Friends,
Before we jump into the main topic this week, I wanted to congratulate the French people on an incredible accomplishment: the repair and reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.
From an excellent article by the New York Times, capturing in photos the last five years.
Many of us will remember the devastating fire in the spring of 2019, which destroyed much of Notre Dame. I remember it well because it happened the morning my daughter was arriving in Paris for a school trip and her first scheduled stop was supposed to be Notre Dame.
After the devastation, the French President committed to rebuilding in five years which seemed completely unrealistic. Then the pandemic hit, and it seemed even more unlikely to happen.
But here we are!
CBS 60 Minutes did a great video report last weekend, just watch: “Cathedral of Notre Dame set to reopen 5 years after Paris fire” (December 1, 2024)
In a time when there is quite a bit to be depressed about, the French have done something magnificent, inspiring pride and giving hope to millions.
As Jean Sablon would sing, C’est magnifique!
Jean Sablon’s album International Troubadour and obituary in 1994.
***
Let’s jump into the main topic with something that doesn’t sound at all related to this newsletter, but trust me, I’ll get there.
On Thursday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer “rebooted” his government and announced his six “milestones.” These were meant to be measurable priorities that he committed his government to achieve by the end of this Parliament (2029). Telling the British people that these were the priorities he wanted them to judge Labour’s performance on.
1) Raise real household disposable income by the end of this parliament
2) 75% of school children are school ready by the time they start school
3) Recruit 13,000 police officers
4) Build 1.5 million new homes
5) Decarbonize the electricity grid by 2030
6) Treat 92% of NHS patients within 18 weeks of referral
As Politico reported from two senior Labour advisors before the speech, these six milestones are meant to both signal to the British people what the government will achieve AND signal to the government which priorities will receive resources and support… and which won’t as the budget crunch tightens.
Setting aside the fact that it has been five months since Labour came to power and they are just now announcing what they are going to do, can you notice what’s missing?
I’ll give you a hint: there is a war raging in Europe on NATO’s doorstep, there is a regional war in the Middle East, and Asia continues to sit on the brink of conflict and instability.
Yet there is no stated milestone in the defense domain which suggests that the Labour government will make further cuts to military spending, devote less energy on shaping the world in a positive direction, and the UK will increasingly turn inward obsessed with domestic priorities.
I provide this bit of detail to make a broader point: regardless of what the United States does under a new administration, the other countries which presumably uphold a liberal international order are increasingly looking inward, failing to make defense investments for deterrence, and withdrawing from the world.
Very few seem to be making the kinds of sacrifices necessary to resist Beijing and Moscow.
Let’s just scan the horizon for a moment:
Japan – Prime Minister Ishiba leads a minority government that was recently defeated in national elections and its plan to pay for increased defense spending (from 1% of GDP to 2% of GDP) was rejected by voters. While Ishiba’s LDP Party understands the threats posed by Beijing and Moscow, they are not in a position politically to do much about it.
South Korea – This week, a deeply unpopular President Yoon briefly imposed martial law after accusing his opposition in the Korean legislature of conspiring with North Korea against Seoul. The legislature rejected his martial law, and it looks like it is only a matter of time before Yoon is driven from office. The most obvious casualty of Yoon’s defeat is likely to be the Trilateral relationship Yoon championed with Japan and the United States.
Australia – The Labour Government in Australia, while mindful behind closed doors of the threat posed by the PRC, seeks to portray the economic relationship with its principal threat as back on track. The AUKUS agreement while still in place and portrayed as a significant achievement, is not being backed with the kinds of defense spending increases that would make it viable over time. Unless Australians are will to devote more than just 2.3% of GDP towards defense, it seems unlikely that they will field the sort of balanced force that can help maintain deterrence.
Germany – Within 20 hours of Trump’s re-election, the German coalition government collapsed over an unwillingness to lift debt restrictions so that the country could respond to the dire economic and security threats facing them. Europe’s largest economy has made some defense investments, raising its defense spending from 1.4% of GDP in 2021 to just a hair over 2% in the summer of 2024, but without an ability to side-step its self-imposed debt brake, it seems unlikely the country will maintain that level of defense spending. The German economy faces some pretty serious headwinds and political instability which will likely mean that Europe’s leader cannot concentrate on anything but its own domestic challenges.
France – This week, the French government collapsed after the far-left and far-right teamed up for a vote of no confidence, the first time since 1962. As of last summer, France had only just met its NATO defense spending obligations, inching above 2% of GDP. But this governmental collapse leaves the country without a budget and no real chance for a new government to form until the next round of elections which will need to take place before June 2025. President Macron’s hasty decision to dissolve the National Assembly last June and hold snap elections backfired, sending Europe’s second largest economy (and permanent member of the UN Security Council) into a nosedive.
Italy – Europe’s third largest economy sits just under 1.5% of GDP on defense and is moving in the wrong direction as this represents a reduction of defense spending since 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Prime Minister Meloni has been in office since October 2022 and while she pulled Italy out of the Belt and Road Initiative, Italy has hardly stepped forward to exercise leadership as Germany and France have stumbled. See more below from Francesco Sisci’s commentary in Formiche (#82).
Spain – Europe’s fourth largest economy has been led since 2018 by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. While making some defense investments over the past few years, they started at a miserable 1% of GDP on defense in 2021 and now the country currently sits at 1.3% of GDP on defense. Sánchez has been particularly unhelpful on dealing with the PRC, allowing Spain to be used as an advocate for Beijing’s interests in Brussels, the most recent example was Spain’s rejection of tariffs on Chinese EVs.
United Kingdom – As covered above, the Labour government that swept into office with a huge electoral mandate last summer has since stalled as the scope of economic problems facing a post-BREXIT Britain appear unsurmountable. This is forcing the UK (another permanent member of the UN Security Council) to cut back further on defense spending and focus almost entirely on domestic challenges. The UK currently sits at about 2.3% of GDP on defense, but that appears unsustainable given the economic situation and the proclivities of Starmer’s Labour government.
Canada – Nearly 10 years of rule by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party has left the Canadian military and defense spending at record lows. The country seems to make no effort to meet its NATO obligations and continues to free ride off the North American defense umbrella provided by American taxpayers. It currently sits at 1.4% of GDP on defense, only slightly better than Spain, though without the positive trajectory. The Prime Minister and his government stand accused of collaborating with (or at least enabling) the Chinese Communist Party in interfering with Canadian national elections in both 2019 and 2021, both times aiding the Liberal Party to remain in power.
Despite admirable efforts by the Biden Administration to convince these allies to do more, none appear to be doing so with any kind of urgency.
IMO, this is a recipe for disaster.
[CAVEAT - Shout out to my colleagues at the European Commission and the European Parliament, as well as the Poles, the Baltic states and the Nordic countries. They appear to be taking these challenges seriously, largely because they understand how dire a Sino-Russian alliance really is (and how the addition of North Korea and Iran cause further instability) and how it threatens the safety of their citizens.]
As I evaluate our collective stance against our principal rivals in Beijing and Moscow, I must conclude that we have squandered the crises of the last four years.
Instead of coming out of the pandemic and demonstrating that democracies perform better than alternative systems, or responding collectively to serious security threats, we have shown ourselves as stuck in our domestic ruts and committed to a vision of multilateralism that no longer works. It appears like we simply desire a return to the status quo (globalization of the 2000s) rather than developing a compelling vision for the future that takes into account that conditions have changed over the past three decades since the end of the first cold war.
To me, this is what makes the success of rebuilding Notre Dame so striking.
It demonstrates that democracies can do wonderful things when required, that a nation’s people can come together for a greater good. It demonstrates that impressive feats of collective effort aren’t solely the purview of authoritarian regimes.
So, take heart, what happened in Paris last week should serve as an inspiration to us all!
***
In other news, Damascus has fallen to Turkish-backed Syrian rebels and after 14 years of civil war, Assad has fled into exile (location unknown), and it looks like the Russians have evacuated (or are nearly complete on evacuating) their base on the Mediterranean at Tartus.
