Matt Turpin's China Articles - January 29, 2023
Friends,
As the week ended, Washington, Tokyo and The Hague appeared to have reached a consensus on preventing the transfer of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to the PRC (see Japan, Netherlands Agree to Limit Exports of Chip-Making Equipment to China, Wall Street Journal, January 28). It remains to be seen how the details will be worked out, but an agreement has been reached and it is going to be exceedingly difficult for Beijing to make progress on advanced semiconductors.
Three and a half months ago, the U.S. Commerce Department announced a series of far-reaching measures that prevented advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment and know-how from being transferred from the United States (or U.S. Citizens) to the PRC. However, the United States isn’t the only country with that technology and in some areas, it isn’t the most advanced. That’s what led to intense technology diplomacy between the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands (home to ASML, Europe’s most advanced and important technology company).
Given that both Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida have visited the White House to speak with President Biden in just the past few weeks, I’m not surprised by this accomplishment. The teams of negotiators in Tokyo, The Hague, and Washington have clearly worked hard to reach this agreement and their achievement is historic.
This may not seem like particularly important news, but I suspect that this will stand out as an important milestone in the new cold war with the PRC.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. China’s New Anti-Uyghur Campaign
James Millward, Foreign Affairs, January 23, 2023
Starting in late 2017, Uyghur and Kazakh émigrés from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China began hearing frightening reports from relatives and friends at home—or began losing contact with those relatives and friends entirely. Through early 2018, journalists and researchers began to flesh out the story: in the vast Central Asian territory annexed by China in 1949, also known to many exiles as Eastern Turkestan, the government was rounding up people who do not belong to the country’s Han ethnic majority (including the Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group) and locking them in camps. At their peak, these facilities interned between one and two million people, and detainees were subjected to psychological and physical torture, rape and sexual assault, forced administration of pills and injections, persistent hunger, and sleep deprivation. Beijing at first denied the existence of what Chinese government documents and signs on the facilities labeled “concentrated educational transformation centers,” but officials later admitted to establishing “vocational training centers,” which they claimed would end extremism and alleviate poverty.
With their clear echoes of genocides in the twentieth century, the camps prompted outrage from international organizations, human rights groups, and governments—some of which sanctioned Chinese companies and officials in response. Although the Chinese Communist Party dismissed the criticisms as “lies,” it appeared to respond. By 2019, authorities had moved many of the internees out of the camps, announcing that they had “graduated.” This suggests that the CCP does, in fact, care about international opprobrium.
But the change was largely cosmetic, and most of the internees have not been freed. Many of the camps have simply been converted into formal prisons and detainees given lengthy prison sentences, like several hundred thousand other non-Han people who have been imprisoned since the start of the crisis. Over 100,000 other internees have been transferred from camps to factories in Xinjiang or elsewhere in the country. Some Uyghur families abroad report that their relatives are back home but under house arrest. And Beijing has also been forcing tens of thousands of rural Uyghurs out of their villages and into factories under the guise of a poverty alleviation campaign. Today, the total numbers of non-Han Chinese people in coerced labor of one form or another may well exceed the numbers interned in camps from 2017 to 2019.
The camps were just the most famous aspect of the CCP’s broad-spectrum program of assimilation and repression. The party has also disparaged and restricted the use of the Uyghur language; prohibited Islamic practices; razed mosques, shrines, and cemeteries; rewritten history to deny the longevity of Uyghur culture and its distinctiveness from Chinese culture; and excised Indigenous literature from textbooks. These scars on the cultural landscape remain. The vaguely worded counterextremism and antiterrorism laws, implemented from 2014 to intern people for everyday religious and cultural expression, are still on the books. The infrastructure of control that made southern Xinjiang look like a war zone a few years ago—intrusive policing, military patrols, checkpoints—is less visible now. But that is because digital surveillance systems based on mobile phones, facial recognition, biometric databases, QR codes, and other tools that identify and geolocate the population have proved just as effective at monitoring and controlling local residents.
The state continues to incentivize, and likely coerce, Uyghur women to marry Han men while promulgating propaganda promoting mixed marriages. (Uyghurs very rarely married non-Uyghurs before the current crisis.) Uyghur children are being institutionalized in boarding schools, where they are forced to use the Chinese language and adopt Han cultural practices. There is little data about these schools, but escaped children tell of beatings and hours of basement confinement for speaking Uyghur. If the “educational transformation centers” were reminiscent of twentieth-century concentration camps, the Xinjiang boarding schools have re-created the brutal residential institutions designed to deracinate Indigenous children in Australia, Canada, and the United States. They also contribute to China’s broader colonial policy to Sinicize the region by moving Han people into Xinjiang and suppressing Uyghur birth rates.
Despite the ongoing abuses, the world has paid little attention to the atrocities in Xinjiang over the last few years. Instead, focus has drifted to other news relating to China—primarily the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing was able to convene the Winter Olympics as planned in February 2022, with only symbolic protests from democratic countries. The atrocities did not stop Chinese leader Xi Jinping from being named head of the CCP for a historic third term or from stacking the Politburo standing committee with close loyalists. It has not prevented him from meeting with foreign leaders, including U.S. President Joe Biden.
For now, it may seem as if Xi is getting away with his brutal actions in Xinjiang. But the saga in the province is not yet over. U.S. and European sanctions could impinge more on China’s economy as time goes on, provided that governments vigorously enforce them. These economic costs would come on top of the severe reputational costs that Beijing has incurred for its behavior, including worsened relations with Europe, as well as with the United States. It is unclear if these penalties will ultimately matter to Xi, who now wields nearly unconstrained political power and is willing to subject his country to economic and social pain in pursuit of his aims. But Xi is capable of correcting course when his policies become disastrously costly. If the world keeps up the economic and rhetorical pressure, it can convince China to end its efforts to repress and assimilate the non-Han peoples of Xinjiang.
COMMENT – James Millward, professor of history at Georgetown and the author of both Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang and Beyond the Pass: Economy, Ethnicity, and Empire in Qing Central Asia, 1759-1864, has done an excellent job of connecting the long history of Chinese imperial conquest in Central Asia to the policies of the Chinese Communist Party today.
For a ruling Party that claims to stand against the rapacious policies of imperialism and defends the ‘Global South’, its actions in Xinjiang (East Turkistan) exceed the worst of European imperialism of the 19th Century.
2. Xi puts top brain in charge of Taiwan unification strategy
Katsuji Nakazawa, Nikkei Asia, January 26, 2023
Wang Huning tasked with creating alternative to 'one country, two systems'.
COMMENT – Wang Huning has his work cut-out for him. Large majorities of the Taiwanese people no longer identify themselves as primarily “Chinese” but increasingly as Taiwanese. No one wants a war, but very few desire a reunification with the mainland, a political reality that even the KMT has had to deal with.
