling of rigid Covid control measures was simply a skillful re-tooling of existing policies. And one of the most important tools in this reframing process has been the phrase “optimize and adjust epidemic prevention and control measures” (优化调整疫情防控举措).
The notion that China “optimized” policies in December has now become an essential part of CCP propaganda, with the claim, supported by the selective use of foreign voices, that sudden changes in Covid policy were good not only for the health and livelihoods of Chinese citizens but for the development of the entire world.
19. WAY BACK MACHINE – Xi Jinping’s News Alert: Chinese Media Must Serve the Party
Edward Wong, New York Times, February 22, 2016
The Chinese news media covered President Xi Jinping’s most recent public appearances with adulation befitting a demigod.
Front-page headlines across the nation trumpeted Mr. Xi’s visits to the headquarters of the three main Communist Party and state news organizations on Friday. Photographs showed fawning journalists crowding around Mr. Xi, who sat at an anchor’s desk at the state television network. One media official wrote the president an adoring poem.
The blanket coverage reflected the brazen and far-reaching media policy announced by Mr. Xi on his choreographed tour: The Chinese news media exists to serve as a propaganda tool for the Communist Party, and it must pledge its fealty to Mr. Xi.
Though the party has been tightening its control over the media since Mr. Xi became the top leader in late 2012, the new policy removes any doubt that in the view of the president and party chief, the media should be first and foremost a party mouthpiece. Mr. Xi wants to push the party’s message domestically — and internationally — across all media platforms, including advertising and entertainment, scholars say. That is a shift from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who stressed the need for the state-run media to become more responsive to the modern digital environment and shape or channel public opinion.
“All news media run by the party must work to speak for the party’s will and its propositions, and protect the party’s authority and unity,” Mr. Xi told the gathered media officials on Friday, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.
Mr. Xi also wants to curb the presence of foreign media companies. Last week, government agencies announced a regulation that would prevent foreign companies from publishing and distributing content online in China. That could affect Microsoft, Apple and Amazon, among others.
Mr. Xi’s appearances on Friday were another major effort in his campaign to build a personality cult that equates him with the well-being of the party and the nation. The act of biao tai, or pledging loyalty, by newsroom leaders was one that Mr. Xi has demanded of military leaders and other important figures in the last year.
That tightening of control has come as Mr. Xi faces pressure about China’s economy, partywide corruption and widespread public frustration over pollution and environmental degradation.
An essay in China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, offered an explanation on Monday about why Mr. Xi was unveiling his policy now.
“It is necessary for the media to restore people’s trust in the party, especially as the economy has entered a new normal and suggestions that it is declining and dragging down the global economy have emerged,” the essay said.
“The nation’s media outlets are essential to political stability, and the leadership cannot afford to wait for them to catch up with the times,” it said.
Mr. Xi’s directives would also make it harder for foreign governments to determine which Chinese journalists operating in their countries are legitimate news gatherers and which ones are agents serving propaganda, intelligence or other official interests. The major party and state-run news organizations have been greatly expanding their operations overseas, including in the United States.
Mr. Xi’s new policy came about because “despite the continuing tightening of control of the media over the last three years, Xi is not fully assured that the state media, even the most central ones such as Xinhua and CCTV, are fully under his control,” said Xiao Qiang, a scholar in Berkeley, Calif., who researches the party’s information control.
David Bandurski, the editor of the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, said that “under Xi Jinping, the centrality of the party is explicit for every single medium.”
“I think the sense is, ‘We own you, we run you, we tell you how things work,’ ” he said. “ ‘The party is the center, and you serve our agenda.’ This is much more central now, and it’s being defined for all media platforms, from social media to commercial media.”
On Monday, in a sign of how officials were embracing Mr. Xi’s new policy, a website managed by the propaganda unit of the Beijing municipal party committee attacked a popular property tycoon, Ren Zhiqiang, who had criticized Mr. Xi’s speech on Friday. The site accused Mr. Ren, a party member, of having “lost his party spirit” and “opposing the party” after he wrote on his microblog that the media should be serving the people and not the party. The posts by Mr. Ren have been deleted.
Under Mr. Xi, there has been a steady rollout of policies aimed at tightening control of every aspect of the media, including social networks, films and books.
The latest such regulation, announced last week by two agencies, said that starting March 10, foreign companies — even ones that form joint ventures with Chinese partners — would not be allowed to publish and distribute online content. Many foreign publishers and producers of online content aimed at a Chinese audience are based overseas, but a handful have significant operations or joint ventures in China that may be in jeopardy, including Microsoft and Apple, which has a Chinese App Store. Amazon sells e-books in China and operates Amazon.cn.
Articles on Mr. Xi’s policy speech, which was not immediately released in full, said the president also demanded that journalists and news organizations “strictly adhere to the news viewpoint of Marxism” and “raise high the banner” — phrases that mean advancing the interests of the party.
Mr. Xi’s policy has been building piecemeal. In 2013, the government began requiring all Chinese journalists to take a test in order to get their press cards renewed, with the aim, among other things, of getting news gatherers to “uphold the Marxist journalistic ideals more consciously.”
That year, China’s top legal bodies said the criminal charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” could apply to online speech. Since then, the authorities have used it as a cudgel to silence dissent on the Internet.
In several prominent cases, officials have persecuted journalists for everything from sharing information with foreigners to “spreading rumors” related to the stock markets and the economy.
Chinese news organizations, including formerly adventurous and commercially driven ones like Southern Weekly, are toeing the line. People’s Daily has become a publicity machine for Mr. Xi. On one day in December, his name appeared in 11 of the 12 headlines on the front page.
Some political analysts note that Mr. Xi’s attempts to impose total control over the media say as much about his personal insecurities as they do about any Marxist-Leninist ideological vision that he holds.
“The most important thing is for him to announce his absolute authority,” said Zhang Lifan, a historian. “He doesn’t feel effective and confident in dealing with problems, and he lacks a sense of security.”
Mr. Zhang added, “He worries the Chinese Communist Party will lose political power, and he also worries that his peers will shove him from his position.”
COMMENT – This piece is almost exactly 7 years old, but it deserves re-reading to appreciate how the Chinese Communist Party views journalism and the duty the news media has to protect and serve the Party.
20. WAY BACK MACHINE – How China uses the news media as a weapon in its propaganda war against the West
Raksha Kumar, Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, November 2, 2021
21. Mike Chinoy on the Art of China Watching
Jordyn Haime, The Wire China, February 12, 2023
The longtime China correspondent talks about his new book; the wall of secrecy created by the CCP; why China is particularly bad for foreign journalists now; and the consequences of the shrinking coverage of Chinese society.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
22. China must stop its coal industry
Noah Smith, Noahpinion Substack, February 16, 2023
Americans by now are very used to our own fossil fuel companies doing everything they can to block the transition to solar and wind. We’ve basically accepted that this is a political-economic problem that we have to overcome if we’re going to both fight climate change and invest in cheap new energy sources. But China hasn’t yet realized this, and it’s a big problem — especially for China, but also for the entire world.
First, some blunt facts. China is now the world’s chief emitter of carbon dioxide, dwarfing the U.S.
23. World’s critical fisheries endangered by corrupt leaders
Fu Ting, Grace Ekpu, and Hele Wieffering, PBS NewsHour, February 10, 2023
Stephen Akester, a fisheries management adviser who has worked in Africa and South Asia for four decades, said there is a long history of foreign companies — particularly from China — forging corrupt relationships with fisheries officials.
“They exploited the weakness of these governments for whom any kind of revenue was big money, even small dollars,” he said. “And that still continues today.”
In Gambia, a small West African nation nestled along Senegal’s coast, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Fisheries and Water Resources, Bamba Banja, was charged in 2021 with accepting a bribe from a Chinese company to free a vessel detained for illegal fishing.
According to charging documents, an employee of Golden Lead Company Limited told Gambian authorities that he and another shareholder in 2018 gave Banja 100,000 Gambian dalasi, or about $1,600, to release the ship. The case is ongoing; Banja’s lawyer told the AP that the fisheries secretary denies any wrongdoing.
