Friends,
In a long-running effort to connect my travels (last week I was in Dublin and Belfast) with geopolitics and obscure music references, I bring you this week’s edition (along with plenty of maps, charts and pictures… oh joy!).
The 1970s Irish hard rock band, Thin Lizzy, with front man Phil Lynott, the first commercially successful Black-Irish musician, singing their most popular hit, “The Boys are Back in Town.”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve run across a number of articles debating the return of blocs (here, here, and here) and whether (or not) the PRC has “allies.”
So, let’s cover both of those topics today.
First, are we witnessing a return of geopolitics by blocs?
I answer with an emphatic, Yes.
During the First Cold War, commentators, diplomats and political leaders adopted a “Three-world model” to describe the main categories that countries fit into as the rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union took shape, and, more importantly, the process of decolonialization accelerated. The concept of “First World,” “Second World,” and “Third World” became the colloquially accepted way to visualize a reality that was far more complicated when one focused in on specific details. While imperfect, it became a sort of heuristic to make sense of complexity.
[SIDE NOTE – I’ve always been confused that folks claim that the First Cold War was strictly bipolar, when nearly everyone spoke of the “Three-world model.”]
I think we are back in the same circumstances and the lines are drawn in almost the same ways. This time, the historical process of decolonialization is over, but the historical memory of that period remains and colors the way folks interpret current events (look no further than the narratives surrounding the Israel-vs-Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah conflict). When we consider the most important geopolitical events of the 20th Century, I think decolonialization needs to top our list, even if it is often overshadowed by two World Wars and the First Cold War.
As the Second Cold War begins, the terms have changed but the concept remains the same.
I think we should use the terms “Global West,” “Global East,” and “Global South” to describe our new “Three-world model” (as G. John Ikenberry argued in an International Affairs article in January, “Three Worlds: the West, East and South and the competition to shape global order”).
The Blocs are Back!
Admittedly, the map above shows a world without much nuance. Mongolia probably shouldn’t get lumped into the Global East and several other Central Asia republics would like to keep their options open and probably lean towards the Global South. Turkey is *still* a part of NATO, though it is clear that it is shifting away. Countries in the Global South are members of organizations like BRICS and SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization). Venezuela and Cuba likely belong in the Global East and the island nations of the Pacific should, for the most part, fall in the Global South.
But my point is not to fixate on where the heuristic fails, but on the wider point that Blocs have most certainly returned to our geopolitical reality.
For many, these three Blocs disappeared in the 1990s as we imagined entering a period of Globalization, in which trade and economics trumped geopolitics. The First World had “won” the geopolitical war, erasing overnight the entire conception of a Second World. The Third World became the “developing world” (also known as the Global South), while Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union slipped into the “developed world” (aka the Global North) with the nations of the former First World. Interestingly, the PRC shifted out of the Second World (despite the Sino-Soviet split, it never fit neatly in the First World) and into the “developing world” even though it has undergone enormous economic development that outpaces anything that happened in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.
To see this economic conception of the world, one need only look at this map published by UNCTAD (United Nations Trade and Development) in 2023.
UNCTAD’s map seems to resemble the one i created with a few important changes.
For those who wear only economic glasses, the world may look this way. But it only looks that way to folks who are willfully blind to the rivalry and geopolitics that shaping our world.
[NOTE - I have serious objections to calling the PRC a “developing country”… you can’t be the world’s largest importer of Ferraris and Lamborghinis, with a trillion dollar overseas infrastructure building scheme, and call yourself a “developing country”… that is just ri-goddamn-diculous.]
So why does this matter?
It matters because the seams and overlaps of these three Blocs constitute the most dangerous flashpoints of nation-on-nation conflict in our world today.
The places where conflict already exists (Ukraine, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, in the Red Sea and Sudan, and in Myanmar) and where conflict might likely erupt (in the Baltics, in the Gulf, along India’s border with Pakistan and the PRC, in the South and East China Seas, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, and Japan) are almost exclusively along the borders of the Global East. In many cases these are wars of aggression by the countries of the Global East on the Global West or the Global South. The five principle countries of the Global East (the PRC, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea) all desire an expansion of their power either through the annexation of territory or the creation of friendly satellite states on their borders. These efforts are directed against nations in the Global West and the Global South.
The tensions along the borders of the Global West and the Global South exist, but are fundamentally different. These tensions are around the migration of people, not nation-on-nation conflict. We can see this in the migration flows from South and Southeast Asia into Australia, the flows of migrants from Southeast Asia into Taiwan and Japan, the flows of migrants across the Southern border of the United States, and the flow of migrants from the Middle East and Africa to Europe.
Some of these migrants are fleeing violence (in which case they should be rightly called refugees) and some seek economic opportunities that exist in the Global West. To be sure, there is also the flow of migrants and dissidents from the Global East to the Global West (brain-drain from both Russia and the PRC).
Some question the reemergence of Blocs, but I find this a bit mind-boggling.
Take someone like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who on multiple occasions has claimed that Germany is not a part of a geopolitical bloc and won’t be part of one (from his Foreign Affairs article in December 2022, “Germany and Europe can help defend the rules-based international order without succumbing to the fatalistic view that the world is doomed to once again separate into competing blocs”). This is coming from the leader of a German Government whose foreign, defense, and economic policies are utterly dependent on its participation in a bloc (… perhaps Olaf is unfamiliar with what the EU and NATO are). There is nothing independent or autonomous in what Berlin does on the international stage, aside from its undying faith in Wandel durch Handel (Change through Trade). It is objectively false for a German leader to claim that Germany isn’t a part of this dynamic. It comes across as strategically naïve to claim this isn’t happening and this kind of naivety isn’t something we can afford to entertain any longer.
Does China have allies?
Affirmative!
I’ve heard multiple U.S. Government officials claim emphatically that the PRC does NOT have allies or alliances. They paint this picture in stark contrast to the United States that has a long list of treaty allies which strengthens the American position. Those officials often go on to claim that “we have friends and China does not.” In the correlation of national power that these officials present, the United States possesses something that is very valuable, that the PRC can’t and won’t be able to match.
I don’t doubt that America’s network of formal treaty alliances and less formal “partnerships” provides significant benefit to the United States.
But I do question the assertion that the PRC has no allies or friends, as they most certainly do. I understand this is a controversial position to take, as it flies in the face of years of rhetoric employed by American political leaders and diplomats, but let me make my case.
First, there is no universally accepted definition of an alliance, even within the U.S. foreign policy experience. The American concept of alliances has shifted significantly over the past century. Before the Second World War, large swaths of the American public (and their political leaders) shunned the idea of “permanent alliances” and more often than not, the United States presented itself as neutral in world affairs.
In his 1796 Farewell Address, President George Washington famously warned Americans that “it is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world” and that “we must safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies” (if you haven’t read Washington’s Farewell Address, do so now… he has a lot to say about political parties that I wish Americans would become more familiar with again).
Rather than viewing alliances as temporary expedients to be developed for specific objectives in an emergency, today Americans largely view alliances as permanent institutions that sit above our domestic political processes and outlive any Presidential Administration. There is utility in this, but we shouldn’t confuse our concept of “alliances” in the second decade of the 21st Century, with all possible ways that alliances could be organized and employed.
