Matt Turpin's China Articles - March 5, 2023
Friends,
In putting together this newsletter, sometimes I come across a particularly disturbing article which risks being lost in the noise. Jonathan Tirone had such a piece this week in Bloomberg, China’s Imports of Russian Uranium Spark Fear of New Arms Race (#57 this week).
When combined with the news last week that Putin withdrew from the last nuclear arms treaty (along with near constant ballistic missile tests by North Korea and an Iranian nuclear program that appears unencumbered), we likely need to come to grips with the fact that we are entering a dangerous new nuclear age.
For close readers of this newsletter, we’ve seen a strong signal for a number of years that the Chinese Communist Party has undertaken a vast program to expand its nuclear weapons arsenal, as well as delivery systems (the building of ballistic missile submarines, the construction of hundreds of new ICBM silos, the development, testing, and deployment of FOBS (Fractional Orbital Bombardment System)).
The implications of these developments aren’t entirely clear, but it should encourage us to shed wishful thinking: Beijing and Moscow are now close allies and they believe that the use of military force is necessary to achieve their mutual interests.
Russian President Putin meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, February 22, 2023
From the PRC Foreign Ministry:
Wang Yi said that the current international situation is complex and severe, but the China-Russia relationship has stood the test of the drastic changes in the world landscape and become mature and tenacious, standing as firm as Mount Tai. Although crises and chaos often emerge, challenges and opportunities exist at the same time, and this is the dialectics of history. The China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era has never targeted any third party, nor does it tolerate any third party's interference or coercion. This is because China-Russia relations enjoy a solid political, economic and cultural foundation, as well as calmness and clear-head from reviewing the past.
There is an understandably deep desire to find some way to separate Beijing and Moscow. Either some sort of ‘reverse Kissinger’ move or by convincing Beijing to abandon Moscow and return to the path of converging with the rules-based, liberal international order. The prospects for the former are incredibly dim. With the Ukraine War raging and as long as Putin is alive, the idea that we could come to some sort of rapprochement with Moscow is remote indeed.
The later appears equally remote, Xi and other leading members of the Chinese Communist Party have spent the past decade ‘burning the bridges’ to the United States and other democracies. The Party has convinced itself that the rules-based, liberal international order is an existential threat to their rule and that the international system must be reformed to protect their regime. For the Party, returning to the old path of convergence would simply enable the ‘color revolutions’ that the United States engineers to overthrow authoritarian regimes.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Cold War 2.0: Sliding Toward a New Cold War
Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, February 26, 2023
Not since the Berlin Wall fell has the world been cleaved so deeply by the kind of conflict that John F. Kennedy called a “long, twilight struggle.”
Joe Biden’s national-security aides were recently at work on a secret mission—how to get the President safely in and out of Ukraine’s capital, ahead of the anniversary of Russia’s invasion—when they got word of a problem closer to home: a suspected Chinese spy balloon had been spotted in U.S. airspace. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was preparing to board a flight to Beijing, called off his trip and, on February 4th, as the world watched, an F-22 shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina, where it sank, like a strange emblem of this precarious moment.
The United States shot down three more floating objects in the following days, then announced that there was no sign that any of them were connected to China. By that point, though, the machinery of confrontation was in full gear. In a radio interview, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, speculated that the balloon was “a test to see what the U.S. would do,” and ventured that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is “bent on a world war.” Nikki Haley, a Republican contender for the Presidency in 2024, signalled her backing for something close to regime change, telling supporters that “Communist China will end up on the ash heap of history.” China cast the uproar as a sign of America’s decline. Its most senior diplomat, Wang Yi, described the balloon shoot-down as “borderline hysterical, and an utter misuse of military force.”
Not since the Berlin Wall fell has the world been cleaved so deeply by the kind of conflict that John F. Kennedy called a “long, twilight struggle” over the shape of its future. In broad terms, it is a schism between the realms of democracy and autocracy, pitting the U.S. and its allies against Russia and its dominant partner, China. Officials on all sides, though, downplay analogies to the past. That’s for the best; banal triumphalism about the Cold War tends to ignore both how close we came to nuclear catastrophe—a spectre that Putin revived last week, when he suspended Russia’s last arms-control deal with the U.S.—and the toll of the proxy wars fought around the globe, which the historian Paul Chamberlin estimates killed more than twenty million people.
The blocs in this new cold war are hardening. Within days of Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Germany announced a “turning point” in its long-standing relationship with Russia, which would alter its military and energy policies. A reinvigorated NATO, at a summit last summer, to which leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand were invited, voiced unprecedented concern about China’s ambitions. Meanwhile, the Biden Administration has strengthened military ties with Australia, Japan, and India; most recently, it announced plans to expand military activities in the Philippines, to bolster its ability to defend Taiwan.
But the war has also delineated the limits of U.S. influence. Despite Russia’s brutality in Ukraine, it has maintained, or reinforced, ties with a host of nations. India, which is working with the U.S. to counter China, nevertheless relies heavily on weapons and oil from Russia, and has quintupled trade with it. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, recently visited nine countries in the Middle East and Africa. But none are as vital to Russia as China: though the two nations have little fellow-feeling, Xi and Putin have forged a circumstantial bond out of hostility to Washington’s dominance. Beijing has aided Moscow by buying Russian oil and selling it commercial drones and microchips, and by abstaining from efforts in the United Nations to condemn the invasion. Xi’s government calls itself a neutral party, but, on Friday, it proposed a ceasefire in terms that echo many of Russia’s claims.
In the run-up to the anniversary, the Biden Administration accused China of weighing whether to supply weapons to support Russia’s war—a charge it denied. If China were to provide arms, it would mark a momentous turn away from the international system, suggesting that Xi feels he cannot afford to let Putin fail, regardless of the consequences for Beijing’s fragile standing in Europe. It would be a calculation recalling an earlier moment of anxiety, shortly before the Soviet collapse, when the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said, “The problem now is not whether the banner of the Soviet Union will fall . . . but whether the banner of China will fall.”
For now, the prospects for preventing a cold war from becoming a hot one rest less on grand strategies than on urgent mechanics. Following the balloon incident, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tried calling Wei Fenghe, China’s defense minister, and was rebuffed. In December, the U.S. said that a Chinese fighter jet had come within twenty feet of an American warplane in international airspace over the South China Sea. The U.S. offered to hold “de-confliction” talks, but Beijing declined. Before the balloon got in the way, Blinken had been expected to use his trip to re-start negotiations over the handling of those types of encounters—establishing “guardrails” that might prevent an accident from escalating into a calamity.
All too often, the onset of a great-power standoff inspires more attention to weapons than to communications. George F. Kennan, the architect of America’s “containment” policy toward the Soviets, often lamented that his theory was used to justify a military buildup rather than a sustained commitment to political and economic diplomacy. In a new biography, the historian Frank Costigliola writes that, after Kennan “spent the four years from 1944 to 1948 promoting the Cold War, he devoted the subsequent forty to undoing what he and others had wrought.” The Soviet example holds only limited lessons for today, though, because of China’s economic scale. Toward the end of the Cold War, U.S. trade with the Soviet Union was about two billion dollars a year; U.S. trade with China is now nearly two billion dollars a day.
Washington should fiercely oppose Beijing’s abuse of human rights, its militarizing of the South China Sea, and its threats to Taiwan. But, if we are to limit the worst risks of a cold war, the U.S. should also prepare for what the Nixon Administration called détente—the policy, adopted in the late nineteen-sixties, with regard to the Soviets, that Henry Kissinger later summarized as “both deterrence and coexistence, both containment and an effort to relax tensions.”