3. Mike Gallagher chairs a vital House committee. Its only focus: China.
George Will, Washington Post, January 25, 2023
Voracious reading — “I am reminded of Andrew Gordon’s masterful book ‘The Rules of the Game’ about the decline of the Royal Navy before the Battle of Jutland” — fuels the fluent writings of Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.). Their distilled essence is: People who are serious about national security should immediately speak loudly so that the nation can carry a big military stick. To qualify for the “marathon” competition with China, the United States must “win the sprint” right now.
After Princeton and before earning a Georgetown PhD, Gallagher served seven years as a Marine, learning Arabic, and, during two Iraq deployments, learning the cost of good intentions combined with muddy thinking. Now 38 and in his fourth congressional term, he chairs the House’s newly created and instantly most important committee. Its single subject is China — meaning, practically, the Chinese Communist Party.
Deterrence failed regarding Ukraine, with a huge cost in blood and treasure; a comparable failure regarding Taiwan would be immeasurably more catastrophic. About this, Gallagher’s thinking is congruent with that of scholars Hal Brands (Johns Hopkins) and Michael Beckley (Tufts) in “Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China.”
…
The House Select Committee on China was created by a bipartisan vote of 365-65. All of the opponents were Democrats, probably wary lest China’s threat complicates the progressive agenda of devoting evermore national resources to multiplying dependent domestic constituencies. Some congressional Republicans, speaking loudly (if vaguely) for frugality, would provide the nation with a smaller military stick rather than touch the two-thirds of the budget devoted to entitlements. To both factions, Gallagher cites another Marine who does not mince words, former defense secretary Jim Mattis: “America can afford survival.”
4. European Space Agency says it has no plans to send astronauts to China’s Tiangong space station
Ling Xin, South China Morning Post, January 25, 2023
The comments by the ESA’s director general are the first indication it is no longer interested in working with China on human space exploration. Josef Aschbacher says the 22 member states are focusing on their commitments to the International Space Station instead.
A top official with the European Space Agency said it had no plans to send European astronauts to the newly completed Chinese space station, making it clear for the first time that the agency is no longer committed to working with China in human space flight in the near future.
“We are very busy supporting and ensuring our commitments and activities on the International Space Station,” ESA director general Josef Aschbacher told a press conference in Paris on Monday.
“We have neither the budgetary nor political greenlight or intention to engage in a second space station – that is, participating in the Chinese Space Station,” he said in response to an online question about whether ESA was still considering flying astronauts to Tiangong.
COMMENT – Despite signing an agreement in 2014 to cooperate with China Manned Space Agency, it appears that the European Space Agency has joined America’s NASA in avoiding direct cooperation.
Looks like this is just one more example of where the strong transatlantic relationship wins out.
5. China’s Mad Dash into a Strategic Island Nation Breeds Resentment
Damien Cave, New York Times, January 23, 2023
For years, Beijing has thrown its wealth and weight across the globe. But its experience in the Solomon Islands calls into question its approach to expanding its power.
Down a dirt road outside the Solomon Islands’ capital city, past Chinese construction projects and shops where Chinese merchants sell snacks, a tribal chief tried to explain what it feels like to have a rising superpower suddenly take an interest in a poor, forgotten place desperate for development.
“At first,” said the chief, Peter Kosemu, 50, as he sat in the shade on Guadalcanal, the largest of the Solomon Islands, “most people just wanted to see what was going on.”
He and many others have watched China rush headlong into seemingly every corner of the economy and politics of this South Pacific nation over the past three years, spurring fears in the West that Beijing is trying to set up an outpost that could play a strategic role in any future conflict with the United States and its allies.
China has opened a large embassy, started construction on a stadium complex and signed secretive deals with the government on security, aviation, telecommunications and more. Many islanders liken it to seeing carpenters waltz unannounced into your kitchen, drawing up plans, tearing down and building, with little explanation.
The longer it has gone on, the more curiosity about China’s big spending and lending has given way to concern and a simmering anger that comes from asking questions never answered. Workers at the stadium — including many who commute from where Mr. Kosemu lives — complain about unfulfilled promises on pay. Residents fret that the prime minister and Chinese officials are undermining democracy, as politicians who resisted China’s plans, or just asked tough questions, have reported that their rivals are suddenly flush with money and pro-China messages that the public is expected to simply accept.
“There’s no proper consultation with the people,” Mr. Kosemu said. “No one is happy about it.”
6. They Poured Their Savings into Homes That Were Never Built
Isabelle Qian and Agnes Chang, New York times, January 24, 2023
To Tang Chao, the apartment in northeast China was where he and his wife were going to start a new life together.
They put down tens of thousands of dollars for it. But months past its scheduled completion, a concrete shell with wiring protruding from the walls and piles of dirt on the floor was all there was to show for the expense. Soon, even their marriage unraveled.
In another city, a man bought a space for a grocery business he thought would help give his young son a better future. A woman paid for an apartment where she imagined her toddler would grow up safe, and she might have a second child. In Shanghai, a technician from a small town thought she had made her parents proud by buying a new home in the big city.
What these and hundreds of thousands of other Chinese homebuyers couldn’t have known was that the country’s decades-long real estate boom would come to a sudden halt. Developers ran out of money amid a government crackdown on excessive debt and a slowing economy. They stopped building.
Across the country, instead of apartment towers, uninhabitable concrete structures rise up from idle, overgrown construction sites. Infuriated homebuyers in more than 100 cities rose up in a rare act of collective rebellion last year, vowing not to repay loans on unfinished properties.
COMMENT – All of these Chinese citizens will harbor resentments that will likely fester and grow over time.
7. Jack Ma downfall spells end of China's golden age
Katsuji Nakazawa, Nikkei Asia, January 19, 2023
Alibaba founder was blown off the scene like a cloud in the sky.
China's meager 3% growth for 2022 signals the end of a three-decade-long golden age for the country's economy. With the exception of 2.2% growth for 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is China's worst economic performance since 1976, when the Cultural Revolution dragged growth into negative territory.
The abrupt abandonment of the zero-COVID policy -- and the explosion of cases that followed -- is not the sole reason for the lackluster growth. Economic policies championed by President and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping were another factor. For the past decade under Xi's rule, philosophy has come before economic rationality.
An incident that happened last week was symbolic.
On Jan. 10, a convoy of cars belonging to the municipal government of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, entered the campus of the Alibaba Group, the e-commerce giant co-founded by Jack Ma.
Among those stepping out of the cars was Liu Jie, the Hangzhou party secretary. That day, the Hangzhou government and Alibaba agreed to restart their long-shelved strategic partnership.
About three weeks earlier, Yi Lianhong, the newly appointed party secretary of Zhejiang province, had also visited Alibaba. He had returned from a trip to Beijing, where he attended the Central Economic Work Conference of the Communist Party, a meeting that discussed China's economic policies for 2023.
Immediately upon his return, he headed to Alibaba's headquarters.
At first glance, the visits seem to signal a warming of relations between the government and Alibaba, a shift from the tech clampdown and a desire by the central leadership to work with the platform to revitalize China's ailing economy.
