The Return of Backchannel Diplomacy
Friends,
This week most of my commentary is focused on the articles I put in the Must Read section, so look for that below.
One thing I’m starting to notice in Washington is that some familiar PRC officials, and former officials, are showing up and engaging again with Americans they feel most comfortable with. It suggests that a whole new line of backchannel diplomacy has started between the United States and the PRC… which must really please Beijing.
One of these tête-à-têtes took place on Wednesday at the St. Regis Bar, two blocks from the White House. Former PRC Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, was meeting with John Thornton, long-time advocate of Beijing’s policies in Washington, as well as the initial funder, and chair emeritus, of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution and co-Chair of the Asia Society, and Danny Russell, former Obama Administration official (National Security Council Senior Director for Asia and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Pacific) and currently a Vice President at the Asia Society Policy Institute.
Cui Tiankai proceeded Qin Gang as Ambassador to the United States (… yes that Qin Gang, the PRC’s Foreign Minister until the middle of last summer when he went missing and was purged for reasons that the PRC Government still hasn’t released).
So it appears that Cui has been “re-activated” and sent back to Washington on behalf of the Party (he’s certainly not here on his own, an individual of his position within the Party can’t just leave the PRC without permission to do so).
I guess Xie Feng, the current PRC Ambassador in Washington isn’t performing effectively enough (take a look at Ambassador Xie’s official biography on the website of the PRC Embassy in the United States… I’m surprised they were willing to share that much information about him).
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. China’s Economy Is in Serious Trouble
Paul Krugman, New York Times, January 18, 2024
In 2023, the U.S. economy vastly outperformed expectations. A widely predicted recession never happened. Many economists (though not me) argued that getting inflation down would require years of high unemployment; instead, we’ve experienced immaculate disinflation, rapidly falling inflation at no visible cost.
But the story has been very different in the world’s biggest economy (or second biggest — it depends on the measure). Some analysts expected the Chinese economy to boom after it lifted the draconian “zero Covid” measures it had adopted to contain the pandemic. Instead, China has underperformed by just about every economic indicator other than official G.D.P., which supposedly grew by 5.2 percent.
But there’s widespread skepticism about that number. Democratic nations like the United States rarely politicize their economic statistics — although ask me again if Donald Trump returns to office — but authoritarian regimes often do.
And in other ways, the Chinese economy seems to be stumbling. Even the official statistics say that China is experiencing Japan-style deflation and high youth unemployment. It’s not a full-blown crisis, at least not yet, but there’s reason to believe that China is entering an era of stagnation and disappointment.
2. Rumors of China’s decline are premature and dangerous
Richard Fontaine, Washington Post, January 22, 2024
Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Chinese Premier Li Qiang pitched his country as a solid investment destination. The Chinese economy, Li said, has “huge potential,” and choosing it “is not a risk, but an opportunity.”
His audience listened skeptically. After decades of unstoppable Chinese economic, demographic and military growth, the past two years have seen more trouble than triumphs. That has led some analysts to worry not about the rise of Chinese power but instead the irrevocable decline of China’s economy.
These fears are utterly premature. Worse, if they represent the assumptions on which U.S. policy is based, America will fail to rise to China’s challenge. The chief near-term risk is not that Beijing’s ascent will fizzle, but rather that Washington will fail to muster the strength necessary for an adequate response.
True, the logic of China’s decline seems straightforward. Long gone are the double-digit growth rates its economy enjoyed for decades; growth has fallen to just over 5 percent by official figures (others believe the rate might be as low as 1.5 percent). Official youth unemployment is at 15 percent, debt problems plague the economy and the real estate sector has cratered. The country’s population declined in 2022 for the first time in 60 years and fell last year by more than 2 million. Efforts to boost population growth have proved ineffective and a fifth of the Chinese population is more than 60 years old. Writing in the Financial Times, investor Ruchir Sharma captured the sentiment. “It’s a post-China world now.”