Expect this to result in further instability across the region as everyone recalculates their geopolitical positions.
***
Also, this week, the Biden Administration released its final set of export control updates on advanced semiconductors. This is the third in a series of export control restrictions that started with a bang on October 7, 2022, but then left loopholes that the PRC has exploited ever since. The glacial pace that the Biden team has taken on closing these loopholes has given Beijing opportunities that they would not have had if the Administration had been more aggressive.
The Administration and Secretary Raimondo put a good spin on them (see her fireside chat at the Reagan National Defense Forum yesterday and this exit interview with her in the New York Times today), but they left serious observers disappointed.
Jordan Schneider at ChinaTalk did a great run down and invited Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis and Greg Allen of CSIS (who recently did an excellent report on the impacts of the Biden Admin export controls titled, The True Impact of Allied Export Controls on the U.S. and Chinese Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Industries).
Jordan’s summary says it all:
We were not impressed. To explain why, we get into:
· What’s in the new controls: high bandwidth memory, FDPR, and the Entity List.
· How key assumptions in Biden’s approach to export controls limited their ultimate impact.
· How China’s stockpiling spree may have already rendered these new rules partially obsolete, and what policymakers can do about that going forward.
· The law-enforcement approach vs. the counterintelligence approach, and whether export controls should be a foreign-policy tool or simply a law-enforcement activity.
· How the new chip controls are like removing puzzle pieces just one at a time — and why that’s exactly what China wants to slowly but surely self-indigenize.
· The “America First” rationale for export controls and domestic chip production.
· Why the Democrats’ regulatory design philosophy was lured away by the promise of complexity — and what the Trump administration could do differently going forward.
First, two disclaimers: Most at BIS and within the administration are well-intentioned, understand the stakes, and have worked incredibly hard these past four years to help America compete in chips and AI. We don’t mean to question anyone’s integrity — but at ChinaTalk, we call it like we see it. Also, we recorded this yesterday the same day the regs were released, and given their complexity our takes are inevitably provisional.
***
I’ll leave you with a clip of my CEO, Alex Karp at the Reagan National Defense Forum yesterday… he sums up how I think a lot of Americans think.
Link to the clip.
Here is what Alex Karp had to say:
Americans are the most loving, God-fearing, fair, least discriminatory people on the planet.
And they want to know that if you’re waking up and thinking about harming American citizens.
Or if American citizens are being taken hostage and kept in dungeons.
Or if you’re a foreign power sending fentanyl to poison our people.
Something really bad is going to happen to you, and your friends, and your cousins, and your bank account, and your mistress. And whoever was involved.
----
Beijing should take notice… the days of sweeping things under the rug are coming to an end.
***
Last week, I reported that Admiral Dong Jun, the PRC’s latest defense minister, might have been sacked. That appears to be false and he made appearances this week. It looks like reporting about Admiral Miao’s downfall was confused with Admiral Dong.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Lithuania expels three Chinese diplomats
Stine Jacobsen, Reuters, November 29, 2024
Lithuania declared three staff members of China's representative office in the country, a type of diplomatic mission, as personae non gratae, its foreign ministry said on Friday.
The ministry cited violations of the Vienna Convention and Lithuanian legislation as the cause, though no further details were provided. The 1961 Vienna Convention outlines the rules of diplomatic law.
The staff have been instructed to leave Lithuania within a week, the ministry said in a statement, exacerbating sour relations between the two countries.
China's representative office in Lithuania could not be immediately reached for comment.
China has already downgraded ties with Lithuania and pressured multinationals to sever links with the Baltic nation of 2.9 million people after it allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy there in 2021.
In March, the chief of Lithuania's counter-intelligence said Chinese interference in this year's elections could not be ruled out due to the EU and NATO member's support for Taiwan.
In addition, a Chinese ship is suspected of being involved in damage to two undersea cables recently, one of which runs between Sweden and Lithuania.
COMMENT – I certainly hope other EU members are showing solidarity with Lithuania.
2. China warns of 'countermeasures' after Lithuania expels embassy staff
CNA, December 2, 2024
Beijing warned on Monday (Dec 2) it could take "countermeasures" against Lithuania after the expulsion of three Chinese embassy staff, as relations fray over Vilnius' Taiwan ties and the suspected involvement of a Chinese ship in sea cables damage.
"China strongly condemns and firmly rejects this wanton and provocative action," a foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement.
"China calls on Lithuania to immediately stop undermining China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and stop creating difficulty for bilateral relations," they added.
Two Baltic Sea telecommunications cables were severed last month in Swedish territorial waters, including one running from the Swedish island of Gotland to Lithuania.
Suspicions have been directed at a Chinese ship - the Yi Peng 3 - which tracking sites said had sailed over the cables around the time they were cut.
On Friday, Lithuania's foreign ministry said three Chinese staff members "have been declared undesirable in the country".
The ministry did not give the precise reasons for the expulsion, citing only "activities which violate the Vienna Convention and the legislation of the Republic of Lithuania".
3. VIDEO – Uncovering the Secrets of Xinjiang's Tomato Industry: Blood on The Shelves
BBC, December 2, 2024
A year-long BBC Eye investigation has uncovered that tomato paste produced using forced labour in Xinjiang, western China, is likely being sold in major UK and German supermarkets without the knowledge of customers. This comes three years after supermarkets told the UK Parliament that they had stopped using products from the region.
Forensic testing on tomato puree sold on the shelves of major UK and German retailers indicates they may contain tomatoes produced in China. The investigation found that suppliers in Italy are importing huge quantities of tomato paste from companies that use coercive forced labour in the Xinjiang province of China.
Investigating Xinjiang is notoriously difficult, with journalists often unable to properly report on the situation on the ground. Instead, the BBC Eye team used open-source intelligence techniques including scouring social media, satellite imagery and analysing corporate records and shipping data to understand what is really happening in Xinjiang - and how the tomatoes produced by harsh labour find their way to Europe.
Hearing from over a dozen Uyghurs and Kazakhs now in exile, the team investigates how repeated crackdowns in the region on language, religion, and culture resulted in more than a million people being detained. Witnesses, some of whom have never spoken before, tell the BBC that they were coerced into hard manual labour in the tomato industry, detailing the harsh physical punishments they received for dissent and for failing to meet quotas.
COMMENT – Great job by the BBC on this story. Worth watching!
4. China can accept GDP growth of less than 5%, says People's Daily
Reuters, December 3, 2024
China is not wedded to achieving specific GDP growth rates, and a pace of less than 5% for the economy is acceptable as there is no need for the "worship of speed", state newspaper People's Daily said on Wednesday.
In March, China's government set a growth target of "around 5%" for this year, but the world's second-biggest economy has struggled for momentum largely due to a prolonged property sector crisis and local government debt woes.
COMMENT – For at least the last two years, the PRC’s GDP growth has been between 0-2.5%. To see the Chinese Communist Party finally admit the obvious suggests that things are worse than many have assumed.
5. Red’s Hellscape: Far More Dangerous Than Blue’s
Austin Gray, November 29, 2024
In a bid to deter war over Taiwan, Admiral Paparo has dripped details into public view of his Hellscape plan to turn the waters east of China into a fiery death box for any armada seeking to attack Taiwan. Lethal UUVs (Uncrewed Undersea Vessels), loitering munitions, and one-way USVs (Uncrewed Surface Vessels) would flood the Taiwan Strait. In the Pentagon, Deputy Secretary Hicks has staked her legacy on Replicator. She knows INDOPACOM’s plan relies on drones that only her initiative can buy rapidly.
But China’s Navy, not the United States’, can more easily use uncrewed maritime vessels to control the Taiwan Strait. Should the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch its own UxV sea denial program, an offensive Hellscape, it might not matter how the Pentagon’s counter-blockade concept executes. Effectively, a Chinese Hellscape could be the perfect counter-counter blockade.