Many Americans have developed an idealized definition of the term “alliance” (I count myself as one who has done this). Under this definition, alliances are permanent, legally binding, and public. To get a sense of what the American ideal of an alliance looks like, see NATO (which places the militaries of 32 countries under the potential command of an American, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe), the U.S.-Japan Alliance, the U.S.-Australia Alliance, the U.S. security commitment to Israel, the Philippines, and South Korea, as well as our long-standing treaty with Canada, in which we share duties in defending each other’s homelands through a bi-national military command called NORAD which answers to both the United States and Canadian Governments.
But these idealized forms of alliance aren’t the only approach states can take in developing and implementing agreements, collective security, and partnerships (arrangements that can also be defined as alliances). In fact, before the advent of America’s formal alliance structure at the start of the First Cold War, no other country pursued alliances that way, accept in time of war.
For most human history, alliances between states were temporary, unenforceable, and secret. These were agreements made to protect important interests, but were also of convenience. Invariably, these alliances were made between individual heads of state, i.e. the sovereign (kings, emperors and tzars) and could collapse at any moment based on the whims of the sovereign and the elites surrounding that individual.
This is how we should view Beijing’s approach to alliances, not our own idealized form of them.
Xi and Putin clearly have an alliance in the more traditional sense of the term. They have a common enemy (the United States and the Global West) and they have undertaken a series of agreements to align themselves against this common foe. They conduct routine coordination meetings, military exercises, and transfer technology and intelligence to one another. The PRC and Pakistan have had an alliance for decades oriented on their common foe, India. The fact that for a long period of time Pakistan was also an ally of the United States should not come as a surprise (the world is complicated and countries have strange bedfellows). Beijing and Pyongyang have had an alliance directed at South Korea and the United States since the early 1950s, even when Beijing and Washington were aligned against the Soviet Union. There has been a long-term alliance between the PRC and Cambodia directed against Vietnam (and for a period of time, Vietnam’s ally, the Soviet Union). Chinese leaders even fought a short war against Vietnam to fulfill Beijing’s “commitments” to Cambodia. There is a budding alliance between Beijing and Tehran. One might even assert that Xi is building an alliance of sorts with Viktor Orbán, in the center of Europe to divide and neutralize the EU and NATO.
The fact that there are serious frictions between Beijing and its various allies shouldn’t disqualify the existence of those alliances. If frictions automatically dissolved alliances, NATO would have disappeared decades ago.
For more on these dynamics, I recommend reading Sergey Radchenko’s 2014 book, Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia at the End of the Cold War. I just finished it and Radchenko, an historian at John Hopkins SAIS, describes how Soviet leaders failed in their “pivot to Asia” in the 1980s. It gives a very different picture of what alliances look like for Beijing and Moscow compared to the idealized version of alliance that many of us are familiar with (though our great grandparents would likely be very familiar with Beijing’s version of alliance).
While some aspects of these “alliances” are public (“Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a new Era and the Global Sustainable Development” February 4, 2022), we have no reason to doubt the existence of secret provisions and clauses between the PRC and its partners. The provision of technology and mutual aid likely exist within these agreements, just as they do between the United States and its partners (that is what AUKUS is). On the other hand, Beijing is not bound in a legalistic sense to fulfill these agreements, though it would suffer reputationally if it fails to fulfill the expectations of its partners (similar to the reputational dynamics that bound the United States to its allies).
Rather than saying that the PRC doesn’t have alliances, it would be more accurate to say that the PRC doesn’t have “our” version of alliances, they have their own.
Perhaps we should call them “Alliances with Chinese Characteristics.” Or perhaps we should call ours “Alliances with American Characteristics” since ours appear to be the historical outlier.
***
A bit off topic, though somewhat related, I recommend reading Maureen Dowd’s article about Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, in the New York Times yesterday. Full disclosure, I work for Alex and I’m very proud to, this article helps to explain why.
Alex Karp Has Money and Power. So What Does He Want?
Maureen Dowd, New York Times, August 17, 2024
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. ‘Monument to history’ battle between US and China over future of Mao’s secretary’s diary
Amy Hawkins, The Guardian, August 18, 2024
In the early hours of 4 June 1989, Li Rui, a veteran of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), was standing on the balcony of his apartment on Chang’an Boulevard in central Beijing. He could see tanks rolling towards Tiananmen Square.
For weeks, up to a million protesters had been gathering peacefully in Beijing’s plaza, demanding political reform. But they failed. Instead, as Li observed from his unique vantage point, troops opened fire, killing an estimated several thousands of civilians. It was the worst massacre in recent Chinese history. “Soldiers firing randomly with their machine guns, sometimes shooting the ground and sometimes shooting toward the sky,” Li wrote in his diary. A “black weekend”.
The first-hand account of an event that the Chinese government has systematically tried to distort and erase from the historical record is one of thousands of observations noted in Li’s diaries, which he kept meticulously between 1938 and 2018. Few people, especially not of Li’s stature, have kept such detailed records of this tumultuous era in Chinese history. Now those diaries are the subject of a hotly disputed lawsuit, the trial of which begins on Monday.
Li Rui, who spent a lifetime near the centre of elite politics, despite becoming a bold critic of the ruling Communist party. Photograph: Goh Chai Hin/AFP/Getty Images
Born in 1917, Li joined the Communist party as a young idealist. After the communists seized power in 1949, he rose through the ranks to become Mao’s personal secretary in 1958. But it wasn’t to last. Amid the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, Li was subjected to political persecution, including more than eight years in solitary confinement. It wasn’t until Mao died in 1976 that Li returned to the senior party ranks. He went on to become one of the most outspoken members of the liberal, reformist faction, observing from the inside the silencing of dissent that has intensified under the rule of his personal acquaintance Xi Jinping.
Li’s papers are, therefore, thus a crucial archive. “It’s hard to overstate their significance,” says Joseph Torigian, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. But on Monday, a court in California, not China, will begin hearing a trial about the fate of those diaries, the culmination of five years of legal wrangling that have complicated Li’s legacy since he died in February 2019, at the age of 101.
For several years before his death, Li’s daughter Li Nanyang, who lives in the US, had been scanning, transcribing and cataloguing her father’s papers, and ultimately transferred them to the Hoover Institution, the leading archive for CCP history in the US. Li Nanyang and Stanford claim that this was in line with Li’s wishes. On 30 January 2017, for example, he recorded a meeting with his wife, Zhang Yuzhen, to talk about “the issue of my diaries”. Zhang “agreed with my decision … having Hoover retain the diaries”, he wrote.
But on 21 March 2019, a lawyer for Li’s widow wrote to Stanford, asserting her ownership of the diaries and seeking their return. The 89-year-old soon filed a lawsuit in Beijing, arguing that she was the rightful heir to Li’s estate. In May that year, Stanford filed a countersuit in California to eliminate Zhang’s claims to the materials. And so began a legal battle between one of the world’s top universities and an ageing widow – who, Stanford argues, is a front for the Chinese government.