"This is a complete misreading of the situation," a Chinese source familiar with business affairs in Zhejiang said.
The context of the visits becomes clearer when taken together with another development. On Jan. 7, Alibaba-affiliated financial company Ant Group announced that Jack Ma, its founder, would give up control of the company.
The restructuring left Ma with a little more than 6% of Ant's voting rights; he had previously held more than 50%.
It can perhaps be compared to the bloodless fall of Edo Castle in Japan. The 1868 incident ended the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, returned power to the imperial family and ushered in the Meiji era. Edo was renamed Tokyo.
Now Ma has surrendered Alibaba Castle without putting up resistance. He has been staying in Japan since before the Chinese Communist Party's national congress last October, unable to return to China.
Hangzhou Secretary Liu Jie's visit came three days later.
Sitting on top of data of more than 1 billion users of Alipay, China's ubiquitous mobile payments platform, Ant wields enormous influence. Ma was instrumental in bringing Alipay around the world.
Ant did not have any major management problems. Instead, it was precisely its success, and the influence that accompanied that success, that came under increased scrutiny from the Xi regime. Ma was eventually deprived of his control of the company.
Around the same time as Ant's announcement on Jan. 7, photos of Ma taken in Bangkok surfaced on social media. Since moving to Japan, Ma has occasionally traveled overseas. Each time, he has returned to Japan, not to China, keeping a low profile.
Following Ma's loss of control of Ant, an investment company affiliated with the Hangzhou government became a major shareholder.
Suddenly, Ant became a company under the direct influence of the party and Chinese government through voting rights. This influence over Alibaba will strengthen and the fact that the Hangzhou government and Alibaba have become strategic partners is significant. Deprived of their leeway, Alibaba and Ant will face an extremely high hurdle to rapid growth.
It was on Nov. 2, 2020, that a masterpiece by Kaii Higashiyama, Japan's most celebrated contemporary artist, was used to imply the perilous situation Ma now finds himself in.
State-run Xinhua News Agency's WeChat account published a column accompanied by a landscape painting by Higashiyama featuring a horse-shaped white cloud in a blue sky.
Jack Ma was born as Ma Yun, which literally means "horse" and "cloud."
The Xinhua column, in effect, warned that the horse-shaped cloud in the painting was doomed to disappear after being swept away by a blast of wind.
Its publication came after Ma was summoned by Chinese authorities for questioning. A day after the controversial painting was posted, the postponement of Ant's initial public offering was announced.
Ma probably saw the article as a prank played by Xi to flex his muscle or as a form of bullying at the hands of the party and state. Now, two years and a few months on, it is clear that the printing of Higashiyama's painting was no joke. It was a statement of intention.
COMMENT – It is hard to overstate just how successful the Party has been at dismantling Jack Ma’s business empire, his power, and the influence he had in the PRC and across the world. At the height of his power, Jack Ma even eclipsed Xi Jinping as the PRC’s most influential leader. It is a cautionary tale to any entrepreneur in the PRC that no matter how successful you are, you cannot challenge the Party.
I can imagine that this is why someone like Joe Tsai, one of Jack Ma’s longest-serving deputies and Executive Vice Chairman of Alibaba, spends so much time living in the United States.
AUTHORITARIANISM
8. Red Memory — enforced forgetting and the legacy of the Cultural Revolution
Yuan Yang, Financial Times, January 25, 2023
Tania Branigan’s intimate stories of survivors capture a traumatic decade for many that still informs modern China.
“Another book about the Cultural Revolution? Why do foreigners like to read about it so much?” was my mother’s response when I told her I was reading Red Memory by Tania Branigan.
Indeed, there are numerous English-language texts on the chaos and violence of 1966-76, the decade of internal factional struggles under Chairman Mao that killed around 2mn people — teachers bludgeoned to death by their students, class enemies hounded by their neighbours. Among the books credited by Branigan, The Guardian’s China correspondent between 2008 and 2015, are veteran journalist Yang Jisheng’s recently translated The World Turned Upside Down, Jung Chang’s autobiographical Wild Swans and the post-1970s “scar literature” of writers such as Lu Xinhua.
What makes Branigan’s account special is captured in a line at the end of her work: “This book could not be written if I were to begin it today.” Her posting in Beijing began during the giddy optimism of the Olympic Games, when the foreign ministry relaxed regulations on international correspondents, allowing them to roam everywhere, except Tibet, without permission. It finished just before the July 9 mass arrest of human rights lawyers, in the first few years of an increasingly censorious presidency under Xi Jinping.
Red Memory brings together reported accounts of the Cultural Revolution from survivors of that period still in China — a rarity, given the increasing sensitivity to the Communist party of its own history and its desire to cleanse public memories. Branigan’s central theme is that one cannot understand China without understanding the Cultural Revolution. The book flits between the past and present, exploring how survivors of the era manage its personal legacy, through tightly choreographed confessions or cheerful group reunions.
In one way her argument is clearly true: the era shaped China’s current leadership, particularly President Xi Jinping, who spent seven years labouring as a “sent-down” youth. But it is also elusive, because so few families like to discuss the Cultural Revolution, even with their children. It has left behind intergenerational traumas that families are still struggling to understand.
In one case, Branigan describes a father who taught his son never to trust anyone, not knowing when people would betray him. It may partly explain the broader fears of my grandparents’ generation, their warning to my parents not to study the humanities or arts (often the first scholars to be purged), their desire to have the protection of those in power, and yet their fear of engaging with politics.
9. Coffins sell out as rural losses mount
Stephen McDonell, BBC, January 25, 2023
The BBC has found evidence of a considerable number of Covid-related deaths in China's rural regions, as the virus spread from big cities to more remote areas with older populations.
In Xinzhou region of northern Shanxi province the coffin makers have been busy. We watched the skilled craftsmen as they carved elaborate decorations into the freshly-cut wood. Over recent months, they say, they haven't had time to stop.
10. Relatives angry as Covid kept off Chinese death certificates: ‘What are you trying to hide?’
Ryan McMorrow, Nian Liu, and Sun Yu, Financial Times, January 19, 2023
Medical professionals cite pressure after questions emerge over mortality rates.
11. China’s Missing COVID-19 Data
Johanna Costigan and Jin Ye, The Diplomat, January 20, 2023
Center-local dynamics are incentivizing a cover-up of China’s COVID-19 statistics well before they reach the public.
COMMENT – This is a real predicament for public health authorities around the world: if the PRC Government and its public health professionals cannot be trusted to fulfill their international obligations on transparent data sharing or refrain from retaliating against those who do share data, then how can the PRC be expected to be treated like those countries that do fulfill their obligations?
The Chinese Communist Party will howl at the unfairness of the discrimination (as they did when testing and visa restrictions were reimposed earlier this month on Chinese citizens released from Zero-COVID), but of course that “discrimination” comes as a justifiable response to the Party’s overwhelming desire to escape any responsibility and politicize public health.