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
24. TikTok’s Transparency Campaign Echoes Effort by Huawei to Ease Security Concerns
Georgia Wells and Stu Woo, Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2023
Chinese-owned app is taking steps that are similar to largely unsuccessful tactics used by the telecom giant.
TikTok is trying to win Washington’s trust with a playbook recalling the unsuccessful strategy that another Chinese-owned company, Huawei Technologies Co., took in the U.S. and swaths of Europe.
As part of its push to demonstrate openness to U.S. authorities, TikTok this week gave journalists a tour of what it calls its Transparency and Accountability Center. In an office park in this city next to Los Angeles, screens explained how TikTok moderates and recommends the short-form videos on its app.
25. Disney cuts ‘Simpsons’ episode with China labour camp reference in Hong Kong
Chan Ho-him, Financial Times, February 6, 2023
Missing programme on streaming platform mentions ‘camps where children make smartphones.’
26. BBC Says Producing Ads for China Propaganda Organs Is “Vital” For Funding Its Journalism
Jake Kanter, Deadline, February 13, 2023
The BBC has defended its decision to produce glossy adverts for Huawei and Chinese state media, saying the contracts are important to funding its international journalism.
Sean O’Hara, the BBC’s Executive Vice President of advertising, said the corporation reports on China “without fear or favour” despite a Deadline investigation revealing that it has commercial ties to China Global Television Network (CGTN) and other organs of the Chinese government.
“The commercial income generated from advertising provides vital investment in BBC News, ensuring that we are able to sustain our global network of journalists and continue to bring independent and impartial news to the UK and beyond. I’d like to assure you that it has no influence on our editorial output,” he said.
O’Hara made the remarks in a memo to Lord David Alton, a British lawmaker and member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. Alton called on the BBC to review commercial unit BBC StoryWorks’ ads for China, arguing that it was “simply not realistic to believe that commercial relationships with the Chinese Communist Party have no bearing on behaviour.”
Alton originally wrote to Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, who set out the governance arrangements for BBC StoryWorks. He passed Alton on to O’Hara, who heads up BBC StoryWorks, for more detail. O’Hara’s full email is below.
The BBC executive said: “All of our activity is subject to a rigorous compliance process, and in the case of the content we have created for Huawei and for CGTN, was referred for senior editorial approval outside of the division. Each decision is made on a case-by-case basis and is considered within the context of the situation at the time.”
He added that Alton’s concerns would be fed into regular reviews of StoryWorks guidelines to determine whether they “strike the right balance between achieving commercial income and safeguarding our reputation with audiences and other key stakeholders.”
In an investigation published in December, Deadline revealed that StoryWorks has partnered with at least 18 Chinese clients, including nine state-affiliated bodies. StoryWorks produced uncritical sponsored content for Huawei, despite concerns about its role in state-sponsored surveillance.
COMMENT – The BBC’s commercial arm (StoryWorks) produced the ad campaign for CGTN after the UK’s media regulator had withdrawn CGTN’s license to operate in the United Kingdom.
27. Chinese Propaganda, In a Local Paper Near You
David Bandurski, China Media Project, January 19, 2023
Recent reflections on China’s efforts at global influence in the CCP’s official newspaper suggest core Party media have made little real progress in developing their own international channels for communication since “going out” was defined as a key goal in the late 2000s — and that when it comes to foreign audiences, they just aren’t listening.
Raising the effectiveness of international communication has been a top political priority for China’s leaders since the late 2000s, rooted in the sense that the country’s comprehensive national power (CNP) and capacity for global influence are hampered by a deficit of soft power. In the Xi era, the sense of strategic urgency has deepened, with concern among Chinese Communist Party leaders that “the general pattern in international public opinion of western strength against our own weakness remains unchanged.”
Xi Jinping’s bid to close China’s gap in global discourse power (话语权) with the West has focused on remolding older CCP approaches to external propaganda (对外宣传) around the notion of strategic storytelling. The objective, first outlined in August 2013, is to “tell China’s story well,” which will enable the more effective transmission of “China’s voice.”
But crafting a credible and compelling narrative and finding ways for that narrative to effectively reach diverse audiences with widely varying demands is far easier said than done. As we approach the ten-year anniversary of Xi’s injunction to “tell the China story well,” it is not clear that China has become better or more effective in conducting external communication — even if it has become far more determined.
Global Delusions of Grandeur
Last month, as the CCP’s official People’s Daily reflected back on its accomplishments for 2022, it ran several articles on the issue of “comprehensively raising the effectiveness of international communication.” This included a December 22 article laying out the CCP’s strategic approaches to external communication, and a December 28 special feature detailing the ways the People’s Daily had applied its own efforts.
The pieces, juxtaposing policy approaches and concrete cases, offer a revealing summary of how the Party and its flagship newspaper approach the issue of external propaganda. And one clear takeaway for those who observe the broader question of Chinese influence is that core Party media have made little notable progress in developing their own international channels for communication since “going out” was defined as a key goal in the late 2000s.
Emily Tamkin, Foreign Policy, February 16, 2023
The trip began in France, with visits planned to Germany, Hungary, Italy—and Russia.
29. China threatens ‘countermeasures’ against US entities over balloon’s downing
Lauren Sforza, The Hill, February 15, 2023
China warned on Wednesday that it will take “countermeasures” against U.S. entities over the takedown of a suspected Chinese spy balloon earlier this month.
“China firmly opposes this and will take countermeasures in accordance with the law against the relevant U.S. entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said at a briefing, adding that Beijing will “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and its legitimate rights and interests.”
30. China Puts Lockheed, Raytheon on Trade Blacklist Over Taiwan Arms Sales
Dave Sebastian, Wall Street Journal, February 16, 2023
Commerce Ministry adds the American defense contractors to its ‘unreliable entities list’ prohibiting exports and imports.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
31. The Toll That Twitter’s Glitches Are Taking on Chinese Activists
Chang Che and Paul Mozur, New York Times, February 14, 2023
In November, Bao Pu, a veteran human rights activist who was visiting Beijing, posted videos on Twitter of university protests against China’s tough coronavirus lockdown orders. He gained over 10,000 followers in subsequent weeks.
But friends and fellow activists soon told him they were having a hard time finding his posts — and even his account — on Twitter.
“I was shocked,” said Mr. Bao, who is based in Hong Kong. He said he feared that Twitter was “putting a limit on the influence” that he could have.
More than 30 prominent Chinese dissidents and activists have experienced similar visibility problems on Twitter in recent months, according to interviews with nine of them and screenshots of search results. The activists’ accounts did not appear after a search of their Twitter names, the screenshots showed, though impostor accounts turned up. Three of the dissidents said their accounts had also been suspended with no warning and reinstated only after appeals.
32. Xinjiang governor cancels controversial trip to UK
Christina Gallardo, Politico.eu, February 14, 2023
The governor of the Chinese region of Xinjiang has canceled a visit to London planned for this week amid huge backlash from U.K. officials and human rights activists.
Erkin Tuniyaz, who had not been invited by the U.K. government, has decided against traveling to London, according to a U.K. official and campaigners pressing against his visit. Tuniyaz has also cancelled a trip to France and Belgium planned for later this week.
COMMENT - It is somewhat shameful that the UK Government wasn’t the one to cancel this meeting.
How could anyone in the Foreign Office think that this was a good idea?
33. How China’s police are ensnaring thousands of suspects abroad
The Economist, February 14, 2023
America’s federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) has a web page called “The China Threat”. It is often updated with links to news about the bureau’s efforts to counter it. Top of the list is the fbi’s investigation of a Chinese balloon that was shot down by an American fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on February 4th. But if you look closely there are plenty of other startling areas of Chinese subterfuge and surveillance. Among the most surprising is China’s pursuit of fugitives beyond its borders. The scale of activity globally is now staggering—involving many thousands of alleged miscreants—and it is increasingly straining relations with the West.