Why would Zhang, who is now well into her 90s, spend several years and millions of dollars fighting over a collection of diaries?
Lawyers for Zhang, who did not respond to interview requests, say it is about privacy. The materials reflect “deeply personal” affairs, including “intimate correspondence”, her lawyers argue. The “ongoing violations” of her privacy have caused “severe emotional distress”.
But others are sceptical. “By all indications … the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is running this litigation behind the scenes,” lawyers for Stanford have argued. “To put it simply, Ms Zhang lacks the financial ability to pay the attorneys’ fees being incurred on her behalf.” Zhang’s lawyers deny there has been any interference from the Chinese government.
“It’s simply about control,” says Ian Johnson, author of a book about China’s unofficial historians, such as Li. Under Xi Jinping, China’s leader, the party has made it clear that it “can’t allow competing narratives of what happened in the past”.
In many countries, the diaries of a political leader would be housed in an archive, available to researchers or the public. In China, the opposite is true. In 2013, Xi warned against “historical nihilism”. For historians, that has meant that, after a period of relative openness, archive after archive has been shuttered. In 2012, the archives of the foreign ministry
abruptly closed, reopening the following year with 90% of the materials redacted.
That makes Li’s diaries particularly valuable to researchers. “The detail is mind-boggling,” says Frank Dikötter, a historian. Insights into elite politics are buried among notes about how many laps he swam in the pool, and how many times he got up to use the bathroom at night. Domestic details notwithstanding, Dikötter says it’s unimaginable that his diaries could be displayed in today’s China. “When you have a monopoly over power, you develop an obsession with secrecy.”
Li was keenly aware of this trend. In 2013, he said in an interview: “There are classified materials of the party about the Cultural Revolution … I heard it was all burned.” Such titbits have been marshalled by Stanford to argue that Li wanted his papers preserved at Hoover. But Zhang’s lawyers have found their own bits of evidence in Li’s voluminous writings and interviews. In 2014, he said, “Li Nanyang is Li Nanyang, and I am myself. My thoughts and opinions are well known and expressed in my books and articles. Li Nanyang is my daughter, but she can’t represent me, and I don’t allow her to represent me.”
Li Nanyang, a fierce CCP critic herself, doesn’t dispute the fact that she and her father didn’t always see eye to eye. “He wanted to save the party. That’s not my idea … This is not something that demonstrates that my father won’t work with me [to donate] his historical materials.”
Zhang denies that there is a plot to hide the Li Rui diaries from the public. Her legal filings note that she is only seeking the return of his original handwritten diaries, not the full collection of papers at Hoover, and that Hoover is free to make copies for researchers.
But historians say that original manuscripts are vital, especially when history is contested. It’s “crucial that you have the handwritten ones,” says Dikötter. “Because, ultimately, that’s what the whole thing relies on. The credibility relies on that.”
Li “would have known how difficult it would have been for [the diaries] to see the light of day [in China],” says Johnson. “I think very much that he wanted to donate them to Hoover.”
Li died without a will. His daughter says that this is because if he had made his intention public, including getting a will formally notarised, he would have faced trouble from the government. Zhang’s lawyers have quoted from a draft will, in which Li stated that his children “must not participate in the publication of my diaries”. Stanford says it has never seen evidence of this draft.
A court in Beijing long ago ruled in Zhang’s favour. A second lawsuit filed in Beijing by Li Nanyang’s sister, seeking the return of the papers relating to their mother, Li Rui’s first wife, also resulted in a judgment that the materials should be returned. But the 40 boxes full of pages and pages of Li’s dense scrawl, documenting the dramatic and often darkening developments of China in the 20th century, for now remain at Stanford. Some legal experts have pointed out that this week’s trial could simply be a question of whether a US court should respect a ruling made in a foreign jurisdiction. But for scholars, the stakes are higher. The diaries are “a monument to history”, says Dikötter.
COMMENT – This will be an important trial, not so much about the ultimate possession of these diaries, but whether the U.S. legal system can stand up to the concentrated efforts of the Chinese Communist Party’s manipulation of our judicial system.
The U.S. judiciary seems to be the last vestige of the U.S. Government that has remained blind to the Party’s seizure complete control inside the PRC. Some judges appear blind to the complete capture of the PRC legal system by the Party and hold the false belief that the PRC judiciary should be treated as an equal.
There is case last week in which a U.S. court sided with a PRC tech company (Hesai) to claim, with no sense of irony, that it isn’t under the ultimate control of the Party and State. Immediately following that ruling other companies (AMEC), sanctioned by the U.S. Government, saw their openings and have sought to make similarly fantastical claims of independence in U.S. courts.
The article about SLAPP suits from Bethany Allen in The Wire China (Libel Lawfare: Is there a Risk to Criticizing Chinese Companies?) is another example.
This trial over the diaries is yet another example of the Chinese Communist Party conducting lawfare within the U.S. legal system while granting no similar access to their own.
Congress must act to bring this situation to an end, the PRC, as a jurisdiction, cannot be treated as a place in which the rule of law exists because it doesn’t. Without clear legislation to prevent PRC entities from abusing our open legal system, this stuff will continue to happen and individual judges, without proper context, will make harmful rulings.
2. Election 2024: Foreign TikTok Networks Are Pushing Political Lies to Americans
Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2024
A flood of anti-Trump videos, generated with the help of AI, traced back to a web of overseas accounts.
Intelligence officials have warned that the 2024 presidential contest could face an unprecedented flood of fake news, fueled by AI, from foreign actors. A Journal analysis of videos on TikTok has found it’s already happening.
Amid all the general political news and lighthearted election memes on TikTok, the Journal found thousands of videos with political lies and hyperbole. Further analysis led the Journal to identify 91 accounts that pushed these videos from China, Nigeria, Iran and Vietnam—and were tied together in complex ways.
These viral foreign networks are hijacking TikTok’s well-honed engagement machine with false and sometimes incendiary claims, and their intent or who’s behind them isn’t clear. TikTok says some are looking for profits. Cybersecurity experts say such groups often aim to cause chaos.
Whatever the intent, the divisive narratives corrode the country’s already acrimonious political discourse at a time when about a third of young Americans turn to TikTok for news.
Fake stories have thrived online since the earliest days of the internet. Initially most of these relied on misleading or doctored text and photos. Now AI and other automation tools have made it trivially easy to splice together clips and write and voice scripts at little cost.
“Anyone with $5 and a credit card can do this,” said Jack Stubbs, chief intelligence officer of research firm Graphika.
People can then spread these lies to huge audiences online with the help of addictive engagement algorithms that pick up users’ tastes.
TikTok, and other social-media platforms, are struggling to keep up.
TikTok’s rules forbid misinformation about elections that the company considers harmful. TikTok has said that it’s hired experts, added policies and built tools to try to thwart these players. TikTok and researchers say that bad actors keep changing tactics to bypass the platform’s defenses.
COMMENT – Unsurprising. And why it is such a travesty that TikTok wasn’t banned years ago before this problem fully manifested.