This piece will examine the unique geographic and industrial factors that enable a Chinese Hellscape.
Because Chinese UxV capability will resemble Ukraine’s, but with far more robust production, their uncrewed vessels will likely dominate waters within 400 NM of China, perhaps further. Analysis of Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian uncrewed speedboats shows that most have ranges from 200 NM, for those with large payloads or engines, up to 500 NM, for those prioritizing fuel over payload or speed.
Several American USVs, such as the hundreds of GARCs supposedly purchased by the US Navy, now have ranges approaching 1,000 NM. Saronic’s recent Corsair USV product launch seemed designed to upstage GARC’s range-payload specs. Whether these USVs can achieve max range at full payload capacity remains unclear, but US UxVs must have longer range than Chinese or Ukrainian because of geography. Major US bases like Guam and Yokosuka are much more than 500 NM from Taiwan. Let’s quickly look at that geography, and superimpose the Black Sea battlefield onto the first island chain’s potential front.
Ukraine has conducted numerous attacks as far into the Black Sea as the Kerch Straight Bridge, which the below map shows is 362 miles from a potential launch area. Since attacking USVs can’t travel in straight lines, we’re safe to assume that these vessels have 400-500 miles range. They have also conducted attacks deep into the Sea of Azov, much farther. HI Sutton’s comprehensive USV guide shows that the Ukrainian’s USV range is likely around 450 nautical miles (517 miles).
COMMENT – We have got to get our act together… we’ve been admiring the problem posed by the PRC’s massive defense build-up for about 15 years. But over that same period of time, we have done incredible self-harm with sequestration and continuing resolutions.
Unless and until we reverse those national and budgetary mistakes, it is going to be very hard to deter a conflict in the Western Pacific.
6. The tainted legacy of the Merkel-Obama years
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, December 2, 2024
Angela Merkel’s memoir is called Freedom. But it could just as well be titled No Regrets. In her newly published book, the former German chancellor goes back over her 16 years in power and argues that, all things considered, she got it right.
It will be interesting to see if Barack Obama is similarly defensive when he publishes the next volume of his memoirs. For the international legacy of the Obama-Merkel years is looking increasingly questionable with the passage of time.
From 2008 to 2016, Merkel and Obama were the two most powerful politicians in the western world. They got on well — which is not surprising, since they were similar characters. They were both outsiders: the first female chancellor of Germany and the first Black president of the US. They were both raised well away from the metropole, in east Germany and Hawaii respectively.
Both Merkel and Obama are self-assured, highly educated, intellectual and cautious by temperament. These are qualities that endeared them to cautious, educated liberals. (I plead guilty.) But, in retrospect, their careful rationalism made them ill-equipped to deal with ruthless strongman leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Both Merkel and Obama still have a huge fan base, many of whom look back nostalgically to their era as a period of stability and sane government. So it was, in many ways.
But it is increasingly clear that decisions taken by the two leaders — or often the decisions not taken by them — had a damaging, if delayed, impact on global stability. We are now witnessing major wars in Europe and the Middle East and sharply rising tensions in east Asia. Some of today’s problems date to mistakes made in a crucial period from 2012 to 2016.
Merkel did not like or trust Putin. But she did appease him. The mistakes made by the former chancellor — particularly after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and attack on the Donbas in 2014 — were picked apart in many reviews of her book. Her eagerness to avoid a wider European war sucked Merkel into the futile “Minsk process” of talks among Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France. Her unwillingness to confront Putin also reflected her country’s economic interests — in particular, German industry’s thirst for cheap Russian gas.
Rather than pushing back against the mistakes made by the German chancellor, Obama compounded them. In his second term, he made three critical foreign policy blunders. Collectively, they sent out a message of weakness that contributed to the mess we are in today.
Obama’s first mistake was the failure to enforce his own red line over Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Promising to take military action and then retreating in the face of congressional opposition — and his own personal misgivings — looked weak. The decision could be easily rationalised. But it still resonated around the world.
The Trump camp would add Obama’s decision to sign a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons programme to their indictment of his policies in the Middle East. But that is a much less clear-cut mistake than the decision not to enforce the chemical weapons red line.
The reason the Syrian decision mattered so much was that it formed part of a pattern. The second mistake made by Obama was a failure to react to China’s construction of military bases on the artificial islands that it had created in the South China Sea. In 2015, President Xi explicitly promised not to militarise the South China Sea in a statement made at the White House. In fact, it was already happening. Obama’s passive response made it look like an authoritarian leader had once again kicked sand in his face — and got away with it.
The third error was the failure to rearm Ukraine in response to Russian aggression. There are people in Berlin and Washington who claim that it was Merkel who led the way on this policy. If that is true, it was a mistake for Obama to listen.
But it also seems likely that the natural caution of Merkel and Obama reinforced each other. There were certainly people in Obama’s circle who were quietly dismayed by his timid reaction to the Crimean annexation. One later complained to me about America’s unwillingness to take actions that Putin might deem provocative, lamenting: “We were afraid of our own shadows.” President Joe Biden also came to the conclusion that Obama’s reaction to the 2014 attack on Ukraine was too weak. Biden is quoted as saying: “We fucked it up. Barack never took Putin seriously.”
Obama and Merkel could doubtless respond that their critics are blessed with perfect hindsight. Some of them, including Biden, went along with many of their decisions at the time. All government involves difficult trade-offs, and it is much easier to preserve a broadly satisfactory status quo than to demand sacrifices to ward off a threat that may never materialise.
Merkel has a PhD in quantum chemistry. Obama was a law professor. Their training told them to weigh the evidence and to avoid rash decisions. Unfortunately, international politics is less like a law school seminar or a laboratory than a playground in a tough area. Playground bullies tend to get nastier and more aggressive, until somebody finally stands up to them.
COMMENT – A damning indictment of the Obama-Merkel era by Gideon Rachman. In many ways, that was the decisive decade, and the mistakes made by Europe and the United States during their leadership set us on a far more difficult path.
7. Could you feed yourself on $70 a month? Chinese millennials are trying.
Lyric Li, Washington Post, November 29, 2024
The cost of living is weighing on consumers everywhere. But some Chinese, worried about making ends meet in a slowing economy, are taking this food-spending challenge.
Call it under-consumption core. Call it frugality. In China, call it “proudly stingy.”
Just as the cost of living is weighing on many Americans — and even helped propel Donald Trump back into the White House — so too are many Chinese worrying about making ends meet, even while Chinese food costs are a fraction of American ones.
As the world’s second-largest economy slows and the job market dries up, tens of thousands of young Chinese are embarking on money-saving challenges and sharing their latest feats on social media. One trend that has taken off in recent months: spending no more than $70 a month, or 500 yuan in Chinese currency, on feeding oneself.
Participants upload photos of what they eat each day and detail the costs of each item on the popular platform Xiaohongshu, which has at least 300 million active users. Some who finish a month with money to spare go on to target an even a lower budget.
Some say their quality of life has not dropped substantially.
COMMENT – Tough to see how the Chinese economy recovers as long as this is taking place.
8. Martial law reversed in South Korea after president’s surprise decree sent shockwaves
Yoonjung Seo, Peter Wilkinson, Rob Picheta, Lauren Said-Moorhouse, and Tara John, CNN, December 3, 2024
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s cabinet has reversed a martial law order in the country, just hours after he issued the surprise decree that plunged Seoul into political uncertainty and sparked fierce backlash from lawmakers across the political spectrum.
The cabinet decision came after Yoon backtracked on his shortlived decree in the early hours of Wednesday local time and withdrew the troops deployed to carry out the order.
South Korean lawmakers – who had scrambled earlier in the night to block the martial law order with a parliamentary vote – are now calling for resignations.
The opposition Democratic Party says it will begin impeachment proceedings against Yoon if he doesn’t step down immediately. “We will not sit idly by and watch President Yoon’s crime of destroying the Constitution and trampling on democracy,” the party said. “President Yoon should immediately resign voluntarily.” While the leader of Yoon’s ruling People’s Power Party, Han Dong-hoon, apologized to the public in a statement to reporters Wednesday morning, and called for the country’s defense minister to be fired.