Kennan, to his final days, warned about the seductive logic of wars, both cold and hot. In 2002, at the age of ninety-eight, he campaigned against the march to war in Iraq, arguing that history suggests “you might start a war with certain things on your mind” but often end up “fighting for entirely different things that you had never thought of before.”
Secretary Gina Raimondo, U.S. Department of Commerce, February 28, 2023
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo delivered a speech titled “The CHIPS Act and a Long-term Vision for America’s Technological Leadership” at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. In her remarks, Raimondo outlined the historic opportunity provided by the CHIPS and Science Act and the long-term goals she has set for the program to solidify America's technology and innovation leadership while protecting America’s economic and national security.
3. Watching China in Europe - March 2023
Noah Barkin, German Marshall Fund, February 28, 2023
European leaders in recent years have taken to declaring an end to the era of naivety toward China. But wishful thinking has persisted despite the steady erosion of the geopolitical landscape amid the pandemic, the unwinding of decades of globalization, and the war in Ukraine. One lingering hope was that the United States and China could manage their differences under President Joe Biden, a pragmatist with a lengthy résumé in foreign affairs, and a team of capable, experienced diplomats. Another was that China’s relationship with Russia would ultimately prove to be a fragile marriage of convenience that would crack under pressure. The past few weeks, bookended by the shooting down of a Chinese balloon over the United States and the publication of Beijing’s 12-point plan for resolving the Ukraine conflict, should go a long way toward extinguishing these last glimmers of hope.
If anyone in Europe still harbors illusions about acting as a balancing middle power between the United States and China, or prying Chinese President Xi Jinping away from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, they should have their head examined. The remainder of 2023 is likely to be especially challenging for Europe as the war in Ukraine enters its second year, pressure from Washington to decouple from China mounts, and tensions over Taiwan build in the run-up to a presidential election on the island in January 2024. It is a discomforting picture, one that will require new realism in Brussels, Berlin, Paris, and beyond.
4. AUDIO – Will Xi Give Putin Arms? Has A Cold War Already Begun?
Jordan Schneider and Dennis Wilder, China Talk, February 27, 2023
Would China really arm Russia, and if so what will that mean for the world if the US and China end up on opposite sides of a proxy war?
To discuss this I have on today Georgetown’s, Dennis Wilder, a longtime CIA veteran who served as an NSC director on the China desk under the bush administration and spent six years under Obama editing the presidential daily brief before concluding his career in government as the CIA’s deputy assistant director for East Asia and the Pacific.
5. VIDEO – House Select Committee on the CCP Hearing on ‘The Chinese Communist Party’s Threat to America’
U.S. House of Representatives, YouTube, February 28, 2023
The first hearing of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
6. Russia Turns to China’s Yuan in Effort to Ditch the Dollar
Chelsey Dulaney, Evan Gershkovich, and Victoria Simanovskaya, Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2023
Moscow has jettisoned longstanding concerns about giving China too much leverage over its economy.
Russia’s economy, restricted from Western financial networks and the U.S. dollar, has embraced a burgeoning alternative: the Chinese yuan.
Energy exporters are increasingly getting paid in yuan. Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund, a war chest to support government spending burdened by battlefield costs in Ukraine, is using the Chinese currency to store its oil riches. Russian companies have borrowed in yuan, also known as renminbi, and households are stashing savings in it.
The Chinese currency’s rise inside Russia deepens ties between two countries that have long rivaled each other for global influence but have grown closer amid shared discontent with the West. It also serves China’s long standing but mostly frustrated campaign to make the yuan a more prominent feature of global finance and commerce.
AUTHORITARIANISM
7. EY China staff encouraged to wear Communist party badges
Cheng Leng, Financial Times, February 27, 2023
Communist party members at EY China in Beijing have been asked to wear their party badges to show their political loyalty while they are at work.
A Communist party branch committee at the company made the demand just ahead of China’s annual parliamentary meetings, a time of high political sensitivity in the country. The rubber-stamp legislature is expected to confirm Xi Jinping for a third term as president, and a new slate of top officials will be appointed.
The committee sent a message from its EY email account to all party members at the Big Four accounting firm’s Beijing office on February 23, according to two people who received the directive. A party branch needs to set up a committee at a company when the number of its members exceeds seven but is below 50.
8. The A4 Movement: Mapping its Background and Impact
Patricia M. Thornton, China Leadership Monitor, March 1, 2023
Although not the primary cause that prompted the sudden reversal of Xi Jinping’s signature “zero-COVID” policy, the protests that swept twenty-one provinces and over two hundred college and university campuses in late November no doubt played a role in the timing of the decision.
Yet, neither the excessive zeal with which the coronavirus prevention measures were applied at the local level nor the resulting rise in social discontent were surprising or unpredictable. Both were the result of an increasingly autocratic system that demands absolute adherence to an increasingly infeasible task and places downward pressures on the social grassroots.
The “blank page” protests brought together three disparate groups – the urban working class, suffering economic deprivation caused by the rolling lockdowns; the middle-class urbanites and university students, suffering from “lockdown fatigue”; and an exploding solidarity movement of overseas Chinese students and members of the next-generation Chinese diaspora, who provided support via social media. Predictably, public security officials attempted to defuse, dissipate, and contain these groups, and propaganda organs appeared poised to declare the end of “zero-COVID” as a public relations victory.
The ongoing search for nefarious “foreign forces,” allegedly behind the protests, highlights the inability of China’s repressive apparatus to recognize the fact that the unorganized interests behind the protests were unlikely to have been driven by a larger anti-state agenda.
9. Lukashenko arrives in Beijing as concerns rise around China-Russia relations
Jared Gans, The Hill, February 28, 2023
10. Xi Welcomes Russia Ally Lukashenko in Visit Shadowed by War
Bloomberg, March 1, 2023
Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, a close Russian ally, in talks watched closely for signs that Beijing is expanding coordination with Moscow and its supporters in their standoff with the West.
Belarus “fully supports the initiative put forward by you,” Lukashenko told Xi in Beijing Wednesday, according to state-run news agency Belta. He was referring to China’s proposals for international security, many of which were echoed in its 12-point peace initiative for Ukraine released last week. That plan was quickly dismissed by Kyiv and its allies in the US and Europe.
11. China is rolling out the red carpet for a key Putin ally as US warns against aiding Russia’s war
Simone McCarthy, CNN, February 28, 2023
China is preparing to welcome a key autocratic ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin for a state visit, amid warnings from United States officials that Beijing may be considering aiding Moscow in its ongoing assault on Ukraine.
Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko is scheduled to hold talks with Chinese officials in Beijing from Tuesday to Thursday at the invitation of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, China’s Foreign Ministry announced Sunday.
His trip comes after the two leaders agreed to upgrade their countries’ ties to an “all-weather comprehensive strategic partnership” during a September meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan, which Putin also attended.
The visit from Lukashenko – who allowed Russian troops to use Belarus to stage their initial incursion into Ukraine last year – comes as tensions between the US and China have intensified in recent weeks, including over concerns from Washington that Beijing is considering sending lethal aid to the Kremlin’s struggling war effort.
COMMENT – This visit by Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator who has been in office since 1994 and who staged a massive crackdown following rigged elections two years ago, happens as Xi Jinping has still not spoken with Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy despite a year of war and Beijing’s recent release of a peace plan.