Police forces everywhere try to enlist the help of counterparts in other countries in nabbing those on the run. But China often skirts formalities. Last October Christopher Wray, the fbi’s director, accused China of “interfering with our independent judiciary, violating both our sovereignty and the norms of police conduct to run lawless intimidation campaigns here in our backyard”.
Since 2020 the fbi has charged 16 people, most of them Chinese citizens, with involvement in such activity. “We’re seeing the Chinese government resort to blackmail, threats of violence, stalking and kidnappings. They’ve actually engaged criminal organisations in the US, offering them bounties in hopes of successfully taking targets back to China,” said Mr Wray last year.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
34. ASML Says Ex-Employee in China Stole Chip Technology Data
Jordan Robertson and Cagan Koc, Bloomberg, February 15, 2023
Information stolen from shared storehouse of technical details. US ‘deeply concerned’ about allegations of economic espionage.
A China-based former employee of ASML Holding NV — a critical cog in the global semiconductor industry — stole data from a software system that the corporation uses to store technical information about its machinery.
The breach occurred in a repository that includes details of the lithography systems critical to producing some of the world’s most advanced chips, said people with knowledge of the situation. It was the first glimpse at the nature of the theft disclosed earlier Wednesday by ASML, which said a former worker in China had stolen confidential information but didn’t elaborate on what kind of data were taken.
35. ASML says ex-China employee misappropriated data relating to its critical chip technology
Arjun Kharpal, CNBC, February 15, 2023
ASML said Wednesday that it recently discovered the “misappropriation” of data related to its proprietary technology.
The Dutch firm said that it does not believe the alleged misappropriation is material to its business.
The security incident comes at a sensitive time for ASML and the government of the Netherlands.
They have been caught in the middle of a battle for tech supremacy between the U.S. and China.
36. Taiwan tells start-ups to shun mainland China and go to Japan instead, amid supply-chain decoupling
Ralph Jennings, South China Morning Post, February 6, 2023
Head of Taiwanese government-backed group says shift to Japan is being encouraged as ‘one of the new government policies’. But some say Taiwanese investors will objectively assess the long-term benefits and find that mainland China is still an economically sound destination.
37. Why Chinese AI and semiconductors could fall decades behind under US chip ban ‘blitz’
Liu Zhen, South China Morning Post, February 5, 2023
Washington’s latest move to restrict access to chip-making equipment dims Beijing’s hopes of buying from non-US suppliers such as the Netherlands. Without foreign technology, it could take at least 20 years for China to regain lost ground, according to industry consultant.
38. EV battery material suppliers brace for gluts as competition heats up
Rurika Imahashi, Nikkei Asia, February 6, 2023
Lithium, nickel producers expand as U.S. pushes for non-Chinese supplies.
39. Apple’s manufacturing shift to India hits stumbling blocks
Patrick McGee and John Reed, Financial Times, February 14, 2023
The iPhone maker is under pressure to unwind its China-orientated supply chain strategy following Covid disruption.
40. AUDIO – Pekingology: Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics
Jude Blanchette and Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, CSIS, February 16, 2023
In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette is joined by Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, Professor at the Department of International Economics, Government and Business at the Copenhagen Business School, to discuss his work on corporate governance in the Chinese state sector, focusing on his paper: “Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics: Party Organization in State-owned Enterprises.”
COMMENT – It is worth listening to Professor Brødsgaard’s research on how corporate governance works inside Chinese state-owned enterprises… spoiler alert: the CCP controls them at all levels despite their “corporate” veneer.
41. Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics: Party Organization in State-owned Enterprises
Kasper Ingeman Beck and Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard, China Quarterly, January 31, 2022
This article analyses the role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the corporate governance of Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs), including a case study of a central-level SOE holding group. Relying on official documents, secondary literature and interviews with enterprise managers, government officials and academics, the article documents how the CCP has actively formalized its role in Chinese business by embedding itself in the corporate governance structure of SOEs.
Through the application of Chinese indigenous administrative corporate governance concepts such as “bidirectional entry, cross appointment” and “three majors, one big,” the CCP has consolidated its dominance of enterprise decision-making procedures and personnel appointment and created a hybrid, Party-led model of corporate governance.
While this hybrid model can secure enterprise compliance, communication with higher state and Party organs, as well as long-term development planning, it is unlikely to help solve SOE efficiency problems and may even undermine other SOE reforms.
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
42. China is wary of Starlink, but has other priorities
Frédéric Lemaître, Le Monde, December 28, 2023
Built upon the control of information, the Chinese regime perceives Elon Musk's satellite constellation as a threat. Beijing's ambition is to 'access all space' within a radius of 60 to 100 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
In China, Elon Musk is like [the Roman god] Janus: he has two heads. On the one hand, he's an American who opened a mega-car factory in Shanghai in 2019 at the worst moment of the trade war between China and the United States, which cannot be fundamentally bad in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. Especially since neither human rights nor Taiwan's democratic future seem to be of much concern to Mr. Musk. As for the anti-communists, they don't hide their admiration for the libertarian who says out loud what many of them think in silence.
On the other hand, however, he's the founder of Starlink. For a regime that relies in part on the control of information, the myriad satellites launched by a partner company of the US Department of Defense represents a real threat. Acquiring a Starlink terminal is strictly prohibited in China. But there's more: according to a diplomatic letter sent by China to the United Nations, in December 2021, two satellites in the constellation nearly collided with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21.
On each occasion, according to Beijing, the Chinese space station had to take emergency evasive action. These incidents have added fuel to the fire constantly smoldering between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims to have sent several emails to the State Department to complain. The latter denies having received them. The Chinese military-industrial lobby has drawn its conclusions: "A combination of soft and hard measures would be required to render Starlink satellites inoperable and to destroy the constellation's operational system," wrote several researchers in an article published in April in the Modern Defense Technology journal.
43. How publishers are learning to create and distribute news on TikTok
Nic Newman, Oxford University’s Reuters Institute, December 8, 2022
Around half (49%) of top news publishers are now regularly publishing content on TikTok – based on lists drawn from our 2022 Digital News Report covering 44 markets.3 A large proportion of these have joined TikTok in the last year.
Publisher adoption is not evenly spread. The vast majority of Indonesian (90%), Australian (89%), Spanish (86%), French (86%), and UK (81%) publishers operate active accounts on TikTok, along with more than three-quarters in the United States (US) (77%), and around two-thirds in Brazil (68%). News organisations in Japan (31%), Italy (29%), Denmark (27%), and Bulgaria (7%) have been slower to move onto the platform.
News organisations are attracted by the fast-growing audience and younger demographic, but they are also motivated by the desire to provide reliable news, amid fears about widespread misinformation on the platform.
Other publishers are staying away or engaging cautiously. Some worry about the Chinese ownership of the platform and the potential implications for free speech; others fear that the ‘TikTok-ification of news’ risks trivialising important stories as well as undermining business models that depend on referral traffic from social networks.
COMMENT – TikTok’s growth as a platform for news should cause significant pause. Allowing a platform, under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, to opaquely determine which news stories users see across a broad swath of countries should be very concerning.
To reinforce this point, see the Pew Research Center study from October 2022 - More Americans are getting news on TikTok, bucking the trend on other social media sites. About 10% of Americans and a quarter of 18-29 year-olds report that they get their news from TikTok.
44. American Cloud Companies Face Challenge from China in Southeast Asia
Raffaele Huang, Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2023
China’s Alibaba, Huawei and Tencent are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in developing markets including Thailand, Indonesia.
U.S. cloud-computing companies, dominant globally, are facing intensifying competition from upstart Chinese rivals in Southeast Asia, offering a head-to-head look at how the two geopolitical rivals’ corporate champions stack up in a key technology.