Sharma’s not alone. President Biden called China a “ticking time bomb,” and suggested that Beijing “probably doesn’t have the same capacity that it had before.” The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, an astute observer of Chinese affairs, writes that “the feeling of ineluctable ascent has waned. To spend time in China at the end of Xi’s first decade is to witness a nation slipping from motion to stagnation.” Some foreign policy analysts predict that the world will soon witness “peak China.” Others say that we already have.
Despite these challenges, Beijing retains enormous advantages. Its economy remains very large — larger by some measures than our own — and while growth has moderated, Chinese gross domestic product growth was likely higher last year than in the United States. China remains the top trading partner of more than 120 countries and continues to innovate in such key technologies as artificial intelligence and quantum computing while working around U.S.-led controls on items such as advanced semiconductors.
China continues to translate these advantages into strategic power. While smaller than the Pentagon’s, its defense budget is growing, and the Pentagon projects it could keep growing for at least five or 10 years. Beijing now possesses Asia’s largest air force and the world’s largest navy — more than 370 ships and submarines. (The U.S. Navy remains larger in tonnage but, unlike the Chinese fleet, has struggled to grow in number.) China is rapidly expanding its arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, including new intercontinental ballistic missiles. Beijing pursues military installations and bases in numerous countries across multiple regions.
Its ambitions under President Xi Jinping, moreover, remain grandiose. Last year, Beijing convened and expanded the BRICS group of developing countries, offering leadership to key non-Western countries. Chinese vessels act aggressively in the South China Sea, ramming Philippine ships in contested waters. The Pentagon reports dozens of unsafe intercepts of U.S. aircraft, and Chinese warplanes now routinely cross the median line of the Taiwan Strait. This past week, Beijing stripped away the tiny Micronesian nation of Nauru, one of the few remaining countries to recognize Taipei, two days after Taiwan’s presidential election. Chinese leaders tout their leadership in contrast to a fractious West clinging to its historical prerogatives, especially in the Global South.
China’s economic doldrums could persist and someday cut into defense spending, constrain its international activism and perhaps render it a less formidable challenger. But there is little sign of that now and it would be folly to rely on such an outcome.
China continues to rise and seems bent on regional domination and international revisionism. In the grand U.S.-China contest that increasingly drives international politics, however, Beijing’s absolute strength is only half of the equation. Relative power ultimately matters most in contests of this sort, and so America’s own strength will be all-important. Here we have work to do.
American power — the size and vibrancy of our economy, our military capability and capacity, the strength of our alliances and coalitions, and our ability to muster the political unity necessary to solve problems — is fully capable of dealing with even a rising China. Yet these advantages do not combine on their own. We should use the Chinese challenge to stir ourselves to success.
COMMENT – I would add one thing to Richard’s excellent analysis:
While many leaders in Washington and Brussels might think the PRC is in decline, Chinese Communist Party leaders do not believe that they are in decline.
They believe that they are in an existential struggle with the United States, and other liberal democracies, who they believe are trying to straggle them. They also believe that they have an incredible opportunity to overturn the international system that has disadvantaged authoritarian regimes for a century.
This chart from a recent WSJ article on the failure of the DoD (and Congress) to take advantage of new defense start-ups and commercial technology paints a jarring picture:
From “Defense Startups Risk Becoming ‘Failed Experiment’ Without More Pentagon Dollars,” Heather Somerville, Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2024. Red arrow added by me.
Despite multiple ongoing wars in Europe and the Middle East which are depleting our collective stockpiles, the start of a new cold war with the PRC (which no one in Washington or Brussels will admit), and massive increases in defense spending by our adversaries, the United States is at best stagnating (and when you include inflation, decreasing) its defense procurement. With inflation and continuing resolutions (CRs) we are spending less than we were 15 years ago when the world was far less dangerous, and our economy was significantly smaller.
Little wonder that companies and investors are pulling back (and our adversaries see an opportunity to use force to achieve what they desire), they simply do not see serious action behind the rhetoric of DoD and Administration Officials who talk about innovation and the need to increase readiness and capability.