12. Orbán backs China’s Ukraine peace plan
Wilhelmine Preussen, Politico.eu, February 27, 2023
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said that his country supports China’s peace plan for Ukraine, countering Western leaders’ position on the Beijing proposal.
“We also consider China’s peace plan important and support it,” the Hungarian leader said in the national parliament Monday, adding that he wants Hungary to stay out of the war and not deliver weapons to Ukraine.
U.S. and EU officials had dismissed China’s Ukraine peace proposal as an attempt to distract from its pro-Russia stance, and NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week that the proposal “doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine.”
Orbán’s remarks drew blowback in parliament on Monday.
“Why did the government side with the murderous Putin? Is it possible that the Hungarian prime minister is an agent of Russia?” former Hungarian prime minister and opposition leader Ferenc Gyurcsány asked during the parliamentary debate following Orbán’s speech.
13. You ain’t no middleman: EU and NATO slam China’s bid to be a Ukraine peacemaker
Stuart Lau, Politico.eu, February 24, 2023
Von der Leyen says Beijing ‘has taken sides’ while NATO’s Stoltenberg says ‘China doesn’t have much credibility’.
China’s attempt to style itself as a neutral peacemaker in the Ukraine war fell flat on Friday when NATO and the EU both slammed its playbook for ending the conflict one year after Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Beijing is a key strategic ally of Russia, which it sees as a useful partner against the West and NATO. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Chinese companies are already supplying “non-lethal” aid to Russia, but added there are indications that China is weighing up sending arms — something Beijing denies.
Earlier on Friday, the Chinese foreign ministry published a 12-point, 892-word “position paper” with a view to settling what it calls the “Ukraine crisis,” without referring to it as a war.
14. How the EU-China relationship became a casualty of Russia’s war in Ukraine
Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, March 1, 2023
When European and Chinese officials talk these days, the meetings tend to follow a certain pattern.
The Europeans raise Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They ask China to use its influence over Russian President Vladimir Putin to help bring the war to an end, emphasising Beijing’s special responsibilities as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and urge it not to send military support.
Jun Mai, South China Morning Post, February 28, 2023
This year’s “two sessions” – the annual meetings of the legislature and political advisory body – begin on March 4 and will complete a twice-a-decade leadership transition, with a reshuffle of top government jobs including the premier, and Xi Jinping set to secure a third term as president. In the first of a six-part series on what to expect from this key event, Jun Mai looks at the general political direction in China.
According to China’s political calendar, with its top government positions in five-yearly transition mode and the lame ducks on their way out, the past four months or so should have been mundane.
No surprises were expected until next month’s annual session of the national legislature, when dozens of news faces promoted from the Communist Party’s rank and file at October’s party congress will be assigned to their government positions.
But the past few months have been anything but uneventful, with President Xi Jinping, who secured third term as party general secretary at the congress, overseeing the abrupt abandonment of China’s almost three-year-old zero-Covid policy.
16. Das Verschwinden eines Bankers schürt Sorge vor politischer Kampagne gegen die Finanzbranche [The disappearance of a banker raises concerns about a political campaign against the financial industry] – ORIGINAL IN GERMAN
Sabine Gusbeth and Michael Maisch, Handelsblatt, March 3, 2023
[GOOGLE TRANSLATE] China's powerful anti-corruption agency is urging financial executives to abandon their 'hedonistic' lifestyles. Xi wants to punish "misconduct" harder.
Shortly before the opening of the National People's Congress, fears are growing in China that the Communist Party could launch a so-called rectification campaign against the financial sector. The immediate cause of this concern is the disappearance of Bao Fan , one of China's most influential investment bankers, in mid-February.
After Bao was unavailable for a week, his bank China Renaissance Holdings said the billionaire was "assisting" Chinese authorities in an unspecified investigation.
Last week, China's powerful anti-corruption agency also announced that it would punish misconduct in the financial sector even more severely. She urged bankers to correct their way of thinking, change their "hedonistic" lifestyle and stop copying Western methods.
Bao, 52, is the founder of Hong Kong-listed investment bank China Renaissance. His sudden disappearance has unsettled China's business elite, because the billionaire is one of the most important financiers of the Internet industry. Bao has played a key role in many deals by the big Chinese tech companies, be they online retailers like JD.com, Meituan or the driving service provider Didi.
William Zheng, South China Morning Post, March 1, 2023
This year’s “two sessions” – the annual meetings of the legislature and political advisory body – begin on March 4 and will complete a twice-a-decade leadership transition, with a reshuffle of top government jobs including the premier, and Xi Jinping set to secure a third term as president. In the second of a six-part series on what to expect from this key event, William Zheng looks at what could be in store for Hong Kong and Macau.
Two senior Communist Party leaders – one tipped to be named a vice-premier and the other head of China’s top political advisory body – are Beijing’s leading candidates to oversee Hong Kong and Macau affairs, analysts said.
They said they would be watching the annual meeting of the national legislature closely for clues as to whether Wang Huning, 67, or Ding Xuexiang, 60, will succeed the retiring Han Zheng, who has filled that role since 2016.
Wang and Ding are both members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body.
Former ideology tsar Wang is expected to succeed Wang Yang as chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference when the advisory body also holds its annual meeting this month.
18. China's Xi lays out government 'reform' plan at party plenum
Tsukasa Hadano, Nikkei Asia, March 1, 2023
The Central Committee of China's Communist Party concluded a three-day plenary session Tuesday, at which President Xi Jinping explained a draft plan for "reform" of the party and government institutions.
A party communique issued after the second plenum stressed the "importance and urgency" of reform, but did not provide details about the proposal itself.
It said the world had entered a "new period of instability and change," hinting at a sense of alarm amid tensions with the U.S. over Taiwan and Ukraine.
Reports from Hong Kong media outlets indicate that the plan involves moving policing and security functions from the State Council -- a government body equivalent to China's cabinet -- to a new internal affairs commission directly controlled by the Communist Party.
This would vastly expand the party's powers. But it also would involve a major reorganization of the state apparatus that shrinks the role of government, an idea likely resisted by many in the party.
The Central Committee also solidified nominations to the State Council. Li Qiang, a Xi ally, is believed to have been unofficially tapped as premier. He Lifeng, chair of the National Development and Reform Commission, is apparently set to become vice premier, responsible for steering macroeconomic policy.
Suisheng Zhao, China Leadership Monitor, March 1, 2023
Xi Jinping has intensified his patriotic education campaign to reaffirm the CCP’s authoritarian rule and he has nurtured a new generation of nationalists who are intolerant of any criticism of the CCP regime and who are muscularly hostile to the Western powers and to Western values.
The campaign has fueled ever-sharper demands for deference to China’s wishes by foreigners, making compromise extremely difficult if not impossible on issues China deems to be its core interests. But nationalism has been a double-edged sword. Chinese people have become increasingly disaffected, directing their anger to the regime and to Xi personally. After the collapse of Xi’s zero-COVID policy, it has become increasingly difficult for Xi to engage young people through nationalism.
20. China Dismisses Latest Claim That Lab Leak Likely Caused Covid
David Person, New York Times, February 27, 2023
China accused the United States of politicizing the coronavirus pandemic again on Monday, in response to reports that the Energy Department had concluded that an accidental laboratory leak had likely triggered the spread of Covid worldwide.