3. Here's what's next in Japan with Kishida bowing out as party leader and prime minister next month
Mari Yamaguchi, Associated Press, August 14, 2024
Japan’s embattled Prime Minister Fumio Kishida surprised the country Wednesday by announcing that he’ll step down when his party picks a new leader next month.
His decision clears the way for his governing Liberal Democratic Party to choose a new standard bearer in its leadership election next month. The winner of that election will replace Kishida as both party chief and prime minister.
A new leader could help the party shake off scandals that have dogged Kishida’s government, and some see a chance for the country to select its first female prime minister.
Here’s a look at how the new leader will be chosen, and what it could mean.
What happens next?
Kishida announced plans not to run just days before the LDP is expected to set a date for its triennial leadership vote, which must take place in September.
Kishida will remain party president and prime minister until his successor is elected.
With the LDP in control of both houses of parliament, the next party leader is guaranteed to become prime minister.
Some political watchers say the next general election could come soon after the LDP has a fresh leader, who can choose to hold it at any time before the current term of the lower house ends in October 2025.
Why is Kishida stepping down?
A series of local election losses earlier this year sparked calls within his party to have a new face to boost support before the next national election.
Kishida said a series of scandals has “breached” the public’s trust, and the party needs to demonstrate its commitment to change.
He said, “the most obvious first step is for me to bow out.”
The most damaging scandal centered on the failure of dozens of the party’s most influential members to report political donations, and resurfaced controversy over the LDP’s decades-old ties with the South Korea-based Unification Church.
How will the party choose its next leader?
Most of Japan’s voters won’t have a say as the LDP chooses a leader in a vote that’s confined to the party’s 1.1 million dues-paying members.
They’ll vote in a system that divides power between the party’s elected lawmakers and its membership at large, with each group getting 50% of the vote.
While LDP leadership votes were long seen as dominated by the party’s powerful factional leaders, experts say that’s less certain as all but one of the formal factions announced their dissolution in the wake of the party’s corruption scandals, in a move led by Kishida.
Who are the possible candidates?
It’s not clear yet who’s leading the race to replace Kishida, with speculation focusing on several senior LDP members.
Three of those names belong to women, raising the possibility of a breakthrough in Japan’s male-dominated politics.
Experts say the LDP’s need to change its image could push it to choose a female prime minister. Only three women have run for the party’s leadership in the past, two of whom ran against Kishida in 2021.
Only 10.3% of the members of the lower house of Japan’s parliament are women, putting Japan 163rd for female representation among 190 countries examined in a report by the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union in April.
How about the general election?
The LDP’s troubles could spill into the general election, but Japan’s fractured opposition may have difficulty capitalizing on the situation.
Experts say voters may want to punish the LDP over its scandals, but don’t see opposition parties as viable alternatives.
The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan has scored some victories in local elections this year, in part helped by the LDP scandals, but it has struggled to come up with policies that draw contrasts with the governing coalition.
COMMENT – Leaders in Europe and the United States should watch these developments closely and get to know their counterparts in Tokyo better.
As this unfolds, I will highlight articles on the dynamics pushing Japanese politics.
4. For China, Bangladesh crisis spells opportunity and awkward social echoes
Cao Li, Nikkei Asia, August 8, 2024
Less than a month ago, Bangladesh's then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was in Beijing, shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping and signing a slew of agreements. Now she is in exile, her government toppled by student protests that remind many of China's own past.
The events in Bangladesh have upended a government in which China has invested heavily but paved the way for a new one that, experts say, might favor Beijing more. Yet, much remains uncertain.
COMMENT – Color Revolutions terrify Chinese Communist Party leaders and their counterparts in Moscow.
5. Trade with Asia 'lifeline' for sanction-hit Russia, says Oleg Deripaska
Alice French and Andrew Sharp, Nikkei Asia, August 8, 2024
Asian countries' trade with Russia since its invasion of Ukraine has been vital for its economic survival amid a barrage of Western sanctions, according to a billionaire oligarch considered close to President Vladimir Putin.
Moscow's continued ability to export goods to "countries that pursue their own interests," chiefly India and China, "was definitely a lifeline for [Russian] trade," metal magnate Oleg Deripaska told Nikkei Asia.
COMMENT – Had the United States pursued a crash effort to extract and export as much oil and natural gas as possible in the immediate aftermath of Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we likely would have pushed global prices beneath the cost of what Russia must spend to extract and export their oil and natural gas.
This would have bankrupted the Russian economy and made Chinese and Indian efforts described in this article moot.
Unfortunately, we failed to prioritize.
Now Russia sells enormous qualities of oil and natural gas on to the global market funding their war effort and tying countries across the world to Moscow’s cause. Additionally, Russian oil and natural gas is far dirtier and more carbon intensive that oil and natural gas extracted and exported by the United States. We should have been smarter about this.
6. Stolen Bodies, Censored Headlines: Shanxi Aorui's Human Bone Scandal
Manya Koetse, What’s on Weibo, August 9, 2024
A Chinese company illegally acquired thousands of corpses to produce bone graft materials sold to hospitals—a major scandal now being tightly controlled on social media.
On Thursday night, August 8, while most trending topic lists on Weibo were all about the Olympics, a new and remarkable topic suddenly rose to the number one, namely that about the “Illegal Human Bone Case.” Just moments later, however, the topic had already disappeared from the Weibo hot search list.
An article about the topic by Chinese media outlet The Paper that had just been published hours earlier on August 8 had already been taken offline. Later, an article published on The Observer was also redirected.
Another article published on the website of Caixin and state broadcaster CCTV similarly disappeared, along with many other headlines. However, at the time of writing, there are some articles on the issue, such as by Sina News or Phoenix News, that remained accessible.
The story centers on Shanxi Aorui Bio-Materials Co., Ltd., also known as Shanxi Osteorad in English, a company founded in 1999 that specializes in the production and supply of bone graft products.
On August 7, a prominent Chinese lawyer named Yi Shenghua, who has a large following on Weibo, exposed details of Shanxi Aorui’s involvement in illegal and unethical practices surrounding the purchase of human bones. The company engaged in these practices for over eight years, from January 2015 to June 2023, generating an income of 380 million yuan ($53 million) from these activities.
These details had previously been disclosed by the Taiyuan Public Security Bureau in May of this year. The case has allegedly been transferred to the Taiyuan Procuratorate for review and potential prosecution, but it has yet to be concluded due to its complexity, involving some 75 suspects.
Over the years, Shanxi Aorui illegally acquired thousands of human remains, reportedly forging body donation registration forms and other documents to illegally purchase bodies from hospitals, funeral homes, and crematoriums from various places, from Sichuan Guangxi, Shandong, and other places. These human remains were then used to produce allogeneic bone implant materials, primarily sold to hospitals.
Authoritarianism
7. China Is in Denial About the War in Ukraine
Jude Blanchette, Foreign Affairs, August 13, 2024
In the weeks following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese government struck a tone of cautious support for Moscow. Spokespeople for the Chinese government repeatedly stressed that Russia had the right to conduct its affairs as it saw fit, alleged that the word “invasion” was a Western interpretation of events, and suggested that the United States had provoked Russian President Vladimir Putin by backing a NATO expansion. China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, expressed sympathy for Russia’s “legitimate concerns.”