“The president must directly and thoroughly explain this tragic situation,” he added. “The minister of defense, who recommended this martial law, should be immediately dismissed, and all those responsible must be held strictly accountable.”
The last time a South Korean president declared martial law was in 1980, during a nationwide uprising led by students and labor unions.
COMMENT – I’ve heard a rumor that President Yoon was drinking heavily when he issued the order for martial law.
9. China plans to restrict exports of a critical metal. But the market isn't that worried
Evelyn Cheng, CNBC, November 28, 2024
China will start limiting exports of critical metal tungsten this weekend, just as alternatives to Chinese suppliers of the metal are reopening.
It’s a reversal of past decades, during which, according to analysts, Chinese businesses poured cheap tungsten into the global market to put competitors out of business — eventually controlling 80% of the supply chain, according to Argus. Tungsten is an extremely hard metal used in weapons and semiconductors.
As part of new rules limiting exports of “dual use” goods — which can be used for military or civilian purposes — China’s Ministry of Commerce earlier this month released a list indicating that businesses wanting to export a range of tungsten and critical mineral products would need to apply for licenses. The latest measures will take effect Dec. 1.
The move comes as escalating U.S.-China tensions boost demand for non-China tungsten. The U.S. Defense Department has banned its contractors from buying China-mined tungsten starting Jan. 1, 2027.
“It’s a bit late for the Chinese on tungsten,” said Christopher Ecclestone, principal and mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company.
“Everybody needs more tungsten. That’s the message out there right now,” he said. “The thing that’ll prompt more tungsten is not a Chinese ban. It’s a Chinese ban causing [it to become more] profitable to mine tungsten.”
Ecclestone pointed out that tungsten prices have not reacted much to China’s announcement. For mining the metal to be significantly profitable, he estimates prices would need to trade $50 higher than their current price of around $335 — measured by the industry in per metric ton units of ammonium para tungstate, in which one metric ton unit is 10 kilograms.
Higher prices in the U.S. alone could encourage more tungsten production.
While China restricts tungsten exports, the U.S. increased tariffs on Chinese tungsten by 25% in September. The majority of public comments on the U.S. tungsten tariffs supported the duties, noting benefits for domestic manufacturing. Some even requested the duties rise to 50%.
It may take years to open a mine, but more tariffs, expected under a Trump administration, could make it “more commercially viable” for some U.S. mining projects to reopen, said Cullen S. Hendrix, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
‘Friendshoring’ tungsten
The U.S. has not commercially mined tungsten since 2015, according to official records. But this year, one of the world’s largest mines for the metal is moving close to resuming production in South Korea.
Canada-based Almonty Industries said last week it came one step closer to fully reopening the Sangdong mine and processing plant with the installation of grinding equipment. The mine, more than 10 hours east of Seoul by bus, closed in 1994.
Almonty aims to restore Sangdong to around 50% of its potential output by summer 2025, CEO Lewis Black told CNBC last month, after a ceremony that highlighted cooperation with the local government.
He noted that 90% of South Korea’s tungsten comes from China, and that Chinese companies might invest in other businesses to maintain their market share indirectly.
Jeong Kwang-yeol, the vice governor for economic affairs in Gangwon where Sangdong is located, said the region is willing to offer foreign investors incentives as he hopes the mine can become an anchor for other industrial companies to expand in the region. He cited estimates that the first phase of the mine would create 250 jobs and 1,500 indirect positions.
Almonty currently operates a tungsten mine in Portugal. In 2015, the company completed an acquisition that gave it the mining rights to Sangdong, and in 2021 it obtained $75.1 million for project financing from German state bank KfW IPEX-Bank. Almonty said overall investment in Sangdong so far has exceeded $130 million.
“In the medium-term, the U.S. will need to rely on friendshoring” for tungsten, said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the critical minerals security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She noted that Almonty has committed 45% of the South Korea Sangdong mine to the U.S. through a long-term supply contract.
Several members of the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency which analyzes the availability of natural resources, visited Sangdong earlier this year to assess its capacity. China was the largest source of U.S. tungsten imports in June at 45%, according to the agency.
Demand for tungsten in and outside China is expected to rise, keeping tungsten prices elevated in the near term, said Emre Uzun, ferro-alloys and steel analyst at Fastmarkets. But starting late next year, he expects increased non-China supply to help stabilize raw tungsten prices.
“Outside China, demand will also rise, but supply is expected to grow when operations expand and projects progress,” he said, pointing to the Sangdong mine and tungsten projects in Kazakhstan, Australia and Spain.
U.S. tungsten deposits
Despite the lack of tungsten production in the United States, the U.S. Geological Survey has identified around 100 sites in 12 U.S. states with significant amounts of the metal: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Utah and Washington.
In Idaho, roughly 4 hours away from Boise, a small Canadian company called Demesne Resources plans in coming days to close an eight-year deal worth $5.8 million to acquire the IMA tungsten mine, CEO Murray Nye said on Tuesday. He expects the mine could begin production by spring.
Nye said decades of historical records indicate the mine has significant quantities of tungsten, silver and molybdenum, a metal often used to strengthen others. That, he said, has the makings of what he expects to be a “nice, profitable mine.”
COMMENT – Placing export controls on commodities that can be found and processed elsewhere is a bad idea (for the country imposing the export controls).
I get the impression that Beijing is imposing these restrictions as performative retaliation rather than for any effective strategic outcome.
Export Controls only work when the imposing country has unique control over the technology or resource and a significant moat to protect that control. Simply driving others out of the market with subsidies and over-production is NOT an effective moat to create unique control.
Authoritarianism
10. Did Hong Kong die by ‘a thousand cuts?’
Cindy Yu, The Spectator, November 20, 2024
Beijing has gutted the city’s pro-democracy movement. Its leaders have been sentenced to exile, silence or prison.
Overnight, dozens of influential figures in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement were sentenced to lengthy terms under the fiercest application of the city’s national security law so far. That these former legislators, activists, and legal academics have only been sentenced three years after their detention is typical of how the Chinese Communist Party operates in Hong Kong, described by one academic to me as “death by a thousand cuts.” China hopes that, with incremental moves over time, its yoking of the city will be met with minimal international backlash. That calculation looks to have been proven right.
The activists were accused of being involved in an unauthorized democratic primary in 2020, through which they planned to pack the city’s legislature and eventually force the-then chief executive, Carrie Lam, to resign. The elections that year had been postponed — ostensibly due to the pandemic — but a group of democratic parties got together and ran their own primary. They wanted to select the pro-democracy candidates who had the highest chance of winning, and avoid the phenomenon of vote splitting that had weakened the pro-democracy camp in previous elections. The mastermind was legal academic Benny Tai. Today he received a ten-year sentence.
Others sentenced include the twenty-eight-year-old Joshua Wong, one of Hong Kong’s most well-known student leaders, and Gwyneth Ho, a journalist who had covered the protests and ran as a candidate in the primary. Ho refused to plead guilty and was sentenced to seven years; Wong received a more lenient, four-year sentence for pleading guilty. Their three years in detention will count towards that time.
This comes a day before the Hong Kong media tycoon and British citizen Jimmy Lai is set to testify at his own trial. Lai faces up to life in prison on charges of conspiring to publish seditious material and the classic accusation of “collusion with foreign forces.” Away from the courts, over the last few years the Hong Kong government, led by the former policeman John Lee, has shut news outlets (including Lai’s Apple Daily), overhauled the electoral system to require that only “patriots” who “respect” the Communist Party can run for office, and adapted school curricula to be more “patriotic” too. That all this has happened slowly, but steadily, means that the CCP has largely got away with it without remarkable international approbation.
COMMENT – For decades, Hong Kong represented the best of Chinese culture to the world. Since 2020, the Chinese Communist Party has straggled the city, showing the world that the Party is fundamentally intolerant and vindictive.