45. China’s generative AI revolution is only just beginning
Greg Noone, Techmonitor, February 9, 2023
It’s a good time to buy Hanwang Technology – that, at least, was the message that spread like wildlife among China’s meme stock aficionados. Fuelled by a wave of enthusiasm in the country’s tech sector for all things ChatGPT, the firm’s share price has been steadily rising since January, fuelled not out of any public love for its e-books and tablets, but by a company statement claiming that its in-house natural language processing technology was inching closer to the generative AI service China had grown to love over the past few weeks.
Hanwang Technology’s actions quickly fell foul of stock market regulators, who demanded that the firm provide further details about its NLP software and confirm that it hadn’t been involved in any insider trading. The company isn’t alone, however, in trying to harness the wave of enthusiasm surrounding generative AI in China. Share prices for other firms involved in artificial intelligence research have jumped, while Baidu, China’s pre-eminent search engine, has announced its own version of ChatGPT build off its ERNIE 3.0 large language model – all while Chinese netizens continue to ask the generative AI to write screenplays and comment on the Zero Covid policy, despite the best efforts of state censors.
46. FBI sees growing Chinese hacking threat
Rebecca Klar and Ines Kagubare, The Hill, February 16, 2023
A top cyber law enforcement official is warning state officials from across the country about threats Chinese hackers pose to elections.
Cynthia Kaiser, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division, spoke at a National Association of Secretaries of State conference on Thursday, saying Chinese hackers are part of “a sea of things we’re concerned” about, CNN reported.
The FBI official warned U.S. states that Chinese hackers pose a “growing threat” and that their attempt to target political parties prior to the 2022 midterm election shows there will be “significant Chinese cyber activity… in the coming year,” the outlet reported.
Her statement follows rising tensions between the U.S. and the Chinese government after a suspected surveillance balloon from China was shot down by the U.S. military earlier this month.
In October, the FBI also warned that Chinese hackers were scanning the headquarters of state political parties for vulnerable systems they could potentially hack ahead of the midterms.
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
47. Philippines Says Chinese Ship Flashed Military-Grade Laser to Disrupt Coast Guard Mission
Feliz Solomon, Wall Street Journal, February 13, 2023
China’s coast guard used a military-grade laser to disrupt a resupply mission by the Philippines in the South China Sea, Philippine authorities said—the latest in a series of encounters that have raised tensions in the disputed waterway.
The Philippine coast guard said in a statement Monday that Chinese coast guard vessels accompanied by boats belonging to China’s maritime militia created a blockade Feb. 6 around an atoll known as Second Thomas Shoal, which China also claims. The statement said the Chinese vessels deliberately prevented Philippine vessels from reaching an outpost there that has been a source of contention between the two nations in the past.
A Philippine coast guard vessel was escorting the mission to deliver food and supplies to the BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era ship that was run aground in 1999 and has since been used as an outpost to uphold Philippine control over the shoal. As they neared the area, one Chinese coast guard vessel twice flashed a green light toward a Philippine vessel and temporarily blinded crew, the Philippine coast guard said.
“The deliberate blocking of the Philippine government ships to deliver food and supplies to our military personnel on board the BRP Sierra Madre is a blatant disregard for, and a clear violation of, Philippine sovereign rights,” the Philippine Coast Guard said. The Chinese ship “also made dangerous maneuvers by approaching about 150 yards” from the Philippine ship, it said.
COMMENT – For some, you may be getting a sense of déjà vu… and that’s because the PRC has a track record of doing this stuff.
See next article…
48. WAY BACK MACHINE – Two US airmen injured by Chinese lasers in Djibouti, DoD says
Aaron Mehta, Defense News, May 3, 2018
Two U.S. airmen suffered “minor” injuries as a result of the use of the Pentagon believes are Chinese-deployed lasers in Djibouti, the Defense Department’s chief spokeswoman said Thursday.
Dana White told reporters that the U.S. has formally lodged a diplomatic complaint, known as a demarche, with the Chinese government, requesting an investigation into the incident.
“This activity poses a true threat to our airmen,” White said. “It’s a serious matter, so we’re taking it very seriously.”
Maj. Sheryll Klinke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, confirmed to reporters after the briefing that the injuries were the result of one incident, in which two pilots of a C-130 aircraft were hit by a “military grade” laser. The pilots are not expected to suffer any long-term effects, Klinke said.
White did not have an exact number for how many incidents there had been, putting it between two and 10, all within the last few weeks. News of the injuries was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
COMMENT – And another example… against the Australians.
49. WAY BACK MACHINE – Australia says Chinese warship ‘illuminated’ one of its planes with a laser
Angus Watson and Brad Lendon, CNN, February 20, 2022
A Chinese warship allegedly used a laser to “illuminate” an Australian Air Force jet in what Canberra called a “serious safety incident” in a statement released on Saturday.
“Acts like this have the potential to endanger lives,” the statement from the Australian Defence Force said, adding it strongly condemns the “unprofessional and unsafe military conduct.”
Pilots targeted by laser attacks in the past have reported disorienting flashes, pain, spasms and spots in their vision and even temporary blindness.
“During critical phases of flight when the pilot does not have adequate time to recover, the consequences of laser exposure could be tragic,” a US Federal Aviation Administration document says.
The incident occurred on Thursday, the statement said, when an Australian P-8A aircraft, a reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare plane, was flying over the Arafura Sea, the body of water between Australia’s Northern Territory and the island of New Guinea to the north.
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) ship that pointed the laser at the Australian jet was one of two PLAN warships sailing east across the Arafura Sea at the time, the Australian military said.
It released photos of two Chinese ships with the statement, which, according to their hull numbers, are the guided-missile destroyer Hefei and the amphibious transport dock Jinggang Shan.
Australia did not say which of the two ships pointed the laser at the Australian aircraft.
After the incident, the Chinese ships passed through the Torres Strait into the Coral Sea, the statement said.
China had no immediate comment on the Australian allegations.
COMMENT – And another one…
50. WAY BACK MACHINE – US accuses China of using laser against Navy patrol plane
Ellen Mitchell, The Hill, February 27, 2020
The Navy said Thursday that a Chinese warship fired a military grade laser at a U.S. surveillance aircraft flying over the Pacific Ocean last week, calling the action “unsafe and unprofessional.”
The Navy P-8A surveillance aircraft was flying above international waters about 380 miles west of Guam on Feb. 17 when the laser was fired from a Chinese navy destroyer, according to a statement from U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The service said such acts “violate the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES), a multilateral agreement reached at the 2014 Western Pacific Naval Symposium to reduce the chance of an incident at sea.”
The Chinese destroyer’s actions were also inconsistent with a Memorandum of Understanding between the Defense Department and the People’s Republic of China Ministry of National Defense over rules of behavior for safety of air and maritime encounters.
The weapons-grade laser — which could potentially cause serious harm to service members as well as ship and aircraft systems — was not visible to the naked eye and was captured by a sensor onboard the U.S. aircraft.
The Pentagon has recorded more than 20 incidents since 2017 where lasers — believed to be Chinese — have been used to target U.S. aircraft in the Pacific and Africa.
The laser attacks most often happen in and around the East China Sea around busy shipping routes near disputed island chains.
In April 2018 personnel at the Chinese military base in Djibouti used lasers to interfere with U.S. military aircraft, which the Pentagon called “very serious incidents.”
COMMENT – As of early 2020, the U.S. Department of Defense had recorded more than 20 of these incidents where suspected PRC vessels targeted U.S. aircraft with military grade lasers.
It is malign behavior like this that drives a country, like the Philippines, to consider taking a step like the one in the next article…
51. Philippines considering trilateral defense pact with U.S. and Japan
Gabriel Dominguez, Japan Times, February 13, 2023
After signing separate defense deals with the United States and Japan, the Philippines is now also reviewing a proposed tripartite security pact with these countries amid tensions with China and concerns it could be pulled into a Taiwan conflict.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told Kyodo News that the proposal was discussed with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his five-day visit to Tokyo, which ended Sunday.
He said such a pact could be “a central element to … providing some sort of stability in the face of all these problems that we are seeing around us,” adding that it would also help strengthen trilateral ties in “confusing” and “dangerous” situations both in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.