Yet outside of the Chinese Communist Party leadership, the reaction was more concerned. Although the vast majority of universities and think tanks in China are state funded, the analysts and academics who work there still retain a degree of independence, and their views exert a measure of influence on the government. After the outbreak of war in Ukraine, these analysts openly fretted about how the conflict could damage China’s relationship with Europe and the United States, further fracture the global economy, and diminish the wealth and power of Russia, China’s most important partner. “The negative impact of the war on China [will be] huge,” Yan Xuetong, one of China’s foremost international relations scholars, argued in May 2022, warning that a protracted conflict would wreak havoc on the global economy and trigger “heightened tensions” between China and neighbors such as Japan. The West’s “unprecedentedly united” effort to sanction the Russian economy, as the international relations scholar Li Wei put it, surprised Chinese experts. Some, such as Wang Yongli, a former Bank of China vice president, worried that sanctions would threaten the globalization on which the Chinese economy depends.
More than two years into the war, however, such stark public pessimism has dissipated, replaced by cautious optimism. The Russian and Chinese economies, these experts now reckon, have largely avoided crippling harm from Western sanctions. Russia is reconstituting its defense industrial base and has avoided the extreme diplomatic isolation that once seemed a plausible outcome of Putin’s gambit.
Some of these analysts’ conclusions about the war in Ukraine—for instance, that the United States’ domestic consensus in favor of arming Kyiv would falter—have been borne out. But other realities are conspicuously absent from the Chinese public discourse. China has, in fact, incurred costs as a result of Putin’s war and Beijing’s economic and diplomatic support for it. Europe has not completely turned its back on China, but the country’s deepening relationship with Russia has caused a significant deterioration in its relations with many European countries that cannot easily be reversed. And the symmetry between Putin’s lust to seize Ukrainian territory and Beijing’s long-standing appetite to absorb Taiwan has provoked the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific to harden their defenses.
These blind spots matter because in China, the war in Ukraine is serving as both an observatory and a laboratory as the country prepares for heightened geopolitical conflict with the United States. As they analyze events in Ukraine, Chinese scholars seek to assess the United States’ and Europe’s resolve and understand what risks China might be forced to bear in a geopolitical or military crisis. Some experts, such as the leading military strategist Zhou Bo, have concluded that NATO’s hesitancy to make certain major interventions on Ukraine’s behalf proves that, aside from the United States, Taiwan would lack defenders in a future conflict with China. Although these scholars tend to be careful not to discuss the contours of a potential war in the Taiwan Strait too explicitly, many seem to be drawing a straight line from the cracks in the United States’ determination to support Ukraine and its likely will to stomach a possible protracted conflict with Beijing.
8. China mutes law professor on social media after cybersecurity ID plan criticism
William Zheng, South China Morning Post, August 8, 2024
9. China lists Taiwanese independence supporters it wants people to denounce
Helen Davidson, The Guardian, August 8, 2024
Beijing website asks for information about supposed ‘crimes’ of ‘secessionist’ current and past Taiwan officials.
China’s government has called for people to denounce “diehard secessionists” and give information about their “criminal activities” as it intensifies its legal and rhetorical intimidation of Taiwan.
The Taiwan affairs office and ministry of public security this week launched new webpages with lists of 10 current and former officials in Taiwan who have been named as “diehard” separatists.
The site includes a prominently displayed email address and urges people to report “the clues and crimes” of those on the list, as well as “new ‘Taiwan independence’ diehards who commit serious crimes”.
China’s ruling Communist party (CCP) claims Taiwan is a province of China and has vowed to annex the territory, by force if necessary. Taiwan’s democratically elected government and a growing majority of its people reject the prospect of Chinese rule, and both sides have been preparing for a potential war in coming decades.
10. Love the army, defend the motherland: how China is pushing military education on children
Helen Davidson, The Guardian, August 11, 2024
11. Xi Jinping's draft internet ID law sparks '1984' fears
Katsuji Nakazawa, Nikkei Asia, August 8, 2024
12. British Airways Suspends Beijing Service Amid Airspace Curbs
Danny Lee, Bloomberg, August 8, 2024
13. Growing number of Chinese now call Japan home
Ryan Shih, Voice of America, August 14, 2024
14. China’s Great Wall of Villages
Muyi Xiao and Agnes Chang, New York Times, August 10, 2024
15. Mandarin’s popularity sags, hits plateau in US as enthusiasm wanes for American youth
Ralph Jennings, South China Morning Post, August 10, 2024
Educators attribute a national trend of fading interest in Mandarin among Americans to a weaker Chinese economy and strained US-China relations.
COMMENT – Perhaps better for American students to concentrate on the languages of countries that we would like to strengthen our economic ties with.
Environmental Harms
16. The West needs China for clean energy. It will pay a price to break free
Hanna Ziady, CNN, August 14, 2024
The United States and Europe are racing to narrow China’s commanding lead in clean energy technologies, throwing subsidies at local manufacturers and hiking tariffs on Chinese imports in a strikingly protectionist turn.
China’s dominance in clean energy supply chains presents a conundrum for governments trying to green their economies and meet fast-approaching climate targets while protecting entire industries and thousands of jobs from a flood of cheap imports.
Without China’s electric vehicles (EVs), solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, reducing planet-heating pollution could take longer and ultimately increase costs for businesses and consumers.
But the West needs to avoid repeating Europe’s mistake of becoming overdependent on a single supplier — Russia — for cheap gas and wants the economic rewards that come from developing its own technologies of the future.
“We saw the playbook for how China came to dominate the solar panel industry… granting massive subsidies for domestic suppliers, while… closing the domestic market to foreign businesses,” the European Union’s competition chief Margrethe Vestager said in April as she announced a probe into Chinese wind turbine makers. “The result is that nowadays less than 3% of the solar panels installed in the EU are produced in Europe.”
“We can’t afford to see what happened on solar panels happening again on electric vehicles, wind, or essential chips,” she added.
COMMENT – If we are racing headlong towards an energy transition, then we must reverse these charts.
My advice, don’t make a hasty transition unless and until these charts change.
Climate Change is an important challenge to address, but it isn’t as existential as activists would have us believe.
17. Chinese Solar Farms Are Crowding Out Much-Needed Crops
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2024
18. OPEC Slightly Trims Oil Demand Forecast, Citing Softness in China
Giulia Petroni, Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2024
Foreign Interference and Coercion
19. Beijing admits Hong Kong-flagged ship destroyed key Baltic gas pipeline ‘by accident’
Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, August 12, 2024
20. China Calls for ‘Professional’ Probe as Estonia Disputes Finding
Bloomberg, August 14, 2024
China urged European nations to focus on the results of an investigation into damage to a key undersea pipeline last year after a senior Estonian official questioned a Chinese probe that reportedly called it an accident.
China’s Foreign Ministry said the government in Beijing was in “close communication” with Estonian counterparts as it assesses the pipeline incident. Estonia’s defense chief this week raised objections to the reported Chinese probe, which said the rupture of the Balticconnector gas pipeline by a Hong Kong-flagged vessel was due to storm conditions.