The world and humanity is poorer.
11. US law firm Paul Weiss to close Beijing office, joining China exodus
Sara Merken, Reuters, December 3, 2024
U.S. law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison plans to close its office in Beijing, ending its presence in China and joining a parade of law firms that have pulled back from the country's legal market.
New York-founded Paul Weiss will shut the office at the end of the year, a Paul Weiss spokesperson said on Tuesday. The firm said it is "committed to having a strong presence across Asia, including in Hong Kong and Tokyo."
The firm, which has more than 1,000 lawyers globally, lists on its website one partner and three other lawyers based in Beijing who focus on corporate work, including mergers and acquisitions and private equity investments.
Paul Weiss opened its Beijing office in 1981 and has described itself as one of the first foreign law firms to open in mainland China, taking advantage of political and economic change.
A growing number of major U.S. law firms have left China or shrunk their footprints there over the past two years, amid growing pressures on foreign businesses, economic uncertainties, muted deal activities, and geopolitical tensions.
Mayer Brown on Monday said it completed its planned reorganization in Hong Kong after announcing in May that it would separate from its existing Hong Kong operations. The firm created Mayer Brown Hong Kong, which it said on Monday has more than 20 lawyers focused on areas including capital markets, M&A and finance. Johnson Stokes & Master, which was the name of the Hong Kong-based entity that merged with Mayer Brown in 2008, was reestablished as an independent firm.
In October, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr said it would close its 20-year-old Beijing office, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom cited "shifting market dynamics" when it said the same month that the firm would close its Shanghai office.
Reed Smith, Perkins Coie, Dechert, Morrison & Foerster and Sidley Austin are among other major law firms that have said they would close offices in Shanghai, Beijing or Hong Kong since the spring.
COMMENT – The Chinese Communist Party is isolating itself from the world by making the country hostile to foreigners and encouraging firms like this to leave.
12. China court jails journalist for seven years on spy charges, family says
Laurie Chen and James Pomfret, Reuters, November 29, 2024
13. How a Young Chinese Nationalist Turned Her Back on Beijing
Shen Lu, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2024
14. Silenced and erased, Hong Kong's decade of protest is now a defiant memory
Tessa Wong, Grace Tsoi, Vicky Wong and Joy Chang, BBC, December 1, 2024
The memories began rushing back as Kenneth strolled through Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, once a focal point for the city’s resistance to China.
As a child, Kenneth would buy calligraphy posters from pro-democracy politicians at the annual Lunar New Year fair.
Then there were the protest marches he joined as a teenager, that would always start here before winding their way through the city. When he was just 12, he began attending the park's massive vigils for the Tiananmen massacre - a taboo in mainland China, but commemorated openly in Hong Kong.
Those vigils have ended now. The politicians’ stalls at the fair are gone, protests have been silenced and pro-democracy campaigners jailed. Kenneth feels his political coming-of-age - and Hong Kong’s - is being erased.
“People still carry on with life… but you can feel the change bit by bit,” said the former activist, who did not want to reveal his real name when he spoke to us.
“Our city’s character is disappearing.”
On the surface Hong Kong appears to be the same, its packed trams still rumbling down bustling streets, its vibrant neon-lit chaos undimmed.
But look closer and there are signs the city has changed - from the skyscrapers lighting up every night with exultations of China, the motherland, to the chatter of mainland Mandarin increasingly heard alongside Hong Kong’s native Cantonese.
It’s impossible to know how many of Hong Kong’s more than seven million people welcome Beijing’s grip. But hundreds of thousands have taken part in protests in the past decade since a pro-democracy movement erupted in 2014.
Not everyone supported it, but few would contest that Beijing crushed it. As a turbulent decade draws to a close, hopes for a freer Hong Kong have withered.
China says it has steadied a volatile city. Hundreds have been jailed under a sweeping national security law (NSL), which also drove thousands of disillusioned and wary Hongkongers abroad, including activists who feared or fled arrest. Others, like Kenneth, have stayed and keep a low profile.
But in many of them lives the memory of a freer Hong Kong - a place they are fighting to remember in defiance of Beijing’s remaking of their city.
15. Protecting U.S. Allies and Partners from Chinese Economic Coercion
Elliott Abrams, Ezra Hess, and Joshua Kurlantzick, Council on Foreign Relations, December 2, 2024
16. As Russia and China Rewrite Rules of War, NATO Adapts Its Game Plan
Daniel Michaels and Alan Cullison, Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2024
Sabotage, cyber and energy security are priorities for alliance’s new leader, Mark Rutte.
NATO was created to fight a shooting war against Moscow. Now Secretary-General Mark Rutte wants the alliance ready to fight unconventional battles against unseen enemies.
Sabotage, hacking and terrorist-type attacks in the U.S. and Europe are escalating, Western security officials say. Politicians and intelligence agencies finger Russia, China, Iran and the West’s other adversaries for most of the incidents, but attributing blame is often difficult. Responding can be even harder.
Rutte and national leaders in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization say they must boost cooperation and prepare response plans before the string of low-grade attacks reaches a level closer to hostilities that could trigger military action.
Russia presents the most immediate threat, Rutte and other allied officials say, because it is using what are called hybrid attacks in response to the West’s support for Ukraine’s resistance to Moscow’s invasion.
“Russia is really ramping up,” Rutte said in an interview. NATO must “make sure that deterrence is there and that the Russians don’t try anything which is really risky.”
He said NATO and its members are responding by expanding exchanges of intelligence, conducting more exercises, boosting cyber defenses and enhancing protection of critical infrastructure. The alliance is now developing a plan for response to hybrid attacks that it aims to adopt at its annual meeting next summer in The Hague.
NATO members have primary responsibility for response to attacks, handling them at the national level, Rutte said, but the alliance can play a critical supporting role by pooling information and sharing best practices.
“We are already working very hard on making sure that we exchange information, [and] that we have the intelligence-gathering,” he said.
Secrecy and mistrust have long impeded intelligence-sharing among allies. It has improved significantly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Michal Koudelka, director of the Czech Republic’s Security Information Service, said.
NATO in May launched a Maritime Center for Security of Critical Undersea Infrastructure, based near London at its existing Allied Maritime Command. In July, members agreed to create a new Cyber Defense Center to combat increasingly sophisticated threats. The center, to be based at NATO’s military headquarters in Belgium, will bring together military, civilian and industry experts.
COMMENT – Until Europeans take the threats posed to them seriously, these attacks will continue.
17. China bans export of critical minerals to US as trade tensions escalate
Amy Lv and Tony Munroe, Reuters, December 3, 2024
18. China Announces a Ban on Rare Minerals to the U.S.
David Pierson, Keith Bradsher, and Ana Swanson, New York Times, December 3, 2024
19. China’s Flood of Cheap Goods Is Angering Its Allies, Too
Jason Douglas, Jon Emont, and Samantha Pearson, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2024
Liao Yiwu, China Review of Books, November 27, 2024
1983’s Strike Hard Against Crime Campaign led to the arrests of many innocent victims, caught up in a culture of fear. One of them was imprisoned for organizing an unofficial dance party — until he broke out in a daring escape.
Liao Yiwu’s introduction
Iwas imprisoned for four years for writing a poem [about the Tiananmen Square massacre]. My life has been as if a knife has sliced through it, leaving me with a before and an after. Before, I was a famous young poet obsessed with exploring the spiritual realm, and had not the slightest interest in politics; after, I was a political prisoner of the lowest order, with a talent for telling prison stories. Now I’ve been in exile from China for many years, and I’m still seen as a political dissident writer, like Alexandr Solzhenitsyn of the former Soviet Union. As I have said before: A good writer should spend some time in jail.