For all the desire that exists out there to “just get along” and find areas of “cooperation” with Beijing, I’m very skeptical that we can actually identify areas of mutual interest. There may be areas at a theoretical level, but in terms of practical cooperation, I see very little opportunity.
For many, cooperation on reducing carbon emissions seems like the most promising, but there again, the same dynamics we see playing out in COVID health data are almost certain to arise.
Any sort of meaningful cooperation on reducing carbon emissions will require transparency and openness: the ability to accurately measure how well each country is fulfilling its pledges. But just like COVID this will immediately become politicized: the Party will be inclined to claim reductions and successes which fulfill its obligations and bolster its leadership credentials, while at the same time refusing to share detailed data or allow for the kind of transparency that would enable independent measurements of performance. (for decades we’ve seen this in areas as different as basic economic data, to environmental protections (remember the violations of the Montreal Protocol?), to SARS and COVID, etc.).
Those who do share accurate data and allow for transparency (through an independent press and judiciary) will end up paying higher costs than those who cheat… and in the end, having cheaters like the PRC will undercut the sacrifices made by others (for example, the UK burns about 8 million metric tons of coal per year… the PRC burns about 13 million metric tons per DAY… even if a country like the UK, 5th largest economy in the world, went to zero carbon emissions, fractional cheating by Beijing would completely erase all of the UK’s sacrifices).
Unfortunately, the Chinese Communist Party has demonstrated over and over that it is a ‘bad faith’ actor on the international stage as well as within its own borders… I’m not sure how we can solve that problem (which is a pathology endemic to a hyper-nationalist and conspiratorial Party-State) through “engagement” and “cooperation.”
12. China Formally Arrests Nine Over Covid Protests, Group Says
Bloomberg, January 25, 2023
Quiet crackdown continues against people who took part. Action comes even as government rolls back virus measures
China formally arrested nine people in connection with a wave of Covid protests that swept the country in November, a human rights group said, even as Beijing unwinds the virus curbs that prompted the demonstrations.
Municipal prosecutors in Beijing have approved the arrests of nine people suspected of participating in demonstrations in the capital, according to Weiquanwang, a website that tracks human rights cases in China. They’re accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” the site said Friday, without disclosing where it got the information.
13. Chinese migrant workers face crackdown for ‘malicious’ protests over unpaid wages
Sun Yu, Financial Times, January 24, 2023
Officials side with employers against labourers seeking overdue new year pay amid economic malaise.
Chinese migrant workers demanding overdue wages from their employers are facing a crackdown by local governments over alleged “malicious” labour activism.
More than a dozen cities across China have in recent weeks threatened to punish workers who take “extremist” measures, such as protests blocking traffic or outside government offices, to get the money they are owed.
The campaign follows widespread reports of payment delays by employers including debt-laden real estate developers and Covid-19 testing providers that have had trouble collecting receivables from cash-strapped local governments. The problem is exacerbated by poor enforcement of labour laws, making it difficult for workers to seek redress through legal channels.
COMMENT – It is ironic that in a country that claims to pursue “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (one might even call it a ‘national socialism’), workers find themselves fighting a combination of the Government officials and the owners of capital, as the workers try to improve their lives and receive their pay. There is of course a labor union in the PRC, but only one (All-China Federation of Trade Unions with 300 million members) and it is a ‘subsidiary’ of the Chinese Communist Party… making it all but useless in furthering the interests of Chinese workers over the interests of factory owners and Government officials (who are often the same people).
When combined with the Party’s continued use of the Hukou system (limiting where peasants and migrant workers can live, send their children to school, and draw on public services), the Chinese Communist Party institutionalizes inequality and makes huge swaths of Chinese citizens dependent on the whims of the Party’s local cadres.
I’ve always felt that these conditions (the lack of labor protections, the Party’s control on where citizens can live and how they can organize) were what made the PRC such an “attractive” place for multinational corporations and their investors to move their manufacturing. These conditions aren’t available in pluralistic democracies where companies have to contend with workers who speak for themselves, organize among themselves, and where governments permit workers the leeway to push for better pay and conditions (through collective bargaining, strikes, etc.).
The ability for workers to organize, strike, and speak out for better pay and working conditions simply does not exist in any appreciable way inside the PRC. This does not mean that workers don’t fight back, it simply means that State power is brought to bear against workers in the name of “stability.”
14. Natural Gas Shortages Hit China as Temperatures Plunge
Keith Bradsher, New York Times, January 25, 2023
Local governments starved for cash after enormous spending on costly “zero Covid” measures cannot afford to keep up adequate supplies of gas.
For many people across China, a shortage of natural gas and alarmingly cold temperatures are making a difficult winter unbearable. For Li Yongqiang, they mean freezing nights without heat.
“We dare not turn on the heat overnight — after using it for five or six hours, the gas stops again,” Mr. Li, a 45-year-old grocer, said by telephone from his home in northern China’s Hebei Province. “The gas shortage is really affecting our lives.”
The lack of natural gas, which is used widely across China to heat homes and businesses, has angered tens of millions of people and spilled over into caustic complaints on social media.
One person in Hebei Province wrote of waking early four nights a week because she was too cold to sleep despite two comforters on her bed. A viral video on China’s internet shows a high-rise apartment building in a different northern province, Shanxi, with the windows plastered with bright red posters of the sort often seen at Lunar New Year — except that these posters say “cold.”
Already this winter, hundreds of millions of people have caught Covid since Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, abandoned his “zero Covid” policy in early December. That policy had kept infections low but required costly precautions like mass testing — measures that exhausted the budgets of local governments. Many towns and cities now lack the money they need even to pay their own employees, much less to maintain adequate supplies of gas for homes.
The crunch, experts said, has exposed systemic weaknesses in China’s energy regulations and infrastructure, while showing the reach of the global market turmoil provoked last year by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has long been a major supplier of natural gas to China and many regions, particularly Europe. When Russia halted exports to Europe last summer, nations bid up world prices as they stockpiled supplies from elsewhere. A surprisingly warm winter has since helped push gas prices lower in Europe, but the bitter cold is now pushing them even higher in China.
At the same time, China’s provincial and municipal governments have reduced customary subsidies for natural gas consumption that used to keep a lid on heating bills. The national government has responded by telling local governments to provide heat, without giving them money to pay for it. As a result, gas is effectively being rationed, with households receiving the minimum needed for cooking food but very little for heat.
“It’s a perfect winter storm for Xi,” said Willy Lam, a longtime analyst of Chinese politics who is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation. “Nothing seems to be working, partly because nobody seems to have much cash.”
This is the third grass-roots energy crisis in just five years for Mr. Xi. His government abruptly banned coal-fired boilers across large areas of northern China in 2017 in favor of gas ones. It was a quick fix for air pollution, but residents soon found there was not enough gas for all the new boilers.
Then in 2021, the price of coal jumped higher than the regulated price at which utilities could sell electricity generated from coal. Reluctant to lose money, utilities temporarily closed power plants, contributing to a wave of blackouts.