The rebuke marks the latest salvo in a running war of words between the two countries over the origins of the virus, an issue that has taken on as much of a political dimension as a scientific one as the rivalry between the two superpowers deepens.
21. Josh Chin and Liza Lin on China’s Domestic Surveillance
Shannon Tiezzi, The Diplomat, March 1, 2023
“Chinese surveillance” became a buzzword in early February, after a spy balloon from China was discovered over the continental United States. While China does have robust espionage operations abroad, it also devotes a great deal of resources to surveilling its own population, both online and in the real world.
Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin delved into the political imperatives and technologies driving China’s surveillance operations in their book “Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control.” In this written interview, The Diplomat’s Shannon Tiezzi asked Chin and Lin about the scope of surveillance in China, the public reaction, and the future direction of such efforts.
22. FBI Director Says Covid Pandemic Likely Caused by Chinese Lab Leak
Michael R. Gordon and Warren Strobel, Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2023
Christopher Wray provides first public confirmation of bureau’s classified assessment of suspected laboratory incident.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said Tuesday that the Covid pandemic was probably the result of a laboratory leak in China, providing the first public confirmation of the bureau’s classified judgment of how the virus that led to the deaths of nearly seven million people worldwide first emerged.
Mr. Wray added that the Chinese government has been trying to “thwart and obfuscate” the investigation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, other parts of the U.S. government and foreign partners have been carrying out into the origin of the pandemic, but that the bureau’s work continues.
23. The Sudden End of Zero-Covid: An Investigation
Minxin Pei, China Leadership Monitor, March 1, 2023
China’s sudden exit from zero-Covid in early December surprised many observers. The most powerful motivations for this decision were the prohibitive costs to the economy inflicted by zero-Covid, the growing evidence of its ineffectiveness in face of a more infectious Covid variant, and the greatly diminished political incentive for maintaining zero-Covid after the 20th Party Congress.
The party’s poor preparations for the exit were mainly due to the leadership’s overriding desire to stage a successful party congress. The politicization of the pandemic response continued even after the sudden end of zero-Covid as the official propaganda apparatus sought to reshape the narrative and the government refused to approve more advanced Western vaccines and to include an imported Pfizer anti-viral treatment in its health insurance program. The decisive end of zero-Covid and the subsequent pivot to the economy nevertheless reveal the party’s pragmatist side.
ENVIRONMENTAL HARMS
24. China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds
Julia Simon, NPR, March 2, 2023
China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021.
That's despite the fact that much of the world is getting off coal, says Flora Champenois, coal research analyst at Global Energy Monitor and one of the co-authors of the report.
"Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas," she says. "We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."
FOREIGN INTERFERENCE AND COERCION
25. China’s Censorship Reaches Globally Through WeChat
Seth Kaplan, Foreign Policy, February 28, 2023
The all-in-one app is also a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok dances have captured the attention of countless U.S. teenagers—and TikTok has captured the regulatory attention of the U.S. government. But the deeper threat to U.S. freedom is from another Chinese-owned app—one with a much broader reach into the wallets and conversations of both Chinese and Chinese Americans. WeChat is China’s “app for everything,” but as some Chinese Americans have found out, “everything” does not include free cultural or political discourse.
Imagine a fusion of WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and PayPal. This is WeChat—an immensely popular app in China and Chinese-speaking communities around the world because of its wide range of functions, including texting, calling, video conferencing, playing video games, shopping, paying bills, sending money to friends, creating information feeds for friends, and reading news. Released by Tencent in 2011, it is the largest standalone app in the world, with over 1 billion monthly active users.
WeChat’s widespread use among Chinese-speaking Americans makes it an important source of news for the United States-based Chinese diaspora, including international students, first-generation Chinese Americans, and others. This has driven an explosion in WeChat-based media targeting the audience. And once adopted, WeChat is far more all-encompassing for its users than TikTok or any comparable U.S. app. In a sense, it is not just an app but an add-on operating system for smartphone communications in Chinese.
26. Überwachung in Deutschland – made in China [Surveillance in Germany – made in China] – ORIGINAL IN GERMAN
Dietmar Neuerer, Dana Heide, and Moritz Koch, Handelsblatt, March 3, 2023
[GOOGLE TRANSLATE] Some countries have already restricted the use of cameras for security reasons, but Germany has not yet. How dangerous is that for critical infrastructure?
Concerns about Germany's critical infrastructure have increased since the beginning of the Ukraine war - and now another danger is becoming clear. The federal government has even sensitive areas monitored with security technology from companies that have close ties to the Chinese state and, if requested, work closely with the regime and may have to pass on collected data.
This emerges, among other things, from a response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior by department head Nancy Faeser (SPD) to a parliamentary question from the Union parliamentary group, which is available to the Handelsblatt. According to this, surveillance cameras from the Chinese manufacturers Hikvision and Dahua are also used for critical infrastructures such as airports and train stations, “insofar as federal agencies operate their own video surveillance systems here”. The technology from China is also used in the federal ministries and their subordinate authorities.
27. Belgium’s cyber security agency links China to spear phishing attack on MP
Yuan Yang, Financial Times, February 28, 2023
European governments are increasingly challenging Beijing over suspected cyber offences.
Belgium’s cyber security agency has linked China-sponsored hackers to an attack on a prominent politician, as European governments become increasingly willing to challenge Beijing over alleged cyber offences.
Samuel Cogolati, a Belgian MP, was named by authorities last month as being the subject of a cyber attack around January 2021 when he wrote a resolution to warn of “crimes against humanity” against Uyghur Muslims in China.
In a letter seen by the Financial Times, the Centre for Cyber Security Belgium (CCB) wrote that it had been informed that a specific Chinese state actor called “APT31” was most probably behind the so-called spear phishing attack.
The cyber authority’s willingness to name a Chinese state actor, and to link them to a specific attack, comes as European cyber agencies lose their former reticence to call out China over suspected incidents.
28. China’s CCP warns Elon Musk against sharing Wuhan lab leak report
Rohan Goswami, CNBC, February 28, 2023
Chinese state-run media warned Tesla CEO Elon Musk that he was risking his relationship with China after he retweeted about the U.S. government’s “low-confidence” assessment that the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
The warning comes ahead of a congressional hearing on China, and after the downing of a Chinese espionage balloon heightened tensions between Beijing and the U.S.
A Chinese state-run newspaper issued a warning to Tesla CEO Elon Musk after he shared reporting on the U.S. Department of Energy’s “low confidence” assessment that the global Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory.
CNBC’s Eunice Yoon reported Tuesday morning on the warning from the social media pages of the Global Times, the English-language subsidiary of the government-controlled People’s Daily. The Global Times warned Musk that he could be “breaking the pot of China” after the Tesla and Twitter CEO responded to tweets that asserted that the Covid pandemic originated in a Wuhan research laboratory.
The saying is akin to the idiom “to bite the hand that feeds you,” Yoon reported. Tesla has an expansive factory campus in Shanghai, and China is the electric vehicle manufacturer’s second largest market.
29. China threatens to block Musk's Starlink with rival fleet of 13,000 satellites
Gareth Corfield, The Telegraph, February 27, 2023
Lasers and microwaves could be used to shoot down internet-providing satellites.
China has threatened to block Elon Musk’s Starlink with a rival fleet of 13,000 satellites amid claims they pose a potential military threat and could spy on the Communist country.
30. China’s Transnational Repression and Modern Slavery in Italy
Leonardo Delfanti and Hugh Bohane, The Diplomat, February 28, 2023
An eye-witness report by two investigative journalists on the ground in Prato, Italy.