The 1983 “Strike Hard Against Crime Campaign” (严厉打击刑事犯罪活动) was a nightmare for many households in China. It is said to have originated from a criminal case which shocked the nation: revenge killings perpetrated by two brothers from the northeastern city of Changchun, who were fugitives for months, clashing with armed police officers. In response to this, and the steadily deteriorating public order since the end of the Cultural Revolution, the supreme leader Deng Xiaoping personally formulated a national policy of “cracking down on crime hard, quickly and severely” which led to many unjust convictions for social offenses — a form of law enforcement by national campaign that continues to this day.
54-year-old Zuo Changzhong was a victim of the Strike Hard Campaign. He was arrested in 1983 for organizing a dorm room dance party with his friends, and imprisoned for life on false charges of being a member of a “gang-rape group.” He was released on medical parole in 1999. When I talked with him at a Court Petitioners Inn on the evening of April 1, 2002, where he was trying to overturn his conviction, he was still frightened. “During the Strike Hard Campaign, the judicial system was simplified,” he said. “The Public Security Bureau, Procuratorate and Court were all squeezed onto the same bench, or even into the crotch of a single pair of pants, handling cases.” Below is his story, told to me that night.
Zuo Changzhong’s story
In the late 1970s, hundreds of thousands of “educated youth” who had been sent “up to the mountains and down to the countryside” during the Cultural Revolution returned to their hometowns. I was one of them, violating national law to return to Chengdu [in Sichuan province] along with many others. During the day, we held sit-ins at the gates of the provincial and municipal governments to petition for relocation of our registered residence to the city. At night, we went to Chengdu’s People’s Park to gather and hang out.
I would sit deep in the shade of the oleanders, holding a guitar and a harmonica, playing old songs that had been banned for many years. Gradually, more and more onlookers gathered, and the wall of people stacked up bigger and bigger. Finally, a brave couple took the lead in dancing, then two pairs, three pairs, five pairs, until a dance party, called the “Ba Ba Dance,” started. This was the earliest underground social networking after the Cultural Revolution, where unfamiliar men and women could convene without having to undergo a political review or be investigated. I felt at home with all this and made many trendy dancer friends.
The Ba Ba Dances, like chief architect Deng Xiaoping’s “Reform and Opening Up” policies, ran out of control. It was not until 1983 that it was banned overnight by the government due to social turmoil. One time, there were dozens of illegal dancers fervently practicing their art in the center of the People’s Park, when somebody shouted: “The cow heads [on-duty militia] are here to wipe out pornography!” Everyone was terrified and scattered. But hundreds of cow heads with red sleeve bands had already sprung out of hiding and surrounded us, holding white wax poles.
The dancers were caught in groups of five, wrists tied together by a length of hemp rope, then taken in to be interrogated. They were beaten until they cried out like ghosts and howled like wolves, so loudly the tiles on the police building’s roof shook. At that time, there were no ID cards in China, and you had to carry your household registration book or work permit when you went out. I forgot to bring mine and that was a big problem. My guitar and harmonica were confiscated and I was detained for a month.
My parents went to great lengths to bail me out. In order not to anger them again, as soon as I got out of the detention center, I went to stay with my Ba Da dancer friend, Wang Yi. He was also an educated youth who had returned to Chengdu from the countryside, and now he worked as a fitter in a valve factory. Just loafing around like this, I unwittingly became the lead sheep of the four young bachelors in his dorm room at the factory.
Having nothing to do, and with an unbearable itch, I secretly organized a dormitory dance and used my social resources to invite dance partners. Wang Yi brought a cassette player and Hong Kong and Taiwan song tapes from home, and our hardware was complete. The dance was scheduled for the weekend. After both open and secret inspections, we confirmed that the dorm building was empty, so we covered the doors and windows with quilts and turned off the overhead lights, leaving a single table lamp wrapped in a thick towel for light.
That night, five pairs of young people with budding thoughts of love had a private dance party in a space of a few square meters. There were iron-frame double-decker bunk beds on two sides, with dim lighting and faintly audible music. Everyone was moving back and forth cautiously in their private dances, like silent ghosts. In fact, this so-called dance was just an occasion for men and women to embrace in the name of dance. Once the bachelors tasted the sweetness of this forbidden fruit, we became excited and looked forward to the next time we could organize another party like it.
The third time we organized a dance party, before the couples could embrace each other, the dorm room door swung open with a crash. This was the summer of 1983, when the Strike Hard Campaign was at its peak, and the men were all arrested. After two days and three nights of rapid interrogations, we were designated as an “extra-large gang-rape group.”
Look at my deformed knuckles, caused by chopstick pinching1. Nobody can withstand it. There was also sitting on the tiger bench2 and drinking chili pepper water. What was even more disgusting is that when the police got tired, they ordered the reform-through-labor prisoners from the detention center to make an appearance. My genitals were poked at and burned by their cigarette butts. It was impossible not to confess, even if you were accused of gang-raping the mother of Chiang Kai-shek, the enemy of the people, you’d willingly sign the confession.
Wang Yi and I were both sentenced to death. I was disinclined to give in, so I banged against the iron bars day and night and cried out against the injustice of it. In punishment, I was forced to accompany the guards to the execution site during my death penalty review period. 64 prisoners were shot in one go, but first the victims were paraded through the streets in trucks, with their arms tied behind their backs and rope looped around their necks. My mouth was injected with anesthesia and I couldn’t utter a sound, so I must have seemed like a dead fish rolling its eyes.
When we returned to the detention center, it was dark as the bottom of a pot, and there was a heavy downpour. I was frightened, but still couldn’t accept my fate, so I howled in protest, demanding to see the center’s inspector. Nothing could stop me. Coincidentally, all five defendants in my case were claiming they had been unjustly convicted and retracted their confessions at the same time as me, causing chaos in the detention center.
After half a year, Wang Yi and I both had our sentences altered: he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and I was sentenced to life imprisonment. The moment I was unshackled, after having my hands cuffed behind my back for so long, my arms twisted backwards subconsciously and could not return to their original state. I slowly wriggled my joints and my bones rattled. I couldn’t make large movements. The old convicts had told me if you move too much, your bones will break.
If you were convicted in the Strike Hard Campaign, it was impossible to be declared innocent. This is the logic of the Communist Party. No matter if you appeal and refuse to accept your guilt, no matter how hard you work, your sentence will not be reduced. So, given the massive momentum behind the Strike Hard campaign, and despite the ever-growing pile of unjust cases, very few people dared to risk filing a complaint. I had to go along with the prevailing custom.
21. The Baltic Sea’s Bad Actors
Elisabeth Braw, Foreign Policy, December 4, 2024
22. Taiwan’s President Visits Pacific Islands to Counter China’s Influence
Chris Buckley and Amy Chang Chien, New York Times, November 30, 2024
23. Hong Kong’s property slump may be terminal
The Economist, November 28, 2024
24. Taiwan says disappointed Trans-Pacific trade pact not considering its membership
Reuters, November 28, 2024
Human Rights in China, November 27, 2024
Two years have passed since the White Paper Movement swept across China - a historical moment of collective defiance ignited by Xi Jinping’s draconian zero-COVID policy. Public outrage - fuelled by years of inhumane lockdowns and mounting despair - erupted with the tragic deaths of 10 individuals in the November 24th Urumqi fire. Thousands of individuals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, took to the streets and raised up blank sheets of paper. The message to authorities was clear: this was a condemnation of the CCP's system of censorship; a demand for accountability, and a plea for dignity in a state which silences and suffocates dissent.
Two years later, we are reminded that even under the weight of repression and enforced silence, the yearning for freedom and dignity burns brightly. No one who dares to stand is ever truly alone.
Liu Jianshu’s poem, below, channels the quiet power of the White Paper Movement - weaving the courage, grief and yearning of a people into a call for hope and renewal.
“Tonight, I Raise a Blank Sheet of Paper” by Liu Jianshu
Tonight, my love burns fiercely.
I love those from distant horizons, and those who stand by my side.
I love myself.
Behold, my freedom! How beautiful it is.
Tonight, my strength blazes.
I want to run; to cry out to the heavens,
I want to live.
For the first time, I dare to raise a blank sheet of paper.