To me, these numbers suggest that it is the United States that is exhausted and entering decline (and don’t get me started on the other NATO Allies who STILL fail to pull their weight and rouse themselves from their slumber… side-eye at you Canada (1.38% of GDP in 2023) and Germany (1.57% of GDP in 2023)).
All of this gives leaders in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, and Beijing reason to believe that they are witnessing “changes unseen in a hundred years.” Where once they faced a strong, wealthy, and (relatively) united set of liberal democracies, they now see increasing weakness, fatigue, and disorder.
Some readers will interpret this as a partisan attack, but that is not the intention. There is plenty of blame to go around on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Atlantic. Over two decades ago, leaders in Europe allowed themselves to fantasize that war and conflict were obsolete. An ill-considered military adventure by the United States in the Middle East eroded our own confidence and our moral legitimacy. A decade ago, lawmakers in Washington allowed themselves to become engrossed in unresolved arguments about federal spending (remember the disaster of sequestration perhaps one of the most irresponsible actions by U.S. leaders in Congress and the White House in our history). One might excuse those failures in the relatively benign international environment of 1998, 2005, or 2013… but we are no longer in a benign international environment.
We need to shake ourselves out of our collective stupor and get serious FAST… the wolf is at the door.
Allowing ourselves the luxury of fantasizing that the “China Challenge” will simply solve itself is irresponsible. Deluding ourselves that our adversaries have not teamed-up and are actively collaborating against us (a Sino-Russian-Iranian-North Korean entente) is irresponsible. A decade ago, an alliance between those four countries was science fiction and laughable… today it is a reality.
Who could have imagined a decade ago that North Korean ballistic missiles would be fired by Russia at European cities?!?... but that is a headline this week in the New York Times, “A New Concern on the Ukrainian Battlefield: North Korea’s Latest Missiles.” Or that we would be begging Beijing to put pressure Iran to stop missile attacks against commercial shipping in the Red Sea?!?... but that too is a headline this week by the Financial Times, “US urges China to help curb Red Sea attacks by Iran-backed Houthis.”
The global nature of the challenge we face is a reality that nearly every official and elected leader refuses to acknowledge because doing so would reveal just how unprepared we are and would call into question our obsessions with domestic political priorities and global challenges like climate change. Rather than “park” our domestic and alliance squabbles and take steps to put ourselves on a significantly better footing to deter a much wider conflict, we hope that our adversaries will “park” themselves and give us time to fix our own problems. As the old saying goes: hope is not a strategy.
3. Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese
Li Yuan, New York Times, January 19, 2024
People with personal ties to China, on a tour to see Taiwan’s election up close, learned of the island’s path to democracy — messy, violent and, ultimately, inspiring.
At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait.
“We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns.
Cuicui was one in a group of eight women I followed last week in Taiwan before the Jan. 13 election. Their tour was called “Details of a Democracy” and was put together by Annie Jieping Zhang, a mainland-born journalist who worked in Hong Kong for two decades before moving to Taiwan during the pandemic. Her goal is to help mainland Chinese see Taiwan’s election firsthand.
The women went to election rallies and talked to politicians and voters, as well as homeless people and other disadvantaged groups. They attended a stand-up comedy show by a man from China, now living in Taiwan, whose humor addressed topics that are taboo in his home country.
It was an emotional trip filled with envy, admiration, tears and revelations.
The group made several stops at sites that demonstrated the “White Terror” repression Taiwan went though between 1947 and 1987, when tens of thousands of people were imprisoned and at least 1,000 were executed after being accused of spying for China. They visited a former prison that had jailed political prisoners. For them, it was a history lesson in Taiwan’s journey from authoritarianism to democracy, a path they believe is increasingly unattainable in China.
“Although it may seem like traveling backward in time for people in Taiwan, for us, it’s the present,” said Yamei, a Chinese journalist in her 20s now living outside China.