COMMENT – There is no reason the world should trust any investigation by Beijing.
21. An election in Kiribati provokes Western alarm about Beijing's sway in Pacific atoll nation
Charlotte Graham-McLay, Associated Press, August 14, 2024
22. Kamala Harris’ VP pick has a long history with China. But Beijing may not be happy about it
Nectar Gan, Eric Cheung, and Will Ripley, CNN, August 9, 2024
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ running mate has a decades-long connection with China. But in the eyes of Beijing, that may not necessarily be good news.
Tim Walz moved to China fresh out of college in 1989 to teach high school for a year, and then frequently returned to the country during a decade of taking American students on summer cultural exchanges.
The 60-year-old Minnesota governor has spoken fondly of his time in China and the people he met there, and his familiarity with the country and empathy for its people bring a personal, nuanced perspective on the United States’ biggest strategic rival that is rare among his political peers.
COMMENT – I remain open-minded about the direction a potential Harris-Walz Administration will take on China policy. There is no guarantee they would follow the precedents set by the Trump and Biden Administrations, but they could.
I suspect they won’t get into much detail about their policies during the campaign and if Harris is elected, I will watch closely the individuals she picks for certain high-profile positions like National Security Advisor, as well as Secretaries of State, Defense, Treasury and Commerce. That will do more to reveal the direction and tone of her policy than any campaign speech will.
23. Eyeing US Midwest, Chinese state-owned firms seek new business amid tense ties
Ralph Jennings, South China Morning Post, August 8, 2024
From agriculture to high-speed trains, stakeholders in a better US-China relationship are being their own ‘ambassadors’ rather than just sitting on the sidelines.
COMMENT – This has everything to do with manipulating U.S. policy by building subnational ties… straight out of the United Front Work Department’s playbook. The Americans involved with these efforts should register as Foreign Agents under FARA.
24. German investment in China soars despite Berlin’s diversification drive
Guy Chazan, Financial Times, August 12, 2024
German direct investment into China has risen sharply this year, in a sign that companies in Europe’s largest economy are ignoring pleas from their government to diversify into other, less geopolitically risky markets.
Figures provided to the Financial Times by the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, show that German direct investments in China stood at €2.48bn in the first three months of 2024, rising to €4.8bn in the second quarter.
That brings the total for the first half of 2024 to €7.3bn, compared with €6.5bn for the whole of 2023.
The investment, much of it driven by big German carmakers, comes despite warnings from Olaf Scholz’s government about the growing geopolitical risks associated with the Chinese market.
Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, has called on businesses across the EU to “de-risk” from Asia’s largest economy.
Many in Europe worry that Germany’s business leaders have not learnt the lessons of the Ukraine war, which exposed its dangerous entanglement with Russia and its over-reliance on Russian gas.
The fear is that an escalation of geopolitical tensions in the Taiwan Strait could prove disastrous for the many German companies with extensive — and deepening — ties to China.
COMMENT – Hopeless.
25. Why is Germany still investing so much in China?
Matthew Lynn, The Spectator, August 2024
German industry is far too exposed to China — and that will end up being very expensive.
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
26. Hong Kong's top court upholds convictions of 7 prominent pro-democracy activists over 2019 protest
Kanis Leung, Associated Press, August 12, 2024
27. Hongkonger charged under new security law over ‘seditious’ T-shirt, mask says he intends to plead guilty
Hans Tse, Hong Kong Free Press, August 8, 2024
28. Chinese dissidents face renewed government imprisonment threats
William Yang, Voice of America, August 8, 2024
29. She Lost a Fight to Freeze Her Eggs in China—Because She’s Not Married
Liyan Qi, Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2024
30. First Known Survivor of China’s Forced Organ Harvesting Speaks Out
Tasnim Nazeer, The Diplomat, August 10, 2024
Cheng Pei Ming’s testimony offered a rare and disturbing glimpse into the horrors faced by prisoners of conscience in China, particularly practitioners of Falun Gong.
In a chilling revelation that underscores the ongoing atrocities committed under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Mr. Cheng Pei Ming, the first known survivor of China’s state-sanctioned forced organ harvesting campaign, spoke to journalist Tasnim Nazeer for The Diplomat about his survival against the odds.
Cheng publicly shared his harrowing experience at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Friday, exposing his story and the ongoing forced organ harvesting that is taking place in China. His testimony offered a rare and disturbing glimpse into the horrors faced by prisoners of conscience in China, particularly practitioners of Falun Gong. Cheng is said to be the only known survivor of China’s forced organ harvesting, and his testimony is unprecedented in exposing the hidden horrors of the brutal industry.
A Brutal Ordeal
Cheng, who hails from a rural village in Shandong Province, was repeatedly detained and tortured between 1999 and 2004 for practicing Falun Gong, a spiritual practice rooted in Buddhist traditions. The Chinese Communist Party, which views Falun Gong as a threat to its authoritarian rule, has branded Falun Gong a dangerous cult and has systematically persecuted its adherents for decades.
Speaking from inside a car in Washington, D.C., Cheng told me, “One day in 2002, I was told to pack up and was suddenly transferred to Harbin Prison and later to Daqing Prison. It was there that I was tortured even more severely.”
Cheng recalled the escalating brutality he faced in detention. In a particularly harrowing episode, he was tortured to the point of losing consciousness.
During his imprisonment, Cheng was subjected to forced blood tests – an ominous indicator of his organs’ viability for transplantation. “They did blood tests on me many times and subjected me to all kinds of inhumane torture,” he noted.
“The torture in the prison was very systematic. One was mental and the other was physical [torture]. Mentally they put me and my family members under pressure as they wanted me to give up my faith in Falun Gong and if I didn’t they would force my wife to divorce me when I was in prison.” Cheng was told that if his wife did not divorce him she would face similar persecution as he was facing.
After hours of excruciating torture known as “the big stretch,” during which his limbs were painfully stretched from all corners, Cheng swallowed a small rusty nail and a blunt blade he had found in the torture room. Despite not showing immediate signs of ill health, he was forcibly taken to the hospital on November 16, 2004.
His family was informed that there was an 80 percent mortality rate associated with the operation, supposedly to remove the objects he had swallowed.
“They said that I had to undergo an operation, but I firmly refused. They held me down and gave me an injection, and I quickly lost consciousness,” Cheng recounted. “When I woke up, I was still in the hospital and felt terrible pain in my side. There was a bloody tube connected to me. I was shackled to the bed. ”
Cheng was shackled to a hospital bed, with an IV tube taped to his foot, a drainage tube in his left chest, oxygen tubes in his nose, and a 35 cm incision on the left side of his chest. Typically, the removal of such objects would be done via endoscopy, but Cheng had undergone open chest surgery.
“The doctors and several of the ‘610 Office’ officials were there,” he recalled. The 610 office is a notorious secretive and powerful organization within the CCP, tasked with implementing the crackdown on the Falun Gong.