COMMENT – Last summer the concern was that shortages of natural gas would lead to unrest and fracturing across NATO. But given a different set of circumstances (unseasonably warm weather in Europe and unseasonably cold weather in the PRC), it is the PRC that is suffering, despite their ‘no limits’ friendship with Moscow.
Will this just be another straw added to the camel’s back?
15. How Xi Jinping Used the CCP Constitution to Cement His Power
Jarek Grzywacz, The Diplomat, January 26, 2023
Xi’s eventual successor will face the problem of major revisions to the party constitution – meaning a complicated transition period.
16. China’s palace politics: Xi Jinping loyalists compete for power
Edward White, Financial Times, January 24, 2023
A new landscape of political divisions is forming at the top of the Chinese Communist party.
Xi Jinping will use the March lianghui — the joint sessions of China’s rubber-stamp parliament and political advisory body — to confirm a batch of appointments to critical roles running the world’s most populous country and rising military superpower.
They will be mostly men Xi has known since his youth or trusted officials with whom he has worked over decades earlier in his career, as well as rising stars who have demonstrated their allegiance to the country’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.
The appointments to government roles in March will mark the completion of Xi’s consolidation of power as he embarks on the unprecedented third term as leader that he sealed at a Communist party congress in October.
They will also signal the emergence of a new set of factions among Xi acolytes and loyalists elevated to more senior party roles during the congress.
COMMENT – We should all learn to pronounce: He Lifeng (incoming economic czar to replace the retiring Liu He) and Li Qiang (former Party Secretary of Shanghai and the incoming Premier to replace Li Keqiang)
Wu Guoguang, China Leadership Monitor, December 1, 2022
The 20th National Congress, which met in October 2022, reorganized the central leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, with party chief Xi Jinping beginning his third term and overwhelmingly dominating the Politburo and its Standing Committee.
As non-Xi factions have virtually disappeared from the top leadership, is CCP factional politics now over? Will CCP elites become “united as a piece of hard steel" with Xi in command? How will the dynamics of leadership politics in the years to follow likely unfold?
This essay is an attempt to answer these questions by analyzing the career paths of the new members of the leadership and outlining the emerging landscape of new factions in the party. It argues that, in the years to come, factional competition will be inevitable due to significant political, administrative, and institutional factors within the dictatorial regime. Generational change, in terms of internal elite circulation and power succession, will also fuel power struggles among those sub-Xi factions that are now taking shape.
COMMENT – Xi’s consolidation of power only produces new factions…
Jeffie Lam, South China Morning Post, January 24, 2023
19. Sequoia Capital China Chief Leaves Beijing’s Top Political Advisory Body
Shai Oster and Juro Osawa, Thje Intercept, January 20, 2023
Neil Shen, the head of Sequoia Capital’s hugely successful Chinese arm, is no longer a member of Beijing’s top political advisory body, raising questions about his relationship with the Chinese government. His absence comes at a time when Sequoia Capital China is navigating a sensitive environment amid growing geopolitical tensions between Beijing and Washington.
Shen was absent from an updated list of more than 2,000 delegates for the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference published earlier this week. Several other high profile Chinese tech entrepreneurs previously listed as members were also absent, including Robin Li, the CEO of search giant Baidu, and Ding Lei, the CEO of online gaming company NetEase. While the group is largely symbolic, membership in CPPCC, which meets once a year alongside the country’s legislature, is closely watched as a potential signal of endorsement and support by the party.
COMMENT – I’m not sure what we should make of this… though as someone who seemed to straddle the U.S.-PRC divide adroitly, Neil Shen’s removal from the CPPCC seems significant.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
20. Drilling starts at China oil giant’s controversial Ugandan field
Jevans Nyabiage, South China Morning Post, January 25, 2023
First rig commissioned at CNOOC Uganda’s Kingfisher oilfield as more than 70 African civic groups predict environmental peril.
Uganda has partnered with the Chinese company and France’s TotalEnergies to exploit the estimated 1.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
The Ugandan subsidiary of the giant China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) has started drilling production wells at the Kingfisher oilfield on the shores of Lake Albert, amid protests from environmentalists.
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
21. China is trying to win over Westerners and private firms. But Xi Jinping is unlikely to change
The Economist, January 25, 2023
22. New Year, Old Moves: China, Philippines, and the South China Sea
Vincent Kyle Parada, the Diplomat, January 23, 2023
Although both sides have kept it low key, Chinese coast guard activities are continuing in areas claimed by Manila.
23. Sen. Young: ‘Every member of Congress should visit Taiwan’
Matt Berg, Alex ward, and Lawrence Ukenye, Politico, January 20, 2023
Listen up, lawmakers. If Sen. TODD YOUNG can make a trip to Taiwan, why can’t you?
That’s the sentiment the Indiana Republican shared with NatSec Daily from Japan, where he met with the country’s top leaders after doing the same in Taiwan a few days prior.
Last year, then-House Minority leader KEVIN McCARTHY promised to retrace NANCY PELOSI’s steps and visit the island nation once he became speaker. We’re a few weeks into the new term, however, and Taiwan is yet to be written into McCarthy’s schedule (publicly, at least).
When asked whether McCarthy should make the visit, Young said the answer is simple.
“I think every member of Congress should visit Taiwan,” said Young, who has penned legislation to counter China’s semiconductor industry and economic coercion by strengthening trade and commerce ties with allies. “From the speaker of the House to newly minted freshmen … I think they should all go to Taiwan. Their visits are going to be very well received.”
Well received by Taiwan, that is. China was livid about the senator’s visit. Days before Young’s trip, one of his top staffers received a threatening email from the Chinese Embassy, which was reviewed by NatSec Daily.
In the message, the embassy official urged the senator to discreetly cancel the visit to Taiwan and warned of increased instability in the region if he followed through. It would further damage relations between the U.S. and China and “send wrong signals” to those who support Taiwan’s independence, the official wrote. The Chinese Communist Party views Taiwan as its own territory under its “One China” policy.
Several members of Congress received similar messages from Chinese officials in recent months, due to their interest in visiting the island nation or supporting it via legislation, as Semafor reported in October.
“I think we’ll see more of this as we push back against the Chinese,” Young said. “It’s certainly not going to deter me.”
COMMENT – I suspect that Members of Congress print out and frame the letters from the PRC Embassy threatening them not to go to Taiwan.
24. The South American Election That Has Taiwan Scrambling
Gabriel Cohen, The Diplomat, January 18, 2023
Paraguay’s upcoming election in late April could see the country establish ties with China at long last. Taipei is predictably worried.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
25. China: Free ‘White Paper’ Protesters
Human Rights Watch, January 26, 2023
Chinese authorities should immediately release and drop all charges against everyone detained for participating in the “white paper” protests against the government, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should also cease harassment of lawyers and friends of protesters and the censorship of protest-related information on social media.
26. What a Gay Flight Attendant’s Lost Discrimination Case Says About LGBTQ Rights in China
Darius Longarino and Yanhui Peng, The Diplomat, January 24, 2023
Chai Cheng’s case is one of the latest chapters in the frustrated struggle of China’s LGBTQ community to obtain legal protection against discrimination.