COMMENT – It really is quite mind-boggling how much Beijing failed to capitalize on the opportunity available to them during the Administration of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. When Duterte came into office in mid-2016, he immediately backed away from the Philippines own arbitration case against the PRC and sought to distance himself from the United States.
However, during Duterte’s six years in office, Beijing’s own aggression and bullying of Manila made it impossible for Duterte to do what he seemed inclined to do when he entered office: align the Philippines with the PRC.
From a Chinese foreign policy perspective, the PRC’s actions towards Manila have been nothing short of disastrous.
If your objective is to break the U.S. alliance structure and peel nations away, then don’t antagonize and threaten them. Beijing’s own actions provide ample justification for strengthening a collective security arrangement AGAINST the PRC.
52. China Finds Itself with Limited Options After U.S. Shoots Down Balloon
Chris Buckley, New York Times, February 5, 2023
53. The Drone War in Ukraine Is Cheap, Deadly, and Made in China
Faine Greenwood, Foreign Policy, February 16, 2023
Almost a year after Russian tanks first began rolling over the border into Ukraine, a war many expected would be over within a month continues to grind on. It’s grimly reminiscent of European conflicts of the 20th century—but it’s also the first war in history where both sides have made extensive use of cheap, startlingly effective small drones, the kind that can be bought at electronics stores or built with simple hobby kits.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion, I knew two things for sure. First, that Ukraine was going to stun the world with what it could do with small do-it-yourself and consumer drones, a skillset that their drone hobbyists and tech experts had been tirelessly expanding ever since Russia’s earlier invasion in 2014 – efforts led by now-famous volunteer drone organizations like Aerorozvidka, whose members had become some of the world’s premier experts on building, modifying, and using small, cheap drones in warfare. Second, I knew that as an expert in both consumer and hobby drones, I was going to do my best to document what happened next.
54. U.S. tracked China spy balloon from launch on Hainan Island along unusual path
Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, and Jason Samenow, Washington Post, February 14, 2023
55. The Balloon Scientist and His Financier
Katrina Northrop, The Wire China, February 13, 2023
Unraveling the network of companies behind China’s balloon program.
On an October morning in 2007, Wu Zhe, an aircraft design expert at Beihang University, gave a lecture about the “military value of balloons.” He described why it was an area of key scientific research for China and explained different solutions for powering these unique aircraft. When he concluded, according to a university press release, his “erudite knowledge and brilliant speech” received multiple rounds of applause.
Nearly two decades later, Wu and his business partner, a tech investor and executive named Wang Dong, are at the center of a military-linked program that has sent balloons over the U.S. and other nations, setting off a diplomatic crisis in Washington. On February 4, after days of intense media coverage, the U.S. shot down one Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina, and has since shot down three more unidentified objects floating in American and Canadian airspace.
On Friday, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that it was leveling sanctions against six Chinese companies involved in the balloon program — which U.S. officials say aims to intercept communications and surveil the ground below, including sensitive military sites.
Records show that Wu and Wang are linked to four of the six sanctioned firms. The two men, according to data from WireScreen, have a complex network of companies involved in balloon and aerospace technologies, some of which are closely affiliated with the Chinese military but are not sanctioned by the U.S. government.
In a statement on Friday about the sanctions, Alan F. Estevez, the under secretary of commerce for industry and security, said that “today’s action makes clear that entities that seek to harm U.S. national security and sovereignty will be cut off from accessing U.S. technologies.” Neither of the two Chinese men, through their companies, responded to requests for comment.
56. Ottawa ends all research funding with Chinese military and state security institutions
Robert Fife and Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail, February 14, 2023
The federal government will no longer fund research with Chinese military and state security institutions and is urging the provinces and universities to adopt similar national-security measures.
Innovation Minister François-Phillipe Champagne announced late Tuesday that Ottawa has instructed the Canada Foundation for Innovation and federal research granting councils to screen funding requests from Canadian universities that are collaborating on sensitive research with China and other hostile states. Those granting agencies include the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, as well as the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Late last month, Mr. Champagne vowed to bring in new national-security rules to better protect cutting-edge science and technology from ending up in the hands of China and other hostile countries in response to an investigation by The Globe and Mail, which uncovered extensive collaboration between Canadian universities and Chinese military scientists.
The Globe reported on Jan. 30 that joint projects with China’s National University of Defence Technology (NUDT) included research on topics such as quantum cryptography, photonics and space science. Some of the Chinese military scientists who were involved are experts in missile performance and guidance systems, mobile robotics and automated surveillance.
“Grant applications that involve conducting research in a sensitive research area will not be funded if any of the researchers working on the project are affiliated with a university, research institute or laboratory connected to military, national defence or state security entities of foreign state actors that pose a risk to our national security,” Mr. Champagne said in a statement Tuesday.
COMMENT – Good move by the Canadian Government… and great job by the journalists at the Globe and Mail whose investigative reporting uncovered these collaborations that University administrators refused to do even the most basic due diligence on.
And here’s their reporting from two weeks ago…
57. Canadian universities conducting joint research with Chinese military scientists
Robert Fife and Steven Chase, The Globe and Mail, January 30, 2023
The joint research projects are generating knowledge that could help drive China’s defence sector in cutting-edge, high-tech industries.
58. Justice and Commerce Departments Announce Creation of Disruptive Technology Strike Force
U.S. Department of Justice, February 16, 2023
Today, the Department of Justice and the Department of Commerce are launching the Disruptive Technology Strike Force. Under the leadership of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the strike force will bring together experts throughout government – including the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and 14 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in 12 metropolitan regions across the country – to target illicit actors, strengthen supply chains and protect critical technological assets from being acquired or used by nation-state adversaries.
“Today, autocrats seek tactical advantage through the acquisition, use, and abuse of America’s most innovative technology. They use it to enhance their military capabilities, support mass surveillance programs that enable human rights abuses and all together undermine our values,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. “Using real-time intelligence and 21st century data analytics, the Disruptive Technology Strike Force will bring together the Justice and Commerce Departments’ expertise to strike back against adversaries trying to siphon off our most advanced technology, and to attack tomorrow’s national security threats today.”
“The Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security remains steadfast in our coordination with our federal partners at the Department of Justice and vigilant in our enforcement of our export controls,” said U.S. Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves. “This interagency strike force will further strengthen this shared national security priority.”
The strike force will be co-led by Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security.
When acquired by nation-state adversaries such as the People’s Republic of China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea, advanced technologies can be used in new or novel ways to enhance their military capabilities or support mass surveillance programs that enable human rights abuses. End users of national security concern seek technologies, including those related to supercomputing and exascale computing, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing equipment and materials, quantum computing, and biosciences. Although they have important commercial uses, technologies in these fields can threaten U.S. national security when used by adversaries for disruptive purposes, such as improving calculations in weapons design and testing; improving the speed and accuracy of military or intelligence decision-making; and breaking or developing unbreakable encryption algorithms that protect sensitive communications and classified information.
“The Disruptive Technology Strike Force takes aim at those who imperil our national security and the rule of law by illegally transferring sensitive technologies to foreign adversaries,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen. “We must remain vigilant in enforcing export control laws, which defend military readiness, preserve our technological superiority over our adversaries, and help to protect human rights and democratic values.”
“Advances in technology have the potential to alter the world’s balance of power,” said Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement Matthew S. Axelrod. “This strike force is designed to protect U.S. national security by preventing those sensitive technologies from being used for malign purposes.”
COMMENT – It is almost as if the Department of Justice is admitting that it needs an “initiative” focused China.
59. DOJ, Commerce Department strike force to fight technology threats from adversaries
Jared Gans, The Hill, February 16, 2023
60. Japan and Taiwan should share intel on China balloon threat, says ex-defense chief
Japan Times, February 16, 2023
The use of suspected Chinese surveillance balloons has shown that Japan and Taiwan need to share "critical" intelligence about potential common aerial threats, a senior defense policymaker in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party has said.