31. US bans imports from five more Chinese companies over Uyghur forced labor
Reuters, Voice of America, August 8, 2024
32. Tim Walz Is Fascinated by China—and Disturbed by Its Human-Rights Record
James T. Areddy, New York Times, August 8, 2024
Democratic vice-presidential candidate has made dozens of visits to China as an educator, businessman and politician.
The Western world recoiled from China in 1989 after its Tiananmen Square massacre of student activists. Tim Walz followed through with a plan to teach in the country.
After graduating from Nebraska’s Chadron State College that year, Walz, then 25 years old, went to teach English and American history to high-school students in Foshan, a city in China’s southern Guangdong province, as part of a yearlong Harvard University program blessed by Washington.
The Minnesota governor and freshly minted Democratic vice-presidential nominee has described the experience as humbling and formative. It was also the first of some 30 visits that Walz has made to China as educator, businessman and politician that took him to far corners of the country and have given him insight into America’s relationship with its biggest global competitor.
“As I always say, I’m about one trip away from knowing nothing about China,” Walz told a congressional panel in 2016. “It feels like it’s complex, it’s difficult.”
His sustained association with China contrasts with his Republican rivals, former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance, as well as Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris, who has never set foot on mainland China. His China connection isn’t highlighted online by the Harris-Walz campaign, but Walz’s past comments on China suggest that his primary interest in the country as a politician has been its poor human-rights record.
COMMENT – The question is, would Walz (and Harris) lean more towards the position of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the PRC or more towards the position of Senator Bernie Sanders?
To me, this is the most pressing question facing the Democratic Party as it heads into its convention this week. I suspect it will receive very little coverage even though the answer to that question will determine a whole series of policies on trade, technology, domestic affairs, foreign policy and defense.
If they lean towards the Pelosi position, a Harris Administration could likely build a bipartisan consensus around American manufacturing rejuvenation, defense spending, and alliance building. If they lean towards the Sanders position, they won’t achieve much (IMHO).
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
33. Thailand Seeks to Curb Online Sales as China Dumping Fears Rise
Suttinee Yuvejwattana, Bloomberg, August 13, 2024
34. Foreign Investors Pull Record Amount of Money from China
Bloomberg, August 11, 2024
35. China Energy Engineering signs $972 million solar deal with Saudi partners
Reuters, August 13, 2024
36. UAE business hub eyes Chinese businesses amid ‘very, very strong’ China ties
Kinling Lo, South China Morning Post, August 8, 2024
37. Shenzhen launches ‘one-stop shop’ to help foreign talent work at Hetao cooperation zone
Iris Deng, South China Morning Post, August 8, 2024
38. Starbucks' new CEO Brian Niccol inherits a China headache
Kenji Kawase, Nikkei Asia, August 14, 2024
39. Saudi Aramco Seeks More China Deals in Oil-to-Chemicals Push
Anthony Di Paola, Bloomberg, August 7, 2024
40. China's soaring 'bride prices' in focus as marriages decline
Itsuro Fujino, Nikkei Asia, August 13, 2024
41. Strikes hit China's property, manufacturing sectors as growth slows
Ck Tan, Nikkei Asia, August 12, 2024
42. China’s 48 Million Unbuilt Homes Threaten to Prolong Crisis
Bloomberg, August 13, 2024
43. Japan's automakers lose market share in China, Thailand as EVs spread
Sayumi Take and Yuichi Shiga, Nikkei Asia, August 8, 2024
44. Simandou: China’s Pilbara Killer Comes of Age
Zachary Fillingham, Geopolitical Monitor, August 8, 2024
45. Foreclosures Rise in China as Homeowners Struggle to Repay Mortgages
Wang Jing, Liang Dong, and Wang Xintong, Caixin, August 12, 2024
46. First Russia-China barter trade may come this autumn, sources say
Reuters, August 7, 2024
47. U.S. Vies with Allies and Industry to Tighten China Tech Controls
Ana Swanson, New York Times, August 9, 2024
48. No respite for Chinese officials as economy shows new signs of weakness
Joe Cash, Reuters, August 14, 2024
49. U.S. Lawmakers Move to Restrict Trade Provision Favored by China’s E-Commerce Giants
Richard Vanderford, Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2024
50. China challenges Brussels’ electric car tariffs with WTO complaint
Edward White and Alice Hancock, Financial Times, August 9, 2024
Cyber & Information Technology
51. Where will U.S.-China tech decoupling go under Harris or Trump?
Yifan Yu, Nikkei Asia, August 8, 2024
52. China's Huawei is reportedly set to release new AI chip to challenge Nvidia amid U.S. sanctions
Sheila Chiang, CNBC, August 13, 2024
53. China court rulings on AI accelerate race to set standards
Maki Sagami, Nikkei Asia, August 11, 2024
54. Robotaxis are worrying China’s ride-hailing drivers as permits pick up the pace
Reuters, Fast Company, August 11, 2024
55. China’s AI Hype Gets a Reality Check
Alex Colville, China Media Project, August 7, 2024
56. China's SMIC vows to avoid chip price war, beats estimates on earnings
Reuters, August 8, 2024
Military and Security Threats
57. Chinese ex-naval captain charged over entering Taiwan illegally said he wanted to ‘defect’
AFP, Hong Kong Free Press, August 14, 2024
58. Hesai’s reported removal from Pentagon blacklist draws criticism from Republican senators
Khushboo Razdan, South China Morning Post, August 15, 2024
59. China looks to its shipyards to beat US in any future war
Peter Apps, Reuters, August 8, 2024
60. Philippines urges China to de-escalate tensions after air incident over Scarborough Shoal
Reuters, August 11, 2024
61. VIDEO – How the U.S. and China Compare in the Race to Build AI Combat Drones
Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2024
62. The Filipinos Living in the Shadow of China’s Military Might
Camille Elemia, New York Times, August 12, 2024
63. Why China’s and Russia’s Militaries Are Training Together
David Pierson, New York Times, August 13, 2024
64. US Army intelligence analyst pleads guilty to selling military secrets to China
Jasper Ward, Reuters, August 13, 2024
One Belt, One Road Strategy
65. Fiji leader visits China ahead of Pacific Islands Forum
William Yang, Voice of America, August 13, 2024
66. How China’s Communist Party is building political schools, and influence, in Africa
Jevans Nyabiage, South China Morning Post, August 8, 2024
Opinion Pieces
67. America’s One-War Military Is No Match for Reality
Mackenzie Eaglen, American Enterprise Institute, August 8, 2024
68. The Will and the Power: China’s Plan to Undermine Pax Americana
Robert D. Blackwill and Richard Fontaine, National Interest, August 8, 2024
Hiroyuki Akita, Nikkei Asia, August 14, 2024
Mao Zedong, the founding father of modern China, famously said, "Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed."
If war is a form of politics, then efforts to end war must also be an extension of politics. China's recent actions clearly underscore this, including its attempts to mediate and resolve the bloody conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
China seems particularly eager to play an active role in achieving peace in the Middle East. It invited representatives from 14 Palestinian factions to Beijing for three days of reconciliation talks. On July 23, the final day of negotiations, the delegates signed the Beijing Declaration, which calls for ending divisions and strengthening Palestinian unity.