COMMENT – This kind of stuff terrifies the Chinese Communist Party… if Chinese citizens begin to unravel the Party’s carefully constructed fiction about why democracy can’t work in a Chinese society, they face a real existential threat to their monopoly hold on power. It is why the Party’s leaders are so desperate to annex Taiwan and stamp out democracy there.
If Taipei were still under KMT martial law, as it was up until 1987, it would not pose such a threat. The Party would still want to subsume Taiwan, but the stakes would not be so high, and it could feel comfortable pushing that date into the future.
But that is NOT the situation that Beijing faces.
The “contagion” of democracy, limited government, and constitutionalism is alive and growing in Taiwan. When we think about the power disparities between the PRC and Taiwan, we often fixate on military and economic power (two areas in which Beijing dwarfs Taipei), but there is also political power, and there the disparity isn’t quite so stark. Taiwanese people continuously renew the political legitimacy of their system and their leaders… the same cannot be said about the PRC. Taiwan’s existence provides a real-life example of what all Chinese people could have.
What motivates CCP leaders to “resolve” the Taiwan problem is NOT wanting to clean up the messiness of 1949 or achieve some nebulous sovereignty and rejuvenation, that’s rhetoric which masks their deepest fear.
CCP leaders want to resolve the Taiwan problem because they fear color revolutions, they fear that Chinese people might prefer what the Taiwanese have. They have stamped out the problem in Hong Kong and now only Taiwan remains a hotbed of democracy within the wider sinosphere.
4. China lobbies countries to praise its rights record ahead of UN review - diplomats
Emma Farge, Reuters, January 22, 2024
China has been lobbying non-Western countries to praise its human rights record ahead of a key U.N. meeting where it will face questions and criticism over its actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, according to diplomats and documents.
Four diplomats told Reuters that China's mission at the United Nations in Geneva had been sending memos to envoys in the build-up to the review of Beijing's record by the U.N. Human Rights Council scheduled for Tuesday.
China's mission did not respond directly to a request for comment on the reported lobbying. In a statement, it said Beijing "firmly opposes the politicization of human rights" and "promotes a fairer and more just, equitable and inclusive global human rights governance".
Tuesday's review will be the first since the U.N.'s top rights official released a report in 2022 saying the detention of Uyghurs and other Muslims in China's Xinjiang region may constitute crimes against humanity. China denies any abuses.
COMMENT – We should be doing far more to put pressure on Beijing in this space.
White House, January 26, 2024
Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing a temporary pause on pending decisions on exports of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to non-FTA countries until the Department of Energy can update the underlying analyses for authorizations. The current economic and environmental analyses DOE uses to underpin its LNG export authorizations are roughly five years old and no longer adequately account for considerations like potential energy cost increases for American consumers and manufacturers beyond current authorizations or the latest assessment of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.
Today, we have an evolving understanding of the market need for LNG, the long-term supply of LNG, and the perilous impacts of methane on our planet. We also must adequately guard against risks to the health of our communities, especially frontline communities in the United States who disproportionately shoulder the burden of pollution from new export facilities. The pause, which is subject to exception for unanticipated and immediate national security emergencies, will provide the time to integrate these critical considerations.
COMMENT – The United States should be exporting as much natural gas as possible to drive down the price and rob Moscow of the revenue it uses to wage its war in Ukraine.
6. More German firms leave China or consider exit - survey
Sarah Marsh, Reuters, January 24, 2024
The proportion of German firms exiting the Chinese market or considering doing so has more than doubled to 9% in the past four years, according to a survey by the German Chamber of Commerce in China.
The survey highlights the challenges faced by German companies operating in China, including increased competition from local companies, unequal market access, economic headwinds and geopolitical risks, the chamber said.
COMMENT – These are still small numbers, but when considered alongside the data collected by Rhodium Group in September 2022 about fewer and fewer European firms investing in the PRC, I think this is significant. Will German political leaders read the room and take more aggressive action against Beijing?