31. Canadians Fear China Swayed Elections That Kept Trudeau in Power
Brian Platt, Bloomberg, March 1, 2023
Poll finds majority suspect Beijing tried to tip the scales More than 40% of Conservatives say 2021 vote was ‘stolen’.
32. Canadians say PM Trudeau should get tougher on China
Steve Scherer, Reuters, March 1, 2023
A majority of Canadians want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to respond more forcefully to alleged election interference by China, according to a poll published on Wednesday, as relations between the two countries again take a turn for the worse.
Some 53% of respondents said they felt Canada's response following a string of recent events, including the arbitrary detention of two Canadians by Beijing and media reports of election meddling, was "not strong enough", polling firm Angus Reid Institute said.
Angus Reid Institute, March 1, 2023
The latest allegations to strain an already challenged diplomatic relationship between Ottawa and Beijing have a majority of Canadians of the belief the Chinese government did indeed attempt to interfere in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, while demanding a stronger response from the federal government on the issue.
These are the latest findings of a new public opinion survey from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute.
Amid allegations Beijing attempted to influence the outcomes of both the 2019 and 2021 elections to ensure the federal Liberal Party formed a minority government over the opposition Conservatives, two-thirds of adult Canadians express belief that Beijing “definitely” (32%) or “probably” (33%) tried to meddle.
Majorities across the political spectrum are of this view, while half of Canadians say this attempted interference represents a serious threat to democracy (53%).
Past Conservative Party voters are most likely to view the Chinese government’s attempts as successful, with a plurality (42%) saying they “feel the election was stolen” in 2021. It should be noted however, that the allegations of interference involve fewer seats than could have swayed the result in parliament.
What is less equivocal, however, is the view the federal government is not doing enough to safeguard Canada’s security and defence. Two-thirds (64%), including majorities of past Conservative (88%) and Liberal (52%) voters alike, say Ottawa needs to put additional focus on this area.
34. Liberal MP accused of getting help from China skipped House votes condemning Beijing
Ryan Tumilty, National Post, February 28, 2023
Han Dong missed voting on one of the Uyghur genocide motions despite being present to vote on other motions before and after it on the same day.
35. Canada needs an inquiry into Chinese election interference: ex-spymaster
Rachel Gilmore, Global News, February 25, 2023
Canada needs a public inquiry into allegations of Chinese election interference, Canada former spymaster says.
Speaking in an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, airing Sunday, Richard Fadden, the former head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and former national security advisor to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, said he “can’t see any compelling reason not to” hold a public inquiry.
“I think in this case, the allegations are so serious they need to be looked into,” Fadden told Stephenson.
“I think a public inquiry is really the route to go.”
36. Liberals ignored CSIS warning on 2019 candidate accused in Chinese interference probe: sources
Sam Cooper, Global News, February 24, 2023
Three weeks before Canada’s 2019 federal election, national security officials allegedly gave an urgent, classified briefing to senior aides from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office, warning them that one of their candidates was part of a Chinese foreign interference network.
According to sources, the candidate in question was Han Dong, then a former Ontario MPP whom Canadian Security Intelligence Service had started tracking in June of that year.
National security officials also allege that Dong, now a sitting MP re-elected in 2021, is one of at least 11 Toronto-area riding candidates allegedly supported by Beijing in the 2019 contest. Sources say the service also believes Dong is a witting affiliate in China’s election interference networks.
Three sources with knowledge of the investigation said Dong emerged as a successor to MP Geng Tan as the 2019 Liberal candidate in ways the service found suspicious. These sources spoke to Global News on the condition of anonymity, which they requested because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act.
HUMAN RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION
37. Volkswagen under fire over Xinjiang plant after China chief visit
Victoria Waldersee and Jan Schwartz, Reuters, February 28, 2023
Volkswagen drew criticism from campaigners and a big investor on Tuesday after the head of its Chinese business said he saw no sign of forced labour during a visit to the carmaker's Xinjiang plant.
The works council, which is represented on Volkswagen's supervisory board, in a statement following Ralf Brandstaetter's comments said the company must make clear the plant's value for the business and take a stance on human rights violations in China.
38. Western Academics Are Fighting for Disappeared Friends in Xinjiang
Liam Scott, Foreign Policy, February 28, 2023
Joanne Smith Finley, a British expert in Uyghur studies, will never forget when she learned that her dear friend Abdurehim Heyit was detained in 2017.
“When I heard he had been interned, I was absolutely distraught. I just collapsed into tears,” she said. “I was imagining awful things. I was imagining that they would break his hands. I was thinking, ‘What would I do if I wanted to break the will or the spirit of a huge cultural figure in Uyghur society who plays the dutar [lute]?’ I would break his hands.”
Heyit’s detention was part of the ongoing crackdown and human rights abuses in China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang, which have particularly targeted Uyghur intellectuals, artists, and writers.
Uyghur studies scholars Elise Anderson and Timothy Grose both remember where they were when they learned that their longtime mentor and friend, the internationally acclaimed Uyghur folklorist Rahile Dawut, had disappeared in 2017. And academic Darren Byler remembers when he learned that his mentor, the famed Uyghur writer Perhat Tursun, was detained in 2018.
“When I’m feeling strong,” Finley told Foreign Policy, the sadness she feels about her many Uyghur colleagues and friends who have been persecuted and detained is a motivator. But “sometimes it’s debilitating.”
The Western academics who have devoted their lives to the study of Uyghur society and Xinjiang, where the Chinese government is committing what the U.S. government says constitutes genocide, are experiencing personal trauma and professional difficulties at the same time as they advocate and work for their detained colleagues and friends. A sense of loss has been matched by a sense of duty.
Due to their work on the region and the human rights crisis happening there, many of them face harassment and retaliation from the Chinese government—in the form of sanctions and lawsuits, denied visa applications and travel bans, online trolling, and state media smears.
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES AND ECONOMIC ESPIONAGE
39. JPMorgan slashes China weighting in proposed new Asia bond index
Hudson Lockett, Financial Times, February 27, 2023
Bank lines up alternative benchmark after Chinese property crisis chokes off debt issuance in the sector.
40. Apple Suppliers Are Racing to Exit China, AirPods Maker Says
Nguyen Xuan Quynh and John Boudreau, Bloomberg, February 28, 2023
41. Measuring China’s Technological Self-Reliance Drive
Jeffrey Ding, China Leadership Monitor, March 1, 2023
Assessments of China's efforts to promote indigenous innovation will be fruitless without clear metrics for technological self-sufficiency. Yet, indicators of indigenous innovation are more ambiguous than other scientific and technological indicators, which complicates such assessments.
Indeed, clear-eyed evaluations of China's drive to reduce foreign dependence in information-technology domains are muddied by confusion over the definition of indigenous innovation and the widening "gray zone" between domestic and foreign companies.
42. Fewer American Companies See China as an Investment Priority
Dan Strumpf, Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2023
U.S. companies are also more pessimistic about their financial outlook there, with more than half saying they didn’t turn a profit last year and more than a third saying their China revenue fell from a year earlier, according to the survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce in China.
Top business challenges identified for 2023 included rising U.S.-China tensions, China’s Covid-19 measures and what respondents said were inconsistent regulatory interpretations, as well as unclear laws and enforcement by authorities.
43. Majority of US Firms Don’t See China as Priority for Investment
Bloomberg, February 28, 2023
AmCham survey shows companies’ outlook for China is negative. More than half of US firms say won’t be profitable in 2022.