COMMENT – It is important to contrast the Chinese Communist Party’s continued intolerance of minorities (whether that is race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation) with what has been happening in Taiwan for the last three decades.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
27. Under-the-radar private Chinese investments are a blind spot for U.S. regulators
Eduardo Jaramillo, The China Project, January 20, 2023
For years, China’s sovereign wealth fund has made investments in large private American investment funds that finance startups and companies working on strategic or sensitive technology in the U.S. — but regulators have yet to investigate these activities.
Samantha Lu, Briana Boland, and Lily McElwee, CSIS, January 24, 2023
This “CCP Inc.” case study examines China’s state capitalism in the space sector by unpacking key Chinese business deals and state projects in Argentina. To Beijing, the space sector is strategically important for national military, economic, and technological development and is more closely tied to the state than most other industries.
As demonstrated by the case of Argentina, these close ties can benefit Chinese party-state actors going overseas by providing material state support—but can also become a liability by engendering skepticism among host countries and potential business partners over Chinese firms’ motivations.
To explore these elements of the CCP Inc. ecosystem, this report examines two recent projects in China-Argentina space collaboration: first, the construction of China’s first international deep space ground station, and second, the dynamics of Chinese business collaboration with Argentine satellite technology start-up Satellogic.
Erika Na, South China Morning Post, January 14, 2023
A growing number of foreign firms are considering alternatives for production and manufacturing after China’s zero-Covid restrictions, two new surveys show.
30. US Poised for Dutch, Japanese Help on China Chip Crackdown
Jenny Leonard, Ian King, and Cagan Koc, Bloomberg, January 19, 2023
Dutch and Japanese moves expected after White House meetings. Overseas restrictions won’t go as far as US personnel limits.
The Netherlands and Japan, home to key suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, are close to joining a Biden administration-led effort to restrict exports of the technology to China and hobble its push into the chips industry.
The Dutch and Japanese export controls may be agreed to and finalized as soon as the end of January, according to people familiar with the matter. Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, and the prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, discussed their plans with US President Joe Biden at the White House earlier this month.
COMMENT – This is an important development and my congratulations to the teams in Washington, Tokyo, and The Hague who have been busy negotiating this agreement.
31. Chinese engineer sentenced to 8 years in US prison for spying
Nectar Gan, CNN, January 26, 2023
A former graduate student in Chicago was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday for spying for the Chinese government by gathering information on engineers and scientists in the United States.
Ji Chaoqun, a Chinese national who came to the US to study electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2013 and later enlisted in the US Army Reserves, was arrested in 2018.
The 31-year-old was convicted last September of acting illegally as an agent of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) and of making a material false statement to the US Army.
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
32. Members of Congress sign up for TikTok, despite security concerns
Ariana Figueroa, Nebraska Examiner, January 23, 2023
Just like teens, members of Congress are setting up TikTok accounts — even as the popular app is increasingly barred from government devices and as heads of federal intelligence agencies raise concerns about data collection and surveillance obtained by a Chinese-owned company.
At least 32 members of Congress — all Democrats and one independent — as of early January had TikTok accounts, according to a review by States Newsroom. While there are no laws in place banning lawmakers from using the app on their personal devices, cybersecurity experts have raised concerns over data collection for those members who deal with sensitive government topics.
Of those members of Congress, at least half either currently sit or have previously served on committees dealing with foreign affairs, the U.S. military, investigations and national security.
33. China can use people's fridges and laptops to spy on them, UK warned
Gordon Rayner, The Telegraph, January 23, 2023
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
34. Russia Shifting Import Sources Amid U.S. and Allied Export Restrictions
Andrew David, Sarah Stewart, Meagan Reid, and Dmitri Alperovitch, Silverado Policy Accelerator, January 2023
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States formed a coalition with 37 allies and partners that imposed sanctions and export controls to limit Russia’s access to foreign goods and technology and erode its ability to sustain the war. U.S. sanctions have immobilized Russian Central Bank assets and targeted thousands of individuals and entities. U.S. export controls were imposed to “choke off exports of technologies and other items that support Russia’s defense industrial base ... and to degrade Russia’s military capabilities and ability to project power.” Export controls include bans or restrictions on products for military end use or to military end users, bans on exports of certain foreign-origin items like semiconductors produced with U.S. advanced technologies, tools, and software, and restrictions on exports of luxury goods to impose costs on Russian oligarchs. In addition, many multinational companies closed their Russian plants or stopped exports to Russia.
The combination of these actions by the United States and its partners has isolated Russia from the global economy and degraded Russia’s military capabilities. However, despite an initial decline in overall Russian imports, Russia continues to have access to some dual-use technologies, such as semiconductors, through increased trade with countries like China. Looking specifically through the lens of trade statistics, this report examines the impacts of government measures and company actions on Russia’s ability to access foreign goods and technologies, including those that could support and sustain the Russian government's war efforts.
The report examines: (1) overall trends in Russia’s imports to determine the extent to which Russia can import goods generally and (2) Russia’s imports of select goods (integrated circuits, smartphones, appliances, passenger vehicles, and vehicle parts) directly impacted by export controls or firm exits to assess in more depth the impact of these measures. This report finds that the United States, its allies, and the private sector need to continue to stay ahead of Russia’s efforts to adapt to government measures and shift to new supply chain networks to access important goods and technologies, including by shifting import sources and importing goods directly or through transshipment points in some post-Soviet states. This can be done through enhanced coordination, additional resources, and further strengthening enforcement efforts.
35. Taiwan president tells pope war with China not an option
Ben Blanchard, Reuters, January 23, 2023
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen has written to Pope Francis to say that war between Taiwan and China is not an option and only by respecting the Taiwanese people's insistence on sovereignty and freedom can there be healthy ties with Beijing.
The Vatican is Chinese-claimed Taiwan's sole European diplomatic ally, and Taipei has watched with concern as Pope Francis has moved to improve relations with China. The democratically governed island has formal ties with only 14 countries, largely due to Chinese pressure.
COMMENT – Unfortunately, under Pope Francis and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican has been moving closer and closer to the Chinese Communist Party. (See Parolin on Agreement with China: I think it is moving towards renewal, Vatican News, September 3, 2022)
36. US Confronts China Over Companies’ Ties to Russia War Effort
Peter Martin and Jenny Leonard, Bloomberg, January 23, 2023
The Biden administration has confronted China’s government with evidence that suggests some Chinese state-owned companies may be providing assistance for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine, as it tries to ascertain if Beijing is aware of those activities, according to people familiar with the matter.