In March 2023, China surprised the world by mediating the normalization of diplomatic relations between two longstanding adversaries in the Middle East -- Iran and Saudi Arabia. Diplomatic sources in the region say Iraq and Oman had laid the groundwork for reconciliation, but China took credit as the mediator.
If China's actions help de-escalate tensions, they are beneficial to world peace. However, if they complicate the path to resolution, they are not.
Overall, the risks associated with China's peace diplomacy likely outweigh its benefits. This is because China's primary motive appears to be countering the U.S. and flaunting its influence as a world power. As a result, China often focuses on achieving short-term results rather than addressing fundamental solutions to the underlying problems.
The recent reconciliation talks for the Palestinian factions illustrate this point. Beijing invited Hamas, the militant group that triggered the ongoing crisis in the Middle East with its surprise attack on Israel last October. Aware that the pro-Israel administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is hostile toward Hamas and has limited negotiation channels with the group, China appeared eager to showcase the extent of its political connections.
If Beijing genuinely wanted to help achieve peace in the Middle East, it should not have invited Hamas. Hamas does not recognize Israel's right to exist, and including the group in the negotiations would likely hinder progress toward a "two-state solution," which seeks the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine.
Moderate Arab nations like Egypt and Jordan view Hamas as a dangerous group due to its tolerance of violence. Consequently, China's mediation efforts could backfire, making regional peace even more elusive.
"Rather than acting as a fair mediator, China appears to be trying to benefit from the Palestinian conflict," said Carice Witte, founder and executive director of the Israeli think tank SIGNAL Group. "China's commitment of donations to the Palestinians has been less than $100 million in recent months, while the U.S. has actually donated around $1.5 billion."
"China continues to support Hamas by formally meeting with and refraining from declaring Hamas to be a terror organization. This position goes against the interests of the Palestinian Authority and Arab state leaders. Moreover, there is little or no chance for China to act as a mediator vis-a-vis Israel," Witte said.
China's involvement in cease-fire or peace talks in the Ukraine war could have an even greater impact on the world.
China, together with Brazil, drafted a six-point peace roadmap in May. On July 24, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba, in China and promised that Beijing would play a "constructive role" in pursuing a cease-fire and peace. This marked the first time since Russia's February 2022 invasion that China had hosted a visit from a Ukrainian foreign minister.
It is commendable that China is attempting to play a role in ending the conflict rather than remaining on the sidelines, but its mediation is unlikely to lead to lasting peace for at least two reasons.
First, China has yet to criticize Russia for its invasion of Ukraine and has instead supplied it with dual-use products that could potentially be used in the conflict, a move many perceive as indirectly supporting Russian aggression.
Second, China's mediation proposal would allow Russian forces to remain in most of the territories they have occupied. If accepted, this could further embolden Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"If Russia wins an advantageous cease-fire, it will likely encourage them to expand their military actions in the long run," said a senior NATO official. "It is highly probable that Moscow will escalate sabotage, assassinations and acts of terrorism in Europe to undermine NATO unity."
70. Xi's anti-graft purge of the PLA is limited and has dubious motives
James Char, Nikkei Asia, August 13, 2024
71. No, Taiwan is not PRC real estate
Denny Roy, The Interpreter, August 14, 2024
There is no legal or moral justification to not support Taiwan’s survival as a democracy.
In a television interview last week, Australia’s former Prime Minister Paul Keating said Taiwan’s people “are sitting on Chinese real estate. It’s part of China.” To be more precise, Keating seems to mean that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) government in Beijing has rightful sovereignty over Taiwan.
Keating’s position is ultimately based on realpolitik. In the same interview, he said he thought the United States could not and would not win a Taiwan Strait war and that Australia would incur only disadvantages by siding with America. I’m not challenging those views here. But Keating also makes an inherently legalistic argument about the PRC owning Taiwan, seemingly to make his realpolitik position more palatable. That argument is inaccurate and ahistorical.
Taiwan being “part of China” is not a geographical or legal fact.
Despite what the PRC government says today, the geographic content of “China” has changed over time. Pre-modern Chinese governments considered Taiwan troublesome barbarian territory. Beijing did not formally annex Taiwan until 1684, only to cede it to Japan two centuries later as part of the settlement of the Sino-Japan War of 1894-95. Japan would administer Taiwan as part of the Japanese empire for 50 years, until Japan’s defeat in the Pacific War. On mainland China, a new government established the Republic of China (ROC) in 1912, but a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uprising beginning in 1927 challenged the ROC government. In the 1940s, CCP leader Mao Zedong said publicly that Taiwan should be an independent country.
The ROC government took possession of Taiwan in 1945 as the victorious Allied Powers dismantled Japan’s wartime empire. In 1949, the Communist insurgency overwhelmed the ROC government on the mainland, forcing it to flee to Taiwan, the last province under its control. From 1949 to 1991, it was Taipei’s official position that the CCP government was occupying Chinese real estate that rightfully belonged under ROC sovereignty. Taiwan’s official title is still the Republic of China (not the contrived Olympic moniker “Chinese Taipei”). The CCP government has never ruled Taiwan.
COMMENT – Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has completely lost perspective. It would probably be best if folks stopped interviewing the 80-year-old or giving him a platform to speak.
72. Pelosi’s arrogance drowns out sensible voice from Down Under
Alex Lo, South China Morning Post, August 18, 2024
Tussle between former US House speaker and Australian ex-premier Paul Keating epitomises the danger America poses in Asia-Pacific.
In the topsy-turvy world of America, “one China” can mean two countries, at least according to Nancy Pelosi. George Orwell once wrote that 2+2=5. For the former Democrat speaker of the US House of Representatives, 1=2. Seriously.
Fine, she can think and say whatever she likes, however ridiculous or dangerous. But it’s the height of arrogance for her to castigate a former leader of a key allied country that is located much closer to the flashpoint in the Taiwan Strait and, thanks to Washington, is increasingly being drawn into the dangerously unstable geopolitics in the South China Sea.
COMMENT – For Alex Lo, perhaps your math is wrong… Guam is 1,729 miles (2,782 km) from Taiwan, Australia is 3,488 miles (5,614 km) from Taiwan.
Talking about or acknowledging an independent Taiwan isn’t “dangerous”, the only thing that is dangerous is the PRC’s unreasonable threats to annex Taiwan by force.
73. Threat to stock markets comes from China and Middle East, not the US
Larry Elliott, The Guardian, August 11, 2024
74. “Shadow Reserves”: China’s Key to Parry U.S. Financial Sanctions
Christopher Vassallo, War on the Rocks, August 9, 2024
75. Serbia’s strongman ruler leans west with a lithium deal
Misha Glenny, Financial Times, August 7, 2024
76. China Is Neither Collapsing nor Booming
Howard W. French, Foreign Policy, August 7, 2024
77. Walz’s deep China experience is good for his campaign and the country
Josh Rogin, Washington Post, August 8, 2024
78. Chinese swimming doping scandal taints Olympic medals won in Paris
Leana S. Wen, Washington Post, August 12, 2024
79. The Olympic Games Are Always Political for China
Karishma Vaswani, Bloomberg, August 7, 2024a