Authoritarianism
7. China's ruling party takes direct control of country's universities
Gu Ting, Radio Free Asia, January 18, 2024
8. China’s strength gap with the US will widen as competition deepens, top political scientist says
Orange Wang, South China Morning Post, January 17, 2024
9. How China’s public views Taiwan’s elections
The Economist, January 18, 2024
As China’s rulers tell it, the Communist Party must control Taiwan to make the whole country safe and strong. “Unification brings strength while division leads to chaos,” says the State Council, China’s cabinet. “This is a law of history.”
Actually, the party’s obsession with Taiwan is a political choice. After 1991 China signed a series of treaties fixing its borders with the Soviet Union and Russia, in effect ceding over a million square kilometres of Chinese territory grabbed by Russia in the 19th century. No law of history forbade that decision to forget past wrongs.
COMMENT – Spot on… “the Party’s obsession with Taiwan is a political choice” and Beijing could make other choices.
10. China vs. EU in Davos: Dueling speeches display global divisions
Claudia Chiappa and Jamil Anderlini, Politico, January 16, 2024
11. China snubs Zelenskyy in Switzerland
Suzanne Lynch, Nahal Toosi, John F. Harri, and Alex Ward, Politico, January 16, 2024
12. China’s Strongest Ally in Taiwan Is Weaker Than Ever
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2024
13. China rebuts Vietnam's claims to disputed South China Sea islands
Reuters, January 24, 2024
14. China Appears to Backpedal from Video Gaming Crackdown
Vivian Wang, New York Times, January 23, 2024
15. Number of foreign visitors to China in 2023 down more than 60% from pre-pandemic levels
Nectar Gan, CNN, January 18, 2024
Environmental Harms
16. Tesla cars face more entry bans in China as 'security concerns' accelerate
Cheng Ting-Fang and Shunsuke Tabeta, Nikkei Asia, January 24, 2024
17. Environmental fears over tempting bargains of Chinese app Temu
Julieanne Corr, Sunday Times, January 21, 2024
18. Morocco, an Unexpected Winner of China’s Strategy to Circumvent the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act
Christian Géraud and Neema Byamungu, CSIS, January 23, 2024
Foreign Interference and Coercion
19. Shadow Play: A pro-China technology and anti-US influence operation thrives on YouTube
Jacinta Keast, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, December 14, 2023
ASPI has recently observed a coordinated inauthentic influence campaign originating on YouTube that’s promoting pro-China and anti-US narratives in an apparent effort to shift English-speaking audiences’ views of those countries’ roles in international politics, the global economy and strategic technology competition. This new campaign (which ASPI has named ‘Shadow Play’) has attracted an unusually large audience and is using entities and voice overs generated by artificial intelligence (AI) as a tactic that enables broad reach and scale. It focuses on promoting a series of narratives including China’s efforts to ‘win the US–China technology war’ amid US sanctions targeting China. It also includes a focus on Chinese and US companies, such as pro-Huawei and anti-Apple content.
The Shadow Play campaign involves a network of at least 30 YouTube channels that have produced more than 4,500 videos. At time of publication, those channels have attracted just under 120 million views and 730,000 subscribers. The accounts began publishing content around mid-2022. The campaign’s ability to amass and access such a large global audience—and its potential to covertly influence public opinion on these topics—should be cause for concern.
ASPI reported our findings to YouTube/Google on 7 December 2023 for comment. By 8 December, they had taken down 19 YouTube channels from the Shadow Play network—10 for coordinated inauthentic behaviour and nine for spam. As of publication, these YouTube channels display a range of messages from YouTube indicating why they were taken down. For example, one channel was ‘terminated for violating YouTube’s community guidelines’, while another was ‘terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy for spam, deceptive practices and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations’. ASPI also reported our findings to British artificial intelligence company, Synthesia, whose AI avatars were used by the network. On 14 December 2023, Synthesia disabled the Synthesia account used by one of the YouTube accounts, for violating its Media Reporting (News) policy.