The people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations, declined to detail the support except to say that it consists of non-lethal military and economic assistance that stops short of wholesale evasion of the sanctions regime the US and its allies imposed after Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
37. GOP Prods Raimondo on Export-Control Files, Citing China Concern
Daniel Flatley and Eric Martin, Bloomberg, January 18, 2023
38. Aukus won’t undermine Australia’s stance against nuclear weapons
Foreign Minister Penny Wong, The Guardian, January 22, 2023
39. Indonesia boosts South China Sea security ahead of energy project
Koya Jibiki, Nikkei Asia, January 24, 2023
40. India, Japan boost defense ties with 1st joint fighter jet drills
Kiran Sharma, Nikkei Asia, January 12, 2023
India and Japan are stepping up their defense cooperation with their maiden aerial combat exercise this month, going beyond their usual naval drills, against a backdrop of aggressive Chinese posturing in the region.
The exercises, "Veer Guardian-2023" conducted by the Indian Air Force and Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), will take place at Hyakuri air base in Japan, starting Monday. The Indian contingent includes four Su-30 MKI fighter jets, two C-17 transport planes and one IL-78 tanker, while the JASDF is participating with four F-2 and four F-15 fighters.
41. Arunachal clash: Over 200 PLA troops came with spiked clubs, taser guns, Indian soldiers hit back
Snehesh Alex Philip, The Print, December 12, 2022
The Chinese, who were attempting to cross over into Indian side of LAC, were initially challenged by about 50 Indian soldiers before backup arrived, outnumbering PLA troops.
42. The Tawang Clash: The View from China
Hemant Adlakha, The Diplomat, December 17, 2022
Various Chinese media reports on the Tawang clash suggest that Beijing is determined to accelerate the frequency of border standoffs.
43. India Has Lost Presence In 26 Of 65 Patrol Points in Eastern Ladakh: Report
Neeta Sharma, NDTV, January 25, 2023
India has lost access to 26 of 65 patrolling points in Eastern Ladakh, a report by a senior police officer in the union territory has said, in a worrying new disclosure amid the country's standoff with China at various flashpoints along their tottery 3,500-km frontier.
"Presently there are 65 PPs (Patrolling Points) starting from Karakoram pass to Chumur which are to be patrolled regularly by the ISFs (Indian Security Forces). Out of 65 PPs, our presence is lost in 26 PPs (i.e. PP no. 5-17, 24-32, 37, due to restrictive or no patrolling by the ISFs," PD Nitya, the Superintendent of Police of Leh, Ladakh's main city, wrote according to the research paper accessed by NDTV.
The report was filed at last week's annual conference of the country's top police officers in Delhi, attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.
COMMENT – I think it is hard to appreciate the scope and scale of the ‘shadow war’ being waged by the PRC on India across their vast and remote frontier. For some reason the Modi Government does not want this out in the open, but it bears watching.
With that in mind, a number of the Indian journalists I follow make clear that the reporting about what’s happening on the Sino-Indian border is often incomplete and conflicting.
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
44. China Belt and Road dreams fade in Germany's industrial heartland
Jens Kastner, Nikkei Asia, January 24, 2023
45. Congo President Demands More From $6.2 Billion China Deal
Jacqueline Simmons and Michael Kavanagh, Bloomberg, January 19, 2023
46. Archrivals China, India move in to fund same Bangladesh port
Syful Islam, Nikkei Asia, January 24, 2023
China and India are stepping forward to invest in the same Bangladeshi port, raising eyebrows as the regional rivals compete for influence in the South Asian country.
The two have zeroed in on the development of Mongla, Bangladesh's second-largest port, in the southwest of the country. China and India have been eyeing the facility for years, promising to provide hundreds of millions of dollars, but holding off on following through.
47. Xi woos America’s Latin and Caribbean neighbours
Wendy Tang, Times of London, January 25, 2023
President Xi has called on Latin American and Caribbean countries to enter a “new era” of co-operation with Beijing, in a renewed effort to build strategic influence in the United States’ backyard.
In a video address to regional leaders, he said that China was “ready to continue working with Latin American and Caribbean countries to help and make progress together, and advocate peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom”.
OPINION PIECES
48. The Mike Pompeo speech on China’s influence on US universities that MIT killed
Douglas Murray, New York Post, January 26, 2023
49. The good old days will not be back for China's internet companies
Angela Huyue Zhang, Nikkei Asia, January 24, 2023
Crackdown's end still leaves regulators with enhanced powers
50. The U.S. Must Help China Avoid Covid Catastrophe. Here’s How.
Michael V. Callahan, New York Times, January 24, 2023
51. Post-Brexit Britain has become a military leader in the East
Tony Abbott, The Telegraph, January 23, 2023
It won’t be from Beijing’s benevolence that peace is maintained in East Asia; only from a calculation that war is not worth it.
COMMENT – Great reminder from a former Australian Prime Minister about the importance of credible deterrence.
52. China Is Trying to Play Nice, and It’s a Problem for the US
Hal Brands, Bloomberg, January 24, 2023
Years of Beijing's bullying neighbors and “wolf warrior” diplomacy helped Washington forge security and trade alliances, but Xi Jinping seems to be wising up.
Having incompetent enemies is a blessing. For three years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has showered blessings upon the US. A self-isolated, belligerent and increasingly repressive China has been its own worst enemy, playing into America’s efforts to check Chinese power.
Now, though, Beijing is attempting an overdue course correction, and Xi’s new approach could expose America’s diplomatic weaknesses.
Since the onset of Covid in early 2020, China has offered a master class in squandering goodwill and exacerbating enmities. Beijing bullied several neighbors — India, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and others — fueling fears of Chinese military aggression. Needlessly brutish “wolf-warrior” diplomacy antagonized countries around the world.
China then compounded the damage by tying itself tightly to Russia just before President Vladimir Putin unleashed a gruesome war on Europe’s doorstep.
At home, Covid lockdowns hurt an already sluggish economy. The neo-totalitarian bent of Chinese politics under Xi — the marginalization of technocratic elites, the heavy emphasis on ideology, the deification of the ruler himself — made every other problem worse.
It almost seemed that Xi was trying to make China look scary and unreliable. In doing so, he encouraged major multinationals, such as Apple, to begin hedging their bets and diversifying their supply chains. He also helped build the very coalition that threatens to constrain Chinese influence.
The strengthening of US alliances in the Indo-Pacific, the emergence or invigoration of groupings such as the Quad (a diplomatic forum for Australia, India, Japan and the US) and AUKUS (a security pact between Australia, the UK and the US); the growing alignment of China’s rivals, such as Australia and Japan; the anti-China turn of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Group of 7; and Europe’s freezing of a trade and investment pact with Beijing were all the products — in part, at least — of China’s penchant for diplomatic self-harm.
But what if Beijing is wising up? In December, Xi unwound his Covid Zero policy faster than nearly anyone expected; China is finally reopening to the world. The government appears less focused on ideological purity than economic recovery: Officials are playing down Xi’s “common prosperity” program and playing up the private sector.
As my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Clara Ferreira Marques notes, one of Xi’s most notorious wolf-warriors has been sidelined. China’s incoming foreign minister, Qin Gang, is speaking in comparatively soothing tones.