44. Is China’s Reform and Opening Era Over?
Sara Hsu, The Diplomat, March 1, 2023
Xi Jinping, who secured a precedent-busting third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last year, is viewed as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. He has consolidated his power through anti-corruption purges, regulatory crackdowns, and increased censorship and surveillance. With a view of a strong China as a model of a communist state, Xi has diverged from his predecessors’ tendency to steer China toward comparisons with Western economies.
In other words, Xi changed China’s trajectory from the “Reform and Opening Up” of his predecessors toward a more internal and state-focused model of economic development. This was shaped, in part, by an external environment, led by the United States, that became increasingly hostile to Chinese state-led and technological development and by the global pandemic, which threatened to create social chaos.
These external influences are reflected by Xi’s turn away from reform led by the private sector, positioned to make China more attractive to foreign investors, to a more cautious and balanced approach to economic development, embodied in the “common prosperity” campaign. Common prosperity references terminology used by Xi’s more conservative Communist Party predecessors, and underscores Xi’s position as a communist leader first, and a proponent of economic growth a trailing second.
45. China’s Farmland Is in Serious Trouble
Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Foreign Policy, February 27, 2023
46. China’s Balance Sheet Challenge
Nicholas Borst, China Leadership Monitor, March 1, 2023
After a decade of rapid credit growth, China is now much more indebted than countries at similar levels of economic development. The slowdown in the economy over the past year has increased pressure on overleveraged borrowers, posing risks for the financial system.
China has three main options to address these problems: using the central government’s balance sheet, readjusting the fiscal balance sheet, or selling state assets. If instead Beijing chooses to simply muddle through, it faces the risk of a Japanese-style lost decade. Policymakers should embrace the debt challenge as an impetus to reform China’s fiscal system and adjust the role of government in the economy.
These changes could once again set China on a path to more rapid growth. Doing so, however, would require a major shift in the Xi administration’s ideological approach to the economy.
47. United States–China semiconductor standoff: A supply chain under stress
Jeremy Mark and Dexter Tiff Roberts, February 23, 2023
In August 2022, the US Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, a law that approves subsidies and tax breaks to help jump-start the renewed production on American soil of advanced semiconductors. Just two months later, the Joe Biden administration issued wide-ranging restrictions on the export to China of chips and chip-making technology to undercut that country’s ability to manufacture the same class of integrated circuits.
Taken together with a steady stream of Biden administration prohibitions on technology sales to key Chinese companies, the US initiatives represent a profound turn toward competition with China in the high-tech realm.3 They also highlight an effort to restructure the complex, multinational supply chains centered on East Asia that manufacture hundreds of billions of dollars of semiconductors a year. As such, the Biden administration has set in motion a process that could alter the business strategies—and fortunes—of homegrown and foreign-invested semiconductor companies based in China, world-leading chipmakers in Taiwan and South Korea, and suppliers around the world that provide the industry with the machinery and myriad inputs that fuel chip production.
COMMENT – An interesting report from the Atlantic Council, mostly written from the perspective of the U.S. semiconductor industry that likes the “benefits” from the CHIPS and Science Act, but has been waging a continuous campaign for years to prevent the U.S. Government from taking actions that disrupt its existing business models… as if those business models weren’t already being disrupted by Beijing.
Or that those same business models hadn’t created serious national security risks (fab-less design firms that out-source manufacturing to vulnerable locations) while undermining their own viability to be leading-edge chip companies (side-eye at you Intel for years of massive stock buy-backs, dividend pay-outs, and stagnant R&D investments).
Given the track record of the past 10-15 years, one might reasonably question the judgement of American semiconductor firms and the business models they have adopted.
48. Past U.S. Industrial Policy Offers Lessons, Risks for Chips Program
Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2023
From moonshots to vaccines, Washington’s efforts to boost specific industries work best with focused goals.
49. Biden admin grilled over $23 bln in licenses for blacklisted Chinese firms
Karen Freifeld, Reuters, March 1, 2023
The Biden administration approved more than $23 billion worth of licenses for companies to ship U.S. goods and technology to blacklisted Chinese companies in the first quarter of 2022, a Republican lawmaker said on Tuesday.
The data comes amid growing pressure on the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden to further expand a broad crackdown on shipments of sensitive U.S. technology to China from Republican lawmakers, who now control the House of Representatives.
“Overwhelmingly, (the Commerce Department) continues to grant licenses that allow critical U.S. technology to be sold to our adversaries,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, said at a hearing on combating the generational challenge of Chinese aggression, as he grilled U.S. officials for allowing the licenses to be approved.
“How does this align with your statement that ‘we’re doing everything within (the Commerce Department’s) power to prevent sensitive U.S. technologies from getting in the hands of (Chinese) military, intelligence services or other parties?”
McCaul said the Commerce Department, which oversees export controls, denied only 8% of license requests to sell to companies on the U.S. trade blacklist during the January to March period last year.
Commerce Department official Alan Estevez, who oversees U.S. export policy, told the hearing that a Trump-era policy that allows China’s blacklisted telecommunications equipment maker Huawei to receive some U.S. technology below the “5G level” is “under assessment.”
Estevez also described TikTok as a "threat," noting that a powerful committee that reviews foreign investments in the United States was dealing with how to handle the popular Chinese-owned social media app.
TikTok said in a statement the company has been working with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States "for over two years on a plan to address national security concerns about TikTok in the U.S."
Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks cautioned against reading too much into the licensing numbers, noting that the approval and denial data provides no information about the transactions.
The data comes a week after the Biden administration added new Chinese companies to the trade blacklist for aiding Russia’s military and months after announcing a sweeping new policy aimed at dramatically curbing shipments of chips and chipmaking tools to China.
CYBER AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
50. TikTok bans: UK at risk of ‘lagging behind’ EU, US
Stuart Lau, Politico, February 24, 2023
The British government is facing renewed scrutiny over its stance on Chinese-owned platform TikTok now that both its ex and supposed best friend have banned the social media app from official devices.
On Thursday, both the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, and the Council of the EU, representing member state governments, banned staff from using TikTok on work phones. The decisions followed a U.S. move in December to prohibit the app for all federal government devices.
London has not followed in the footsteps of Washington, with whom it often boasts to have a "special relationship," despite repeated warnings from security experts and many British lawmakers. Thursday's move by the European Union — traditionally slow in imposing hard-line security measures — only heightens the pressure.
"We run the risk of being marooned as a tech security laggard among free and open nations" by not acting on TikTok, said Alicia Kearns, a Conservative lawmaker and chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, flagging security risks and risks of data leaking to a hostile state as main concerns.
COMMENT – The Canadians have also banned TikTok from their government devices as well…
51. British tech minister: TikTok should be ‘personal choice’ for UK officials
Annabelle Dickson and Tom Bristow, Politico.eu, February 28, 2023
Britain will not follow the U.S. and Brussels in banning government officials from using Chinese-owned TikTok, Rishi Sunak's new tech champion said Monday.
“I think that's a personal choice,” Michelle Donelan, the minister at the helm of the U.K.'s new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, told POLITICO in an interview. “As a Conservative, I strongly believe in personal choice.”
Weeks after the U.S. announced it would prohibit TikTok for all federal government devices, the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, and the Council of the EU, representing member state governments, last week followed suit — banning staff from using the social media app on work phones.