We believe that it’s likely that this new campaign is being operated by a Mandarin-speaking actor. Indicators of this actor’s behaviour don’t closely map to the behaviour of any known state actor that conducts online influence operations. Our preliminary analysis (see ‘Attribution’) is that the operator of this network could be a commercial actor operating under some degree of state direction, funding or encouragement. This could suggest that some patriotic companies increasingly operate China-linked campaigns alongside government actors.
The campaign focuses on promoting six narratives. Two of the most dominant narratives are that China is ‘winning’ in crucial areas of global competition: first, in the ‘US–China tech war’ and, second, in the competition for rare earths and critical minerals. Other key narratives express that the US is headed for collapse and that its alliance partnerships are fracturing, that China and Russia are responsible, capable players in geopolitics, that the US dollar and the US economy are weak, and that China is highly capable and trusted to deliver massive infrastructure projects.
20. Between China and Russia, landlocked Mongolia eyes summit to enhance ties as geopolitical pressures mount
Kandy Wong, South China Morning Post, January 24, 2024
21. Biden Aims to Stop Countries from Exploiting Americans’ Data for Blackmail, Espionage
Riley Griffin, Bloomberg, January 23, 2024
22. Chinese premier Li Qiang is visiting Ireland for talks on China's relations with Europe
Sylvia Hui, Associated Press, January 16, 2024
23. U.S. envoy to Japan vows to continue calling out Chinese ‘hypocrisy’
Gabriel Dominguez, Japan Times, January 18, 2024
24. Canada clamps down on researchers with ties to China, Iran, Russia
Reuters, January 16, 2024
25. Fortescue faces rare delays for China iron ore customs clearance - sources
Melanie Burton, Reuters, January 23, 2024
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
26. Chinese asylum charity chief investigated over Communist Party links
George Greenwood and Fiona Hamilton, Sunday Times, January 15, 2024
27. Xinjiang Torture Trial Report, Migrant Worker Documentary Deleted
Cindy Carter, China Digital Times, January 20, 2024
28. Western countries use UN-backed review to press China on its treatment of activists and minorities
Jamey Keaten, Associated Press, January 23, 2024
29. Falun Gong Report on 2023: 1,188 Practitioners Sentenced, 209 Killed
Yang Feng, Bitter Winter, January 17, 2024
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
30. China’s Scrutiny of Shein IPO Plan Shows Regulator’s Reach Widening
Sarah Zheng, Dong Cao, and Pei Li, Bloomberg, January 19, 2024
31. German Firms in China Say Economy Is on ‘Downward Trajectory’
Bloomberg, January 24, 2024
32. US to Ban Pentagon Battery Purchases from China’s CATL, BYD
Joe Deaux and Mark Burton, Bloomberg, January 19, 2024
33. EU to Upgrade Economic Security to Shield Key Tech from China
Jorge Valero and Alberto Nardelli, Bloomberg, January 21, 2024
34. A Million Chinese Expats Are Transforming Far-Flung Places
Pathom Sangwongwanich, Zheng Li, Nguyen Dieu Tu Uyen, Quynh Nguyen, Lisa Du, David Scanlan, and Tao Zhang, Bloomberg, January 17, 2024
35. China builds the world’s largest civil wind tunnel complex to beat Boeing, Airbus
Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, January 18, 2024
36. A Greater Bay Area: China’s Initiative to Build a New Silicon Valley
Sunny Cheung, Jamestown Foundation, January 19, 2024
37. Why America’s controls on sales of AI tech to China are so leaky
The Economist, January 21, 2024
38. Reassessing the Role of State Ownership in China’s Economy
SCCEI, Stanford University, January 15, 2024
39. US Treasury team set for Beijing talks on economic co-operation
Demetri Sevastopulo, Joe Leahy, and Wenjie Ding, Financial Times, January 17, 2024
40. China's property market slide worsens despite government support
Liangping Gao and Ryan Woo, Reuters, January 16, 2024