Meanwhile, Beijing is preparing a diplomatic push.
Xi’s meeting with German chancellor Olaf Scholz in November presaged an effort to ensure that other advanced democracies, particularly in Europe, don’t emulate America’s partial decoupling from China. Xi’s summit with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in December was the forerunner of an effort to deepen ties with key developing countries, which are often eager for economic engagement with China and disinclined to choose sides between Washington and Beijing.
There’s always reason to question a new narrative coming from China, of course. Claims of implausibly low numbers of Covid deaths can’t be trusted, given the government’s tendency to treat statistics as tools of political warfare. Beijing may be distancing itself from Putin’s fiasco in Ukraine rhetorically, but — as Bloomberg News reports — the Biden administration has evidence that Chinese companies are aiding the Russian war effort there. Most fundamentally, Xi isn’t abandoning his dream of making China preeminent in Asia and the world — and securing unchecked power for himself at home.
Beijing keeps sending military aircraft barreling toward Taiwan, brawling with India in the Himalayas, and pushing around the Philippines in the South China Sea. And sometimes the mask slips, as when the quasi-official mouthpiece Global Times recently warned that Japan risks becoming “the Ukraine of Asia” if it gets too close to the US.
Yet one of America’s major diplomatic challenges of 2023 may be dealing with a rival that is pursuing the same old goals through subtler, more skillful means.
Much of the world, including key US allies, still prefers to engage China rather than isolate it. “China cannot be out, China must be in,” France’s finance minister declared this week. Australia’s center-left government, which took power in May, is seeking a “reset” with Beijing. Indeed, even a slightly less scary China could make things much harder for the US.
For years, Washington has been better at warning countries about the dangers of doing business with China than at offering them an attractive alternative. In Asia, close partners such as Japan and Singapore are frustrated that the US is encouraging them to reduce their entanglement with China without offering a meaningful pathway to deeper integration with America. The 14-member Indo-Pacific Economic Framework announced by President Joe Biden last May is better than nothing, but it’s not nearly as good as what was on offer in the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Washington designed under President Barack Obama and then disowned under President Donald Trump.
European countries, meanwhile, are peeved at clean energy subsidies and other measures in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s administration touts the bill as an investment in the free-world economy of the future, but many allies view it as America First protectionism.
Don’t make too much of these tensions, just yet: Close friends often have commercial contretemps, and administration officials tell me they are optimistic that a handful of crucial countries will emulate the semiconductor sanctions Biden slapped on China last October. But the longer China suppresses its own worst instincts, the more America’s competitive shortcomings will be on display.
COMMENT – From my vantage point, I don’t see much that has changed in the CCP’s approach to the world.
53. China woos the Washington Wizards
Matthew Foldi, The Spectator, January 25, 2023
China’s new foreign minister issued his first public statement at a Washington Wizards game this weekend. “Happy Chinese New Year to DC family,” Qin Gang said, in a video blasted on the giant screens across Capital One Arena and shared by news outlets controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
It was a continuation of China using American sporting events as a means of exerting its soft power, and yet another stark example of the existential challenge that the United States faces in its struggle to outmaneuver the Chinese Communist Party — even in its own capital.
54. TikTok Is Bad, but WeChat Is Worse
Seth Kaplan, Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2023
WeChat is the most popular communications platform in the world for Chinese speakers. It’s also a preferred vehicle for China’s Communist Party to steal data, censor, propagandize and spread disinformation in the U.S., where the app has an average of 19 million daily users. Congress banned the use of TikTok on government devices recently, and the Biden administration is reportedly seeking to go further by, for instance, limiting access to user data to mitigate the app’s dangers. Given the zeal to address threats emanating from a Chinese app, why is WeChat being ignored?
First developed by Tencent in 2011, WeChat is China’s “app for everything.” A billion people use it for texting, calling, video conferencing, playing videogames, shopping, paying bills, sending money, reading news and more. In the U.S., it is the most important source of news for Chinese students, immigrants and first-generation Chinese-Americans. But since it is a China-based technology product, WeChat is also a prominent part of Beijing’s mass-surveillance network. User activity is tracked, analyzed, censored and handed over to the government in line with Communist Party mandates. Algorithms are adjusted to promote the party’s narratives and demote or censor information that runs against them, making the app invaluable to the party’s efforts to spy on and influence Chinese communities world-wide. (Tencent said in 2020 that “user privacy and data security are core values” and that it was taking “seriously” reports that it surveilled foreign users.)
Lydia Liu, an immigrant from China with a doctorate from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, knows this all too well. She started a WeChat public account in 2018 with the aim to tell “the truth of real American life to Chinese immigrants in the U.S.A. and world-wide,” as she told me. Ms. Liu worked countless hours over three years to build the account, eventually reaching more than 250,000 followers and millions of monthly views.
But promoting a positive understanding of life in America—and its democracy and freedoms—challenges the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative about the U.S. In 2021 WeChat suspended Ms. Liu’s account, first for two weeks and then for six months. Posts that contradicted China’s stance on trade or Covid were repeatedly banned. Dozens of articles were disqualified before publication, and more than 40 were removed after publication. Comments were similarly censored. Meanwhile, Ms. Liu was repeatedly harassed. Trolls “repeatedly used the F-word, nicknamed me ‘stab people in the back’ and posted my name and Facebook information on many WeChat groups,” she said.
While users like Ms. Liu report that WeChat censors or demotes content that is positive toward the U.S., negative posts go viral daily. Chinese-speaking Americans see content suggesting that the U.S. treats Chinese people as second-class citizens, that whites always discriminate against Chinese people, the U.S. is a society plagued by gun violence, and that America’s streets were filled with dead bodies during the pandemic. The goal is to suppress Chinese and Chinese-Americans’ passion for politics and make them believe that the American political system is no better than China’s authoritarianism.
The Communist Party also uses the app to stifle the reach of Chinese-American political candidates who take a strong stance against it, such as Allen Shen, a Chinese-born U.S. Army veteran who ran as a Republican for a seat in the Minnesota House. Mr. Shen says he is unable to post on the app because of his political positions. Lily Tang Williams, who was a law professor in China, ran in a GOP primary for Congress in New Hampshire. She says she avoids anything that might be deemed political while on WeChat, out of concern for her relatives in China.
…
WeChat is likely to grow both in importance to its users and in influence over Chinese-language media in general. Its pervasiveness means that all other Chinese-language media must use it to reach readers. The Biden administration and Congress should therefore refocus on mitigating this growing threat.
Tencent has work to do. If it can’t ensure American standards of free expression and privacy on WeChat, and if its algorithms appear to continue promoting anti-American content while censoring posts critical of China, the U.S. should ban the app. If Washington decides to take that step, it must be done in tandem with other democracies to ensure Beijing’s propagandists and censors can’t own the Chinese-speaking world’s public square.
COMMENT – Kaplan is spot-on… WeChat serves as an extraterritorial arm of the Party’s surveillance apparatus to control and influence Chinese speakers around the world.