"We don't have those bilateral relations with Taiwan, so we don't cooperate on that, but Japan's government will have to consider what it does next," said Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister and an influential lawmaker in the ruling party, in an interview.
Japan's islands are within 100 kilometers of Taiwan, so their aircraft and ships often operate in close proximity.
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
61. China’s Belt and Road to Nowhere
Christina Lu, Foreign Policy, February 13, 2023
Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy is a “shadow of its former self.”
Nearly a decade after its inception, momentum behind China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) appears to be slowing as lending slumps and projects stall—forcing Chinese President Xi Jinping to again rethink a floundering initiative that he once hailed as his “project of the century.”
After doling out hundreds of billions of dollars, experts say China’s lending for BRI projects has plummeted, largely a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic and the country’s own economic slowdown. Support has also waned as partner countries drown in debt and fractures emerge—literally—in projects, fueling uncertainty about the future of the sprawling initiative. In 2022, 60 percent of China’s overseas lending went to borrowers in financial distress, compared to just 5 percent in 2010, said Bradley Parks, the executive director of the AidData research group at the College of William and Mary.
“At its peak, it was really looked at as the centerpiece of China’s economic engagement with the rest of the world,” said Scott Kennedy, an expert in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Now, he said, it is a “shadow of its former self.”
Xi launched the BRI in 2013 as an ambitious infrastructure development campaign that would span more than 140 countries and export China’s industrial overcapacity, boosting China’s diplomatic clout and enhancing its global influence. Given its sheer scale and scope, many referred to it as China’s version of the Marshall Plan—only bigger and bolder. But Beijing’s vision has also been murky, intensifying scrutiny and controversy over the initiative and the contracts involved.
“No one really knows for sure what Beijing is trying to get out of it,” said Michael Kugelman, the deputy director of the Asia program at the Wilson Center and the writer of Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief. “That sort of has lent this mystique to it that has led to a significant amount of suspicion, particularly from those governments that worry about China’s rise.”
Instead of a sleek geopolitical campaign, researchers describe the BRI as a decentralized jumble of deals and projects that all loosely fall under the same banner of infrastructure development. Hong Zhang, who researches Chinese public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said that the BRI should be seen as a slogan, not a single program. “A lot of things were happening in the name of Belt and Road,” she said, adding: “Beijing has little control over things going on on the ground.”
China’s lending had already slipped before COVID-19 hit, a trend that was accelerated by the pandemic’s fallout and then China’s own economic slowdown. For many countries, taking on Chinese loans also quickly became unsustainable—particularly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drove up prices in the global marketplace—stoking backlash against Beijing’s lending habits.
62. China’s Mega Railway Project Hits Roadblock in Pakistan
Ismail Dilawar, Bloomberg, February 6, 2023
63. China’s Mideast buildup stirs security worries for U.S.
Ben Lefebvre and Phelim Kine, Politico, February 4, 2023
Chinese state-owned companies are making billions of dollars in investments near the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's prime conduits for oil shipments — a move that could lay the groundwork for a future military presence.
64. Full throttle in neutral: China’s new security architecture for the Middle East
Tuvia Gering, Atlantic Council, February 15, 2023
This report addresses two widely held beliefs about the nature of China’s engagement in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that ought to be revisited in light of notable developments. First, while it is widely assumed that Beijing’s interests in the region are limited to energy security and economic ties, this report will show how cooperation has expanded in recent years across the board. Indeed, China has been fortifying its strategic ties and expanding its cooperation by heavily investing in local Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects, as well as the infrastructure and technologies of the future. In doing so, it seeks to further integrate each nation’s development strategy with its own.
Second, this report will review the assumption that there is no substitute for the United States’ security and diplomatic dominance in the region. It will describe how China currently provides limited security alternatives that directly and indirectly undermine US dominance, even without displacing it. Moreover, it will illustrate how China’s expanding presence has resulted in a firmer determination to get more involved in regional security and politics, most notably through Xi Jinping’s Global Security Initiative and New Security Architecture for the Middle East.
This report will begin by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of China’s increased engagement and increased sense of urgency in the Middle East. The discussion will then turn to internal Chinese debates about stepping up security and political involvement, highlighting a shared belief among Chinese MENA scholars that these measures are necessary. Using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Gulf security as case studies, it reveals the stark disparity between Beijing’s words and deeds. Furthermore, it outlines what the future Chinese strategy might entail, and why its current form does a disservice to its stated objectives of regional peace and security.
OPINION PIECES
65. Filipino patience running out over China’s latest incursion
B. Romualdez, PhilStar Global, February 18, 2023
Over the years, there have been numerous incidents of harassment and intimidation by the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) against Philippine vessels, like last Dec. 17 when CCG vessel 5205 sailed dangerously close to a boat delivering food, noche buena packages and other supplies to troops stationed at the BRP Sierra Madre in Ayungin Shoal.
This latest incident at Ayungin Shoal where this same Chinese Coast Guard vessel 5205 shadowed and pointed a military-grade laser at the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) patrol vessel BRP Malapascua – resulting in temporary blindness for some Philippine crew – is causing more and more Filipinos to become increasingly angry at the way the Chinese have been encroaching into our territory.
What is worse is that the Chinese are now claiming the area as theirs, with the China Foreign Ministry spokesperson saying it was the PCG vessel that did not have permission and “intruded” into the waters when in fact, Ayungin Shoal is located about 105 nautical miles off Palawan and is therefore clearly well within the 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the Philippines.
As Congressman Rufus Rodriguez said, “How can we intrude into our own territory?”
Members of the international community have also expressed their concern in light of this in-your-face kind of aggression and intimidation being demonstrated by China, among them the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom and Denmark, calling out China for its dangerous and provocative actions.
Canada described China’s actions as “coercive” and a “violation of international law and contrary to the maintenance of regional peace and stability, and the rules-based international order,” while both Germany and Denmark also called on China to abide by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 2016 Arbitral Award by the Permanent Court of Arbitration which is “legal and binding.”
A friend from the diplomatic corps told me that China’s actions are “getting more and more unconscionable and provocative,” even preposterously accusing the US of orchestrating the arbitral case. Absolutely not true – it was China’s aggression that precipitated our decision to file the case before the Permanent Court of Arbitration that invalidated China’s expansive maritime claims, including its ridiculous nine-dash-line with absolutely no basis whatsoever in international law.
Filipinos were extremely pleased when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. summoned the Chinese ambassador over this latest incident involving a Chinese Coast Guard vessel. From what I am told, the President was cordial, but at the same time was very firm and clear in expressing his serious concern over the “increasing frequency of action by China against the Philippine Coast Guard and Filipino fishermen in their bancas.”
Filipino fishermen have long been suffering from the intimidation and restrictive actions employed by Chinese vessels which are depriving them of their livelihood, with reports that they were being threatened or their fishing gear confiscated. Numerous protests have also been filed over the illegal fishing activities of Chinese vessels in disputed territories in the South China Sea, with other claimant nations like Vietnam, Indonesia and Malaysia complaining about Chinese fishing fleets encroaching on their maritime territories.
In fact, there are calls for the European Union to impose sanctions on Chinese fishing vessels over alleged illegal fishing activities. An independent study commissioned by the European Parliament’s Committee on Fisheries (PECH) last December on the “Role and impact of China on world fisheries and aquaculture” showed that the large number of Chinese distant water fleets that go dark by using techniques like turning off their identification system, increase the possibility of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing infractions.
According to the study, “One of the most important environmental consequences of the Chinese fishing fleet on the EU’s distant-water fishing activities is the depletion of fisheries stocks, which is associated with environmental degradation and results in reduced resource availability for all actors involved.”
During the visit of US Vice President Kamala Harris to the fishing community of Tagburos in Palawan last November, she spoke about the risk that fishing communities face “when foreign vessels enter Philippine waters and illegally deplete the fishing stock; when they harass and intimidate local fishers; when they pollute the ocean and destroy the marine ecosystem.”