41. Enforcement of China Forced-Labor Import Ban Needs to Be Much Tougher, Say U.S. Lawmakers
Richard Vanderford, Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2024
Cyber & Information Technology
42. Vietnam jumps into made-in-Asia generative AI race
Yuji Nitta, Shunsuke Tabeta, and Kotaro Hosokawa, Nikkei Asia, January 24, 2024
43. Altman Seeks to Raise Billions for Network of AI Chip Factories
Edward Ludlow, Dina Bass, Gillian Tan, and Rachel Metz, Bloomberg, January 19, 2024
44. China forms metaverse working group with Huawei, Tencent, Ant Group and others
Timmy Shen, The Block, January 19, 2024
45. AMD removes Taiwan branding from CPUs, says change wasn't made to appease China
Paul Alcorn, Tom’s Hardware, January 20, 2024
Military and Security Threats
46. PODCAST – Rethinking Strategic Competition with China: A Conversation with Elbridge Colby
ChinaPower, Apple Podcasts, January 18, 2024
47. Taiwan Abruptly Changes How It Reports China Military Activities
Josh Xiao and Cindy Wang, Bloomberg, January 16, 2024
48. China lab simulates attack on US warships using space weapons, hypersonic missiles
Stephen Chen, South China Morning Post, January 19, 2024
49. Lawmakers push for more money for missiles amid Red Sea clash
Joe Gould, Lee Hudson, Connor O’Brien, and Paul McLeary Politico, January 19, 2024
50. China, Philippines agree to lower tensions on South China Sea confrontations
Huizhong Wu, Associated Press, January 18, 2024
51. Germany to Donate More Drones to Philippine Coast Guard
Juster Domingo, The Defense Post, January 16, 2024
52. China warns US against escalating strikes on Houthis
Jay Solomon, Semafor, January 16, 2024
53. Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Stability
Michael Depp and Paul Scharre, War on the Rocks, January 16, 2024
54. US Funded Chinese Defense Research Tracker
Data Abyss, 2024
55. U.S. wants Japanese shipyards to help keep warships ready to fight in Asia
John Geddie and Tim Kelly, Reuters, January 19, 2024
56. VIDEO - A Secretive Chinese Force Is Becoming the U.S. Military’s Biggest Challenge
Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2024
57. Philippine says armed forces to ensure 'unimpeded and peaceful' exploration in South China Sea
Reuters, January 23, 2024
58. China’s feared spy agency steps out of the shadows
Joe Leahy, Financial Times, January 22, 2024
59. Ukraine is piling pressure on China to help bring an end to the war. But Beijing's peace plans are focused on Gaza
Simone McCarthy, CNN, January 18, 2024
60. Taiwan reports first major Chinese military activity after election
Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina, Reuters, January 17, 2024
One Belt, One Road Strategy
61. China seals closer Uzbek ties, pushes railway route bypassing Russia
Reuters, Times of India, January 24, 2024
62. How the U.S. Is Derailing China’s Influence in Africa
Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2024
63. China deepens ties with Global South to counter U.S.-led order
Yukio Tajima, Nikkei Asia, January 23, 2024
Opinion Pieces
64. The Strategic Case for Democracy Promotion in Asia
Michael Green and Daniel Twining, Foreign Affairs, January 23, 2024
65. America after neoliberalism
Julius Krein, New Statesman, December 23, 2023
66. Hong Kong Finds Its Voice at the UN—And Uses It to Cheerlead for Beijing
Anouk Wear, ChinaFile, December 20, 2023
67. How would Trump’s return affect relations with China?
Sam Goodman, Spectator, January 17, 2024
68. Canada should learn from "unprecedented" Chinese interference in Taiwan's election
Sam Cooper, The Bureau, January 16, 2024
69. John Kerry’s Climate-Change Flop
Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2024
70. The Houthis, China, and Other Dangers to Seaborne Commerce
Elisabeth Braw, Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2024
71. Xi Jinping Stars as King Canute with Chinese Stocks
Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2024
72. Davos Turns Gently to the Right
Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2024