I raise this blank sheet of paper—
And a window opens upon my chest.
Has the fire roaring in my heart illuminated you,
My fellow citizens, my compatriots?
I raise this blank sheet of paper—
A sky, clear and boundless.
Has the fresh breeze swept away the shadows and the gloom,
My fellow citizens, my compatriots?
I raise this blank sheet of paper—
A handful of snow from the Tianshan Mountains.
Has its meltwater quenched your parched lips,
My fellow citizens, my compatriots?
I raise this blank sheet of paper—
A patch of untainted earth.
Can you rebuild your home upon it,
My fellow citizens, my compatriots?
I raise this blank sheet of paper—
A map of the motherland.
Have you memorized the sites of our disasters and our sorrows,
My fellow citizens, my compatriots?
This is a handkerchief,
With which I wipe the ashes from the faces of our dead.
This is a mirror,
Reflecting the hypocrisy barely concealed behind 'greatness'.
This is a ballot, And I choose the future, not regression to the past.
This is my diploma—
I have learned to cry out in the silence,
To find courage amidst fear.
This is my charter, my manifesto, my declaration of rights.
I release myself from bondage,
And grant myself my inalienable freedoms.
This is a brick pulled loose from walls towering above us.
This is the portrait of a tyrant.
This is paper money to mourn a reign of terror.
Tomorrow, I will paint the colors of freedom
Across this blank sheet.
This paper will shine, as vibrant and colorful as our lives.
But tonight, I raise only a blank sheet of paper—
Let this eternal flame pierce the darkness which lies ahead.
Environmental Harms
26. Environmentalists Sound Alarm Over China’s Relaxed Forest Rules
Kang Jia and Kelly Wang, Caixin, December 2, 2024
27. Big steelmakers failing to make the switch to renewables, survey shows
David Stanway, Reuters, November 28, 2024
Foreign Interference and Coercion
28. Beijing’s online influence operations along the India–China border
Nishit Kumar, Elena Yi-Ching Ho, and Albert Zhang, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, November 27, 2024
The Chinese government is likely conducting influence operations on social media to covertly dispute territorial claims and denigrate authorities in India’s northeastern states.
As part of a joint investigation with Taiwanese think tank Doublethink Lab for its 2024 Foreign Influence on India’s Election Observation Project, we identified coordinated social media campaigns seeking to amplify social tensions in Manipur and criticise the Indian government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party and its policies. This occurred in the lead-up to and during the Indian general elections, when social divisions were especially heightened.
Despite Beijing publicly seeking stability with India the Chinese Communist Party will likely use other covert methods, mainly targeting Chinese-speaking diasporas, to destabilise the India-China border and pursue its territorial ambitions.
The CCP has a history of trying to exploit ethnic and political conflicts in India’s northeastern states, such as in Manipur, where Beijing has allegedly fostered instability using Myanmar-based and local terror groups. On 3 May 2023, Manipur’s latest ethnic conflict in erupted between the Meitei and the Kuki indigenous ethnic groups over a disputed affirmative action measure related to benefits for the Meitei people. According to reports, the violence resulted in 221 deaths and displaced approximately 60,000 individuals.
Our findings shows that most of the narrative had first appeared on Chinese social media platforms which then entered the Indian social media landscape through translation or AI enabled translations. This way it reached to the targeted audience, the Meitei people. Anthropologists say the Meitei people may be ethnically related to Tibetans, whose land is now part of China, but the Meitei do not speak Chinese.
29. Palau's tourism industry stays resilient despite Chinese pressure
Sophie Mak and Shaun Turton, Nikkei Asia, December 1, 2024
30. Antidoping Agency Froze Out Investigators Who Warned About China
Tariq Panja and Michael S. Schmidt, New York Times, December 3, 2024
31. NBA to return to China for first time since 2019 fallout
Japan Times, December 6, 2024
The NBA will stage two preseason games in Macao next October, its deputy commissioner said on Friday, marking its return to China after being frozen out for more than five years.
No NBA games have been held in China since two preseason contests in 2019 after a tweet from then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Morey posted an image bearing a slogan used by demonstrators urging the world to "Stand with Hong Kong."
COMMENT – The NBA just can’t help themselves from becoming tools of the Chinese Communist Party.
32. Watching China in Europe—December 2024
Noah Barkin, GMF, December 3, 2024
The Fog Thickens
It is difficult to remember a time when the fog enveloping Europe-China relations was so thick. On the one hand, the underlying dynamics that have led to a deterioration of ties between Brussels and Beijing over the past half decade remain in place. These include a significant shift in the bilateral economic relationship, which has seen China morph from a lucrative market for European products into an existential threat to European industry. And they include Beijing’s deepening support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, which has turned China, in the span of a few short years, into a threat to European security. These two drivers will be with us for a while and could metastasize into something far more serious in the years to come.
On the other hand, the election of Donald Trump promises to reshape the geopolitical triangle formed by the United States, Europe, and China. Trump could impose across-the-board tariffs of 10% or more on European products as soon as he enters the White House on January 20. He could try to impose a peace deal on Ukraine that strengthens Putin, turning Russia into an even greater threat to Europe and NATO. Trump’s MAGA army could launch an attack from across the Atlantic on European liberal democracy itself, working hand in hand with far-right populists on the continent to undermine the EU’s foundations.
Missing in Action
Reaching consensus on how to respond to potential developments such as these is a colossal challenge for a bloc of 27 countries with vastly different interests. It is doubly difficult at a time when the EU’s biggest member states are missing in action. Germany will be preoccupied with an early election and coalition talks to form a new government for the first four months of Trump’s presidency. France’s government could collapse as early as this week, setting off a financial storm that could envelop the eurozone. Perhaps the only good news from the old continent is that a new European Commission took the reins in Brussels this week. Returning President Ursula von der Leyen and her team have a short window to try to avert a transatlantic blowup. Is the Trump team open to negotiating with them? How will Europe respond if they are not? And would a trade war between Washington and Brussels push Europe into China’s arms?
I came away from a series of closed-door conferences in Europe and the United States in recent weeks—including the biannual Stockholm China Forum (SCF) hosted by GMF and Sweden’s foreign ministry—gloomier about how the coming months will play out. I was not alone. The decision to hit Europe with tariffs appears to be close to a done deal, and nothing that European policymakers can offer the new administration—from purchases of US liquefied natural gas and defense goods to promises of closer collaboration on China—may change that. “My sense is that it will be too little too late,” one official who is close to the Trump team told me. “Trump’s response will be: If you wanted to work together on China, why haven’t you done more? He will see it as an insincere effort to avoid tariffs.”
COMMENT – Great commentary from Noah, worth reading in full at his website.
33. Ending the Strategic Vacuum: A U.S. Strategy for China in Latin America
Ryan C. Berg, CSIS, December 2, 2024
34. China condemns Lithuanian expulsion of its diplomats
Reuters, December 2, 2024
35. Singapore College Students’ Toughest Test Is Dodging Chinese Tourists
Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2024
36. Chinese ships gather near island disputed with Philippines, satellite images show
Greg Torode and Karen Lema, Reuters, November 28, 2024
37. From Chinese Patriot to American Spy: The Unusual Life of John Leung
Mara Hvistendahl, Joy Dong, and Adam Goldman, New York Times, December 3, 2024
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
Noah Berman, Wire China, December 5, 2024
Deep linkages exist between forced labor in Xinjiang and the global pharmaceutical supply chain, according to a new report.
The U.S. government last month ratcheted up its scrutiny of Chinese companies with ties to Xinjiang, with the Department of Homeland Security adding 29 firms to its sanctions list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. Yet three years after the legislation’s passage, several companies with alleged links to human rights abuses are still slipping through its cracks.
Those avoiding sanctions are concentrated in the pharmaceutical industry, according to a recent report by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), a research group.