If one can recall, over 200 Chinese fishing vessels were seen at Julian Felipe Reef (Whitsun Reef) in March 2021 with reports that they have been anchored in the area since December 2020, raising fears of “possible overfishing and destruction of the marine environment, as well as risks to safety of navigation” in the West Philippine Sea.
Given these numerous incidents in the past, no one can really blame Filipinos for the continued and increasing anger at and distrust of China. This latest incident has also prompted many enlightened legislators to consider working together with other countries aside from the United States to maintain maritime peace and security in the region.
Certainly, we cannot and must not “drop the ball” on this one like what happened in 2012 when we “lost” the Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.
I have often said – Filipinos are a patient people, and while everybody wants a peaceful resolution to all these incidents that have been repeatedly happening over the years, it is clear to all of us that “what is ours is ours,” period. We are not claiming anything outside of what is clearly within our territorial waters.
As President Marcos had said: “We have no conflict with China; the issue we have is that China is claiming territory that belongs to us.”
66. My Chinese Generation Is Losing the Ability to Express Itself
Mengyin Lin, New York Times, February 10, 2023
One morning last November, I woke up to a stirring sight: video clips of young protesters in several Chinese cities singing, shouting and chanting for an end to the oppressive “zero Covid” policy that China had adhered to during the pandemic. I’m 31. Never in my life had I seen my fellow Chinese citizens stand up to the government on such a scale and with such determination.
I marveled at their courage, but a sense of disquiet crept in: The protests made clear just how thoroughly censorship, propaganda and the government’s iron grip on all discourse had stunted a generation’s ability to express itself.
The demonstrations are best remembered for the blank sheets of paper held by many protesters. It was a clever way to avoid trouble: making a statement without actually saying anything. But to me those empty sheets also visually, and literally, represented how my generation is losing its voice, perhaps even control of its own language.
The Communist Party’s monopoly on all channels of expression has helped prevent the development of any resistance language in Mandarin, especially since 1989, when the brutal military suppression of the Tiananmen Square student movement demonstrated what happens to those who speak out. If language shapes the way we think, and most people think only in their own language, how can China’s youth conjure up an effective and lasting resistance movement with words that they don’t have?
67. Xi Jinping’s Power Grab Is Paying Off
Neil Thomas, Foreign Policy, February 5, 2023
Popular narratives about Chinese leader Xi Jinping are in flux. Just a few months ago, he was widely seen as an unassailable force. But unusually widespread protests in late November, followed by a complete reversal of his zero-COVID policy, have prompted some to question whether Xi is losing his grip.
While Xi never possessed godlike powers and could end up facing a bumpier period in state-society relations, this shift in perception makes it worth casting a retrospective eye on the progress he made in strengthening his position at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. These moves still provide Xi with a strong political base to overcome external and internal threats to his authority despite policy errors and economic headwinds.
68. AUDIO – A Historian of The Future: Five More Questions For Stephen Kotkin
Peter Robinson and Stephen Kotkin, Uncommon Knowledge Podcast, February 14, 2023
69. Balloon Incident Reveals More Than Spying as Competition with China Intensifies
David Sanger, New York Times, February 5, 2023
There is nothing new about superpowers spying on one another, even from balloons. But for pure gall, there was something different this time.
It may be months before American intelligence agencies can compare the audacious flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon across the country to other intrusions on America’s national security systems, to determine how it ranks.
After all, there is plenty of competition.
There was the theft of the designs of the F-35 about 15 years ago, enabling the Chinese air force to develop its own look-alike stealth fighter, with Chinese characteristics. There was the case of China’s premier hacking team lifting the security clearance files for 22 million Americans from the barely secured computers of the Office of Personnel Management in 2015. That, combined with stolen medical files from Anthem and travel records from Marriott hotels, has presumably helped the Chinese create a detailed blueprint of America’s national security infrastructure.
But for pure gall, there was something different about the balloon. It became the subject of public fascination as it floated over nuclear silos of Montana, then was spotted near Kansas City and met its cinematic end when a Sidewinder missile took it down over shallow waters off the coast of South Carolina. Not surprisingly, now it is coveted by military and intelligence officials who desperately want to reverse-engineer whatever remains the Coast Guard and the Navy can recover.
Yet beyond the made-for-cable-news spectacle, the entire incident also speaks volumes about how little Washington and Beijing communicate, almost 22 years after the collision of an American spy plane and a Chinese fighter about 70 miles off the coast of Hainan Island led both sides to vow that they would improve their crisis management.
COMMENT – It seems clear to me that the Chinese Communist Party feels pretty confident when it plays a game of chicken with the United States or any of its neighbors it has disputes with.
Beijing knows that there is almost no possibility that the United States, Japan, India, Taiwan, Vietnam, or South Korea would initiate a conflict with the PRC and that the United States and others are hyper-sensitive to the risks of a so-called ‘accidental war.’
This ‘accidental war’ fear springs from a belief that somehow a major war would start over an incident that neither side intended to become a war (by “war” I mean the deployment and conduct of sustained military conflict).
The Chinese Communist Party does not suffer from this fear because it knows that wars don’t start that way: wars aren’t accidents, they are deliberate policies.
That is not to say that there are no mistakes or miscalculations in war. Examples of those are far too numerous to mention. One could characterize the entire human history of war as a story of miscalculations and mistakes, it is what Clausewitz correctly labeled as “friction.” But wars don’t start by accident, wars are intentional.
The Party is confident that its neighbors aren’t planning to attack the PRC or looking for a pretext to start a war (despite the rhetoric and propaganda the Party spreads to the contrary) and the Party feels extremely confident that it can maintain control over how it responds to any unforeseen incident with its neighbors (the Party does not think some rogue PLA general will start a war on his own initiative).
Beijing understands this dynamic and the Party believes that it gives them an advantage. They can take risks that an incident might happen (aircraft crash into one another, soldiers kill one another on a border in a skirmish, or ships ram into one another) with confidence that the Party can control its response and that its rivals will self-limit in order to avoid something that isn’t going to happen: an ‘accidental war.’
This is why the Party is not interested in establishing crisis management mechanisms or committing themselves to the ones that do exist… they are not particularly concerned with the risks that the U.S. and its partners believe are so dangerous.
Perversely, the only way the CCP might be convinced to take these risks seriously is to persuade them that in fact we might actually be planning to initiate a war of our own. I’m not advocating we do that, I’m simply pointing out the counter-intuitive logic that might be required to persuade Beijing to commit themselves to the kinds of risk reduction measures we want to see.
70. Challenging the U.S. Is a Historic Mistake
Robert Kagan, Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2023
Like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, today’s China is a rising power determined to dominate its region and convinced that American strength is waning. It runs the risk of experiencing a similar fate if it attacks Taiwan.
Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping rests on certain basic assumptions: that in a just world, China should be hegemonic in East Asia, the center of a system in which the other regional powers pay their respect and take direction from China, as was the case for two millennia prior to the 19th century; that regions once considered by Beijing to have been part of China should be “reunified” with it; and that a revived China should have at least an equal say in setting the norms and rules of international life. These goals are achievable, Mr. Xi asserts, because the world is undergoing “great changes unseen in a century,” namely, the “great rejuvenation” of Chinese power and the decline of American power. “Time and momentum are on our side,” according to Mr. Xi.
There is no denying that China has acquired substantial global power and influence in recent decades. Even if this is “peak China,” as some suggest, it is already East Asia’s economic hegemon and, were it not for the U.S., would likely become the region’s political and military hegemon as well (though perhaps not without a conflict with Japan). Left to itself, a modernizing China could one day dominate its neighbors much as a unified, modernizing Germany once dominated Europe and a modernizing Japan once dominated China and the rest of East Asia. Those powers also believed that “time and momentum” were on their side, and in many respects they were right.