52. TikTok Ban Debated by House Lawmakers
John McKinnon, Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2023
53. China telcos: the fear of dissident chatbots will retard AI
Financial Times, February 28, 2023
MILITARY AND SECURITY THREATS
54. China weighs sending drones, ammunition to Russia for Ukraine war
Erin Banco and Phelim Kine, Politico, February 24, 2023
China is considering sending Russia drones and ammunition to aid Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine, a person familiar with the matter said Friday.
Another person aware of the intelligence also said Beijing was considering sending ammunition, along with other small arms.
55. Chinese Weapons Could Sustain Russia’s War Effort in Ukraine
Alastair Gale and Brian Spegele, Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2023
Any move by Beijing to help the Russian military could have a far-reaching impact, both in China’s relations with the West and on the battlefield because of Beijing’s capacity to help supply Russia with a pool of materiel, including the artillery shells that Russian fighting units are calling for.
“The main constraint on China’s supplying of such ammunition to Russia lies with the political will, not anything practical,” said Timothy Heath, a senior international-defense researcher at the Rand Corp., a U.S. think tank.
China is also a major producer of drones, which have been used effectively by both sides in the Ukraine war. Trade data shows some commercial Chinese drones have already reached the front lines.
56. ‘Very big mistake’: NATO chief cautions China over supplying weapons to Russia
Lili Bayer, Politico.eu, February 24, 2023
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday sent a public warning to Beijing: Don’t send weapons to Russia.
“On the question of supplies of military support from China to Russia, we have not seen any actual delivery of lethal aid,” Stoltenberg said at a press conference in the Estonian capital Tallinn on the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But, he added, “What we have seen are signs and indications that China may be planning and considering to supply military aid to Russia.” Recent U.S. intelligence indicates this may be the case.
57. China’s Imports of Russian Uranium Spark Fear of New Arms Race
Jonathan Tirone, Bloomberg, February 28, 2023
On the same day in December when Chinese and US diplomats said they’d held constructive talks to reduce military tensions, Russian engineers were delivering a massive load of nuclear fuel to a remote island just 220 kilometers (124 miles) off Taiwan’s northern coast.
China’s so-called fast-breeder reactor on Changbiao Island is one of the world’s most closely-watched nuclear installations. US intelligence officials forecast that when it begins working this year, the CFR-600 will produce weapons-grade plutonium that could help Beijing increase its stockpile of warheads as much as four-fold in the next 12 years. That would allow China to match the nuclear arsenals currently deployed by the US and Russia.
“It is entirely possible that this breeder program is purely civilian,” said Pavel Podvig, a Geneva-based nuclear analyst with the United Nations’s Institute for Disarmament Research. “One thing that makes me nervous is that China stopped reporting its civilian and separated plutonium stockpiles. It’s not a smoking gun but it’s definitely not a good sign.”
China’s burgeoning capacity to expand its atomic weaponry comes as the last remaining treaty limiting the strategic stockpiles of the US and Russia is on the verge of collapse amid spiraling confrontation over the war in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin announced Feb. 21 that Russia is suspending its involvement in the New START agreement, a decision US President Joe Biden condemned as a “big mistake.”
COMMENT – This is really bad news.
58. Who Is Li Shangfu, China’s Next Defense Minister?
Marcus Clay, The Diplomat, February 27, 2023
Gen. Li Shangfu, with deep ties to China’s military space enterprises, is widely expected to become China’s next minister of defense. What do we know about him?
As part of the leadership reshuffle that began with the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, China’s minister-level postings are turning over as well. General Li Shangfu is widely expected to be tapped as China’s next defense minister when the government postings are made official next week. What does that tell us about China’s military direction?
The U.S. Department of Defense’s 2022 China Military Report described Li Shangfu as the general officer who offers “technical expertise on military modernization and space issues” to Xi Jinping’s newly selected seven-person Central Military Commission (CMC), the highest military decision-making authority of the Chinese party-state. The selection of CMC members is always a balancing act (juggling age, service, and career track, among other factors), and this current group of senior military leaders is custom-made to support Xi’s third term as China’s paramount leader.
Indeed, Li’s aerospace engineering background serves as a counterweight to other senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) members on the commission, such as Admiral Miao Hua and General Zhang Shengmin, both of whom rose through the military’s political work system.
Li’s rise reflects the unprecedented development of China’s space enterprise since Xi Jinping took power in 2012. It also signals to the world that, against the backdrop of increasingly intensified China-U.S. technological competition, China will continue to prioritize aerospace in its defense modernization agenda during Xi’s third term and beyond.
ONE BELT, ONE ROAD STRATEGY
59. How America plans to break China’s grip on African minerals
The Economist, February 28, 2023
OPINION PIECES
60. How Xi Jinping is fortifying China's economic security
Naoko Eto, Japan Times, March 2, 2023
More players in the global economy are now prioritizing national security as well as economic efficiency, with economic security increasingly drawing attention.
As the Group of Seven leaders said in their joint statement in December that they will work collaboratively to strengthen their collective economic security, the topic is now becoming the key that could contribute to maintaining the balance of power in the international community.
But while China has been drawing interest as the major actor, what will constitute China’s economic security has not been sufficiently discussed.
Past discussions have concentrated on the policies of the United States, which had already been revealed, with comparatively less analysis made of China’s countermeasures.
However, Chinese authorities are coming up with a strategy of obtaining economic predominance by using the superiority of its gigantic market and its high supply capabilities — particularly its price competitiveness — made possible by combining high productive power with government assistance, and making other countries depend on them.
Furthermore, due to the intensifying competition between the U.S. and China, there is an increasing possibility for Beijing to act more proactively, meaning a potential risk from China is expanding.
61. Four Nuclear States Can Ruin Your Whole Strategy
Matthew Kroenig, Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2023
In its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, the Biden administration promised to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons” in U.S. strategy. America’s adversaries have different ideas. In recent days, the rapidly advancing nuclear capabilities of all four of America’s nuclear-capable rivals—Russia, Iran, North Korea and China—have made international news.
Vladimir Putin announced on Feb. 21 that Moscow was suspending its participation in New Start, its last remaining arms-control treaty with the U.S. This means that for the first time since the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty of 1972, there are no negotiated limits on Russia’s nuclear forces.
America hasn’t conducted on-site inspections of Russia’s nuclear arsenal since March 2020 in any case, first because of Covid-19 and then Russian noncooperation during the war in Ukraine. That led the State Department to declare Russia “in noncompliance” with the treaty in January.
It would be prudent to assume Russia may soon expand its strategic nuclear force beyond the 1,550 warheads allowed in the treaty, if it hasn’t done so already. This is in addition to its large stockpile of battlefield and exotic nuclear weapons (such as underwater nuclear-armed drones) that the treaty doesn’t cover.
On Feb. 19, it was reported that International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors caught Iran enriching uranium to 84% purity—a hair’s breadth from the 90% needed for a bomb. Outside experts estimate that Iran’s breakout timeline—the time it would take to produce one bomb’s worth of weapons-grade uranium—is now essentially zero.
Some argue that we have more time because it would take months for Iran to fashion a functioning nuclear warhead, but in reality the game will be over as soon as the Iranians have enough material for a bomb. Like North Korea, Tehran could move the material to secret underground locations and fashion warheads undisturbed.
The Biden administration tried to negotiate limits on Iran’s nuclear program, but talks broke down in the face of Tehran’s brutal crackdown on protesters. President Biden says he is willing to use force as a last resort, but the moment of last resort is now and Mr. Biden isn’t readying military options. The 20-year international effort to keep Iran from the bomb has likely failed.