That’s largely because the interagency panel in charge of the law’s Entity List, which is chaired by DHS, has prioritized sanctioning Xinjiang’s larger industries, argues Mishel Kondi, author of the report. The bulk of the 107 Chinese companies now barred from U.S. markets are associated with cotton, of which Xinjiang produces 20 percent of the global supply.
But the region also hosts dozens of licensed pharmaceutical manufacturers, none of which are on the Entity List, according to the report. Together, they produce more than 600 drugs, including 76 made only in Xinjiang, the report adds.
“These companies are based in the Uyghur region. De facto, they are participating in human rights abuses that are politically incentivized in the region, and therefore, there is reasonable justification for adding them to the list,” Kondi says.
Pharmaceutical products that China produces only in Xinjiang include conjugated estrogen, a menopause treatment, and the painkiller naproxen, as well as ingredients used in various supplements, the report says.
The UFLPA’s “rebuttable presumption” prohibits firms from importing any goods “mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part” in the Uyghur Autonomous Region, with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection responsible for examining imports at the border. However, pharmaceutical, health, and chemical products make up just 3 percent of the shipments CBP has inspected to date under the legislation, according to official statistics.
39. Uniqlo criticised in China after BBC report of CEO's Xinjiang comments
Eduardo Baptista and Casey Hall, Reuters, November 29, 2024
40. Uniqlo does not use Xinjiang cotton, boss says
Mariko Oi, BBC, November 27, 2024
The boss of the company behind global fashion chain Uniqlo has told the BBC that the Japanese firm does not use cotton from the Xinjiang region of China in its products.
It is the first time Fast Retailing's chief executive Tadashi Yanai has directly addressed the contentious issue.
China is a crucial market for Uniqlo not just for customers but also as a major manufacturing hub.
Xinjiang cotton was once known as some of the best fabric in the world.
But it has fallen out of favour after allegations that it is produced using forced labour by people from the Muslim Uyghur minority. Beijing has consistently denied these allegations.
41. Starbucks and Nestlé face scrutiny over labor practices in China
Vic Chiang and Christian Shepherd, Washington Post, December 3, 2024
42. Inside a Secret Plan to Bring Uyghurs Trapped in China to the United States
Edward Wong, New York Times, December 2, 2024
43. X must immediately end shadow ban of prominent human rights account
Article 19, November 28, 2024
On Wednesday, 27 November, the blue tick verified ‘Teacher Li is not Your Teacher’ X (formally Twitter) account posted to its 1.8 million followers that it believes it had been shadow banned on the platform. The post speculated that the ban was in relation to the two-year anniversary of the White Paper Movement, a protest wave that rocked through numerous cities in China in November 2022 and saw numerous anniversary protests around the world over the past weekend. ARTICLE 19 calls on X to immediately end the shadow ban and provide detailed explanation as to what steps it is taking to push back against requests for censorship from authoritarian governments like China.
Shadow banning occurs when a social media platform intentionally limits the reach of certain content to its users, although platforms often deny shadow banning takes place. In its post, the Teacher Li account shared a screenshot from the platform claiming it had been subjected to a ‘search suggestion ban’.
On 28 November, ARTICLE 19 ran its own search on X, using the account’s username @whyyoutouzhele and its Chinese account name. The search did not surface the authentic Teacher Li account in either case, however both searches revealed multiple impersonator accounts, with around 20 when searching for the username. The search for the Chinese account name returned over 900 impersonator account results, but not the authentic account.
Michael Caster, ARTICLE 19’s Head of Global China Programme, said:
“In China’s relentless war on the free flow of information, both within the walled garden of the Great Firewall and increasingly around the world through the complicity of the global tech sector, few influencers have had as much positive impact as the Teacher Li account. In widely disseminating information to its ever-growing number of followers, the account has become a chronicle of details on protest, crackdown, and wider human rights abuses in China, which terrifies the Party. This appears to be the latest incident in a long line of digital transnational repression targeting the account and its operators.”
“Time and again we have seen China pursue extreme measures in its global censorship objectives. Sadly, we have also often seen global tech companies bow to this pressure. It seems to have happened again, with little other explanation than X caving to pressure from China to interfere with the freedom of expression and free flow of information affecting the account’s more than 1.8 million followers. It is shameful.”
Few online actors are more influential in skirting China’s censorship efforts than Li Ying who established the @whyyoutouzhele, ‘Teacher Li Is Not Your Teacher’, account in April 2022. Having lived in Italy since 2015, he used to post actively on the Chinese platform Weibo. Because he lived beyond the Great Firewall, people in China would reach out asking him to post sensitive content on their behalf. His Weibo account was shut down at least 52 times for crossing the line into social issues, until he was finally purged from the platform altogether. In April 2022 he switched to X and by November 2022 was gaining hundreds of thousands of followers a week, as he became a clearinghouse for sensitive content, especially for information about the White Paper Protests. As the account became a respected source for disseminating and accessing sensitive information beyond the reach of China’s censors, Li Ying faced increasing digital transnational repression.
On 28 November 2022, Li’s personal information was doxed for the first time, including his home address in Italy and pictures of his passport. Some of the anonymous X accounts involved in the doxing also sent him death threats. Safeguard Defenders reported that on the same day Chinese Ministry of State Security officials visited his parents in Li’s hometown. They continued to do so for a couple of weeks, questioning them over Li’s whereabouts and falsely accusing him of receiving foreign funding to engage in anti-China behaviour. Authorities even threatened to block his parents’ pensions if he refused to delete his social media account.
On 12 April 2023, Li found out that all his Chinese bank accounts had been frozen. His parents also told him that surveillance cameras had been installed outside of their home, and that they were subjected to increased scrutiny. Threats online in March and April of 2024 continued to go after his parents if he didn’t return from overseas.
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
44. The Youth Are ‘Lifeless’: Economist’s Speech Goes Viral in China
Bloomberg, December 3, 2024
45. Outflow of overseas money from Hong Kong stocks raises alarm
Kensaku Ihara, Nikkei Asia, November 30, 2024
46. EU shuts out Chinese hydrogen equipment from subsidy program
Eiki Hayashi, Nikkei Asia, December 3, 2024
47. China optimism fades among German, U.K. companies: surveys
Wataru Suzuki and Grace Li, Nikkei Asia, December 4, 2024
48. The rise of US economic sanctions on China: Analysis of a new PIIE dataset
Martin Chorzempa, Mary E. Lovely, and Yuting (Christine) Wan, PIIE, December 2024
49. Malaysia urges Chinese firms to avoid using it to dodge U.S. tariffs
Reuters, December 2, 2024
50. European factories struggled last month as China's perked up ahead of Trump tariffs
Jonathan Cable, Reuters, December 2, 2024
51. China retaliates against latest US chip restrictions
Financial Times, December 3, 2024
52. China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’
Alexandra Stevenson and Paul Mozur, New York Times, November 27, 2024
53. Breaking Down Trump’s Tariffs on China and the World, in Charts
Hannah Miao, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2024
54. G.M.’s Ailing China Business Will Deal It a $5 Billion Blow
Neal E. Boudette, New York Times, December 4, 2024
55. China’s foreign investment is falling. Will a second Trump presidency deal a heavier blow?
Mia Nulimaimaiti, South China Morning Post, December 2, 2024
Cyber & Information Technology
56. TikTok Removes Covert Network Linked to Romanian Candidate
Gian Volpicelli, Bloomberg, December 3, 2024
57. Defense Against the AI Dark Arts: Threat Assessment and Coalition Defense
Philip Zelikow, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar , Eric Schmidt , Jason Matheny, Hoover Institution, December 4, 2024
The United States must now start working very hard with allies to secure democratic advantage in the domain of frontier AI. We suggest how to manage the convergence of three great vectors: private sector–led innovation, emerging threats, and international efforts. An essential starting point is to build a defensive agenda, build a historic public-private partnership, and design overlapping circles of international cooperation. The time to start shaping the national security agenda for AI has arrived.
Key Takeaways:
The national security agenda for AI goes well beyond just evaluating the safety of private products. Using frontier