Yet those examples should give Chinese leaders pause, for both Japan and Germany, while accomplishing amazing feats of rapid expansion for brief periods of time, ultimately failed in their ambitions for regional hegemony. They underestimated both the actual and potential power of the U.S. They failed to understand that the emergence of the U.S. as a great power at the beginning of the 20th century had so transformed international circumstances that longstanding ambitions of regional hegemony were no longer achievable. At this moment of high tension over Taiwan and the Chinese spy balloon detected this week over the U.S., Xi Jinping runs the risk of making the same historic mistake.
71. The US ‘Domain Awareness Gap’ Goes Way Beyond Balloons
Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg, February 12, 2023
If a major conflict breaks out with China, America’s once-vaunted defense industrial base will be exposed as a comatose geriatric, not a sleeping giant.
COMMENT – I recommend reading Robert Kagan’s and Niall Ferguson’s pieces together. Together, they provide different ways to look at the challenges facing the United States and other democracies, as well as the challenges facing Beijing and Moscow. I think it’s important to hold both of their arguments in your head simultaneously because the future is uncertain.
Michael Hirsh, Foreign Policy, January 23, 2023
Even at the advanced age of 94, George Kennan was still arguing that the Cold War hadn’t been inevitable—that it could have been avoided or, at least, ameliorated. A decade after that 44-year conflict ended, Kennan, the somewhat dovish father of the United States’ Cold War containment strategy, contended in a letter to his more hawkish biographer, John Lewis Gaddis, that while Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was alive, an early way out might have been possible.
The so-called Stalin Note from March 1952—an offer from Moscow to hold talks over the shape of post-World War II Europe—showed that the United States had ignored the possibilities of peace accomplished through “negotiation, and especially real negotiation, in distinction from public posturing (italics original),” Kennan wrote in 1999.
Those words still resonate today. Because public posturing is mostly what we’re seeing as the United States finds itself spiraling toward a new kind of cold war with both China and Russia. Yet almost no debate or discussion about these policies is taking place in Washington. Especially when it comes to the challenge from China—which has replaced the Soviet Union as the major geopolitical threat to the United States—politicians on both sides of the aisle see political gain in out-hawking each other by calling for a tougher stance against Beijing. What is emerging as a result is a long-term struggle for global power and influence that could easily outlast the first Cold War. This, despite President Joe Biden’s insistence after a November 2022 summit meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping that “there need not be a new Cold War.” When Secretary of State Antony Blinken makes his first visit to Beijing in a few weeks, it will be an attempt to repair diplomatic relations that have been all but suspended since former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last year.
COMMENT – This is an interesting article by Michael Hirsh as he reviews the new biography of George Kennan by Frank Costigliola. He wrote it in the context of an expected Blinken visit to Beijing without the knowledge of what would unfold at the end of January to derail that visit. Reading it now seems to make his analogy to the March 1952 ‘Stalin Note’ even more prescient… but it only seems that way.
Debates about the “inevitability” of the Soviet-American Cold War (1947-1991) started taking place almost as soon as it began and raged across those four decades and beyond. The practitioners and academics of the Cold War filled stacks of books and articles with their arguments. Kennan, a contrarian diplomat if we’ve ever had one, who always wanted to represent the other side of the argument, was an active participant in these debates. But of course, the issue wasn’t whether the cold war was inevitable or not, the issues that folks like Kennan argued about were specific policy decisions and the contingencies that resulted from them.
I’m less convinced that “a fresh look at Kennan’s views is warranted more today than ever.” Perhaps the greatest lesson we could learn is that during cold wars, open societies will have contentious debates. Those debates help us manage the cold war to achieve our desired objectives.
Costigliola’s latest biography is just another salvo in the 75-year academic battle over the story of the first cold war (the Soviet-American Cold War). A similar battle is raging today over how we should understand the origins and inevitability of the Sino-American cold war. Don’t be surprised that practitioners and academics occupy the same familiar trench-lines, and employ the same rhetorical arguments, for this one as well.
73. Watch Out, China Inc. Is Going Global. Again
Anjani Trivedi, Bloomberg, February 5, 2023
Chinese companies are raising capital in Europe as they look to expand production bases there. It’s an astute move.
China Inc. is going global again. This time via Europe, as industrial companies tap into rising pressure across the region to go green.
A string of Chinese industrial firms including construction machinery giant Sany Heavy Industry Co. and electric-vehicle parts supplier Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls Co. have raised billions of dollars on the SIX Swiss Exchange through global depositary receipts since a cross-listing program was launched in July last year . Now China’s battery heavyweight Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., or CATL, is jumping in, seeking to raise at least $5 billion through GDRs in the largest such issuance by a Chinese company.
74. China Set the Precedent for Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Michael Rubin, Washington Examiner, February 14, 2023
75. Washington’s China Hawks Take Flight
Robbie Gramer and Christina Lu, Foreign Policy, February 15, 2023
The story of how decades of U.S. engagement with China gave way to estrangement.
76. Three Years’ Delay To Rein In TikTok
Thomas Feddo, RealClearDefense, February 15, 2023
National Security Risks Remain Unacceptably Unresolved
The drumbeat regarding national security risks posed by TikTok, the popular social media app owned by Chinese big-tech firm ByteDance, has reached a fever pitch. After recently blocking it from federal government devices, Congress might now seek an outright national ban of the app. Given the failure of a prior attempted ban due to regulated speech concerns, policymakers should instead press the Biden Administration to fulfill a still-active 2020 presidential order to counter the risks. Continued neglect of its implementation could diminish the credibility of future presidents and will surely be interpreted by America’s adversaries as fecklessness and weakness.
Serious policymakers—including the bipartisan leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee, an FCC Commissioner, and the Director of the FBI—have pushed for decisive action. But today’s “ban TikTok” discourse loses sight of two consequential steps taken by President Trump nearly three years ago.
77. China’s Exclusion of Taiwan Imperils Health and Now Counterterrorism
Michael Rubin, Washington Examiner, February 13, 2023
When SARS swept across Asia in 2003, it knew no borders. Taiwan sought to attend a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting charting a strategy to combat the disease, but Beijing vetoed its participation. China likewise impeded WHO-Taiwan cooperation against the backdrop of the 2004 bird flu epidemic. In a compromise the following year, China and WHO signed a memorandum agreeing that WHO would communicate any health-related matters first to Beijing, which then would convey the information to Taiwan. The arrangement undercut health. In one case, China informed Taiwan only after a ten-day delay that corn it imported may have been contaminated with a bacterial infection. Over the past decade, WHO has excluded Taiwan from over 70% of its technical meetings.
Communist China’s willingness to risk global health to score diplomatic points against Taiwan extended to the COVID-19 pandemic. On Dec. 31, 2019, Taiwan queried WHO about potential for COVID-19 human-to-human transmission. Out of sensitivity to Beijing, WHO did not reply. WHO subsequently ignored Taiwan’s attempts to exchange information about COVID-19 and best practices, even though these might have benefited other countries.
Nor does China only endanger lives by prioritizing its own animosity toward Taiwanese democracy over global health. When the Islamic State erupted, it shocked the world. President Barack Obama assembled a global coalition to defeat the Islamic State. Taiwan’s government and its non-governmental organization have given approximately $35 million in assistance to refugees and communities liberated from the Islamic State. Taiwan, for example, has funded de-mining operations in Syria and provided 20 sets of de-mining equipment to Iraq. It has dedicated a half million dollars to rebuild Yazidi agricultural villages in Sinjar and an equal amount to support education in Kurdish-controlled Syria. The U.S. has recognized Taiwan’s contribution, honoring its support for humanitarian and stabilization efforts at a U.S. Institute of Peace reception.
How ironic it is then that the White House and State Department stand aside as China, which never contributed to the Global Coalition against the Islamic State, undermines Interpol’s ability to cooperate with Taiwan. This comes even as Taiwan’s sporadic under-the-table cooperation with the international police organization has helped track down fugitives and recover tens of millions of dollars of stolen or embezzled funds. In 2022, at Beijing’s request, Interpol rejected granting Taiwan observer status at its General Assembly, nor will China allow Taiwan to access the I-24/7 Global Police Communications System to detect lost and stolen travel documents.