On Feb. 18, North Korea conducted a test of a nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile and demonstrated the ability to reach the continental U.S. Pyongyang is the third American adversary capable of holding the U.S. homeland at risk with the threat of nuclear war.
As the North Korea threat grows, American allies worry about the credibility of our extended deterrence, and some consider building their own nuclear arsenals. In public opinion polls, a majority of South Koreans support building an independent nuclear force.
On Feb. 7, the Pentagon notified Congress that China now has more ICBM launchers than the U.S.
What President John F. Kennedy declared in 1962 is still true: America needs to be “second to none” in nuclear weapons. Falling behind means losing a critical element of deterrence.
Instead of pursuing 1990s-era fantasies about reducing the role of nuclear weapons, Washington needs to understand that, for the first time since the Cold War, it is entering a long-term strategic-arms competition. This time will be even more dangerous because the U.S. now faces multiple nuclear-armed rivals.
America needs to strengthen its strategic forces to provide an adequate deterrent for itself and the more than 30 formal treaty allies that rely on U.S. nuclear weapons for their security.
America won the last Cold War in part because it outcompeted the Soviet Union in strategic forces. Washington should remember that lesson if it doesn’t want to lose this one.
62. China’s collapsing birth and marriage rates reflect a people’s deep pessimism
Nicholas Eberstadt, Washington Post, February 28, 2023
China is in the midst of a quiet but stunning nationwide collapse of birthrates. This is the deeper, still largely overlooked, significance of the country’s 2022 population decline, announced by Chinese authorities last month.
As recently as 2019, demographers at the U.S. Census Bureau and the United Nations were not expecting China’s population to start dropping until the early 2030s. But they did not anticipate today’s wholesale plunge in childbearing.
Considerable attention has been devoted to likely consequences of China’s coming depopulation: economic, political, strategic. But the causes of last year’s population drop deserve much closer examination.
China’s nosedive in childbearing is a silent alarm. It signals deep disaffection with the bleak future the regime is engineering for its subjects. In this land without democracy, the birth collapse can be read as a landslide vote of no confidence in President Xi Jinping’s rule.
63. To Save Ukraine, Defeat Russia and Deter China
Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, February 27, 2023
American intelligence officials are concerned that China is considering sending lethal aid to Russia. The West must increase the speed and scale of aid to Ukraine, to remind Beijing that it should stay out of a war Moscow is going to lose.
64. VIDEO – Dr S Jaishankar, No Holds Barred
Smita Prakash and Indian Foreign Minister S. Jaoshankar, ANI Podcast, February 21, 2023
India's External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar's illustrious career as a Diplomat spans 38 years including tenures as India's Ambassador in China, the Czech Republic, the USA, Singapore and finally, as Foreign Secretary. He was picked by Prime Minister Modi himself, to be part of his cabinet in 2019 as External Affairs Minister.
The articulate Dr S. Jaishankar, in an interesting conversation with Smita Prakash shares his journey from being a diplomat to entering politics. He talks about his father whose career growth as a Cabinet Secretary was halted by Indira Gandhi due to internal politics.
He slams the opposition over allegations of being accommodative of China and explains the steps taken by the government to strengthen the security at the LAC. He also reveals how some foreign powers are collaborating to create a false narrative against India as the election approaches.
COMMENT – Great long video interview of Dr. S. Jaishankar… the portion on the PRC starts at 1:03:30. If you have the time, it is worth listening to the entire interview.
65. How helping Ukraine prepares us for a confrontation with China
Gabriel Scheinmann, Washington Post, February 28, 2023
U.S. military aid to Ukraine’s self-defense, critics allege, is making America’s military less prepared and less potent. In particular, the decrepit state of our defense industrial base, and its inability to produce replacement stores of even the most basic armaments, means that any ammunition, platform or system allocated to Ukraine’s defense is one that becomes unavailable for Taiwan’s.
But these critics are wrong. Russia’s disastrous attack on Ukraine and the United States’ still-too-timid military support for Kyiv will help, not hurt, efforts to deter a cross-strait Chinese attack. In fact, continued military aid to Ukraine might be the only thing that saves the U.S. military from its peacetime atrophy.
66. America and the China lab leak theory
Edward Luce, Financial Times, March 1, 2023
Viruses thrive on ignorance. China’s refusal to co-operate with investigations into Covid’s origins is thus self-harming. Not only does it deepen fears that China will be late in alerting the world to the next novel virus outbreak; it fans conspiracy theories that coronavirus was a Chinese plot.
More than three years after Covid erupted, the world has made little progress on preparing for the next pandemic, which is probably a question of time. The fact that the US and China are ensnared in a cold war makes such transparency seem increasingly fanciful. Cold wars stem from mistrust. Global health warning systems are built on trust.
67. How China allegedly spent the last 10 years trying to influence Trudeau
Tristin Hopper, National Post, March 1, 2023
As far back as 2005, Chinese state-owned companies were publishing Pierre Trudeau memoirs in a suspected attempt to curry favour with the younger Trudeau.
Amid ever-louder revelations that the Trudeau government ignored CSIS warnings that China was brazenly toying with the 2021 election, a Wednesday report in The Globe and Mail cited a CSIS official who said that the People’s Republic of China has been openly pursuing an influence operation against Justin Trudeau since well before he became prime minister.
Below, a cynic’s guide to how Beijing may well have put this plan into action.
China was throwing money at the Trudeau Foundation – Probably the most damning allegation in the CSIS leak is that one of China’s Canadian consulates told Chinese billionaire Zhang Bin to donate $1 million to Trudeau-related causes — after which he would be reimbursed for the amount.
So, $200,000 went to the Trudeau Foundation, $50,000 went to fund a statue of Pierre Trudeau, and the rest went to Pierre Trudeau-named initiatives at the University of Montreal.
It’s been known since 2016 that a Beijing-affiliated billionaire was throwing money at things with the word “Trudeau” in them — but it’s only this week that charges first emerged that he was explicitly doing it on orders from the Chinese Communist Party.
Notably, the donation occurred soon after Trudeau spent the evening with Zhang Bin at an exclusive $1,500-a-plate fundraiser organized by the Chinese Business Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile, somebody was showering the Trudeau Foundation in foreign cash. Right up until Trudeau became Liberal leader in 2013, the organization didn’t receive a cent in foreign donations. Then, all of a sudden, in 2015 the Trudeau Foundation was hit by a $438,000 surge in foreign donations, followed by $535,000 in 2016.
Oh, and the head of the Trudeau Foundation during this period — Morris Rosenberg — now has a new job drafting reports for the Trudeau government about Chinese election interference.
An obscure Pierre Trudeau book was released by Chinese state publishers
Even among die-hard Canadian political nerds it’s hard to find someone who’s read Two Innocents in Red China, a 1960s memoir co-authored by a then-obscure Pierre Trudeau. So it’s perhaps a little weird that a state-owned Chinese publishing firm struck a deal with the Trudeau family in 2005 to translate the book and release it in the People’s Republic of China — they even got Justin’s brother Sacha to write a preface.
It’s not known how well the book did among Chinese readers, but in 2021 former Canadian Ambassador to China Guy Saint-Jacques told the National Post that the whole enterprise looked very much like a naked attempt to curry favour with a Canadian political family (even though Justin’s first stab at politics was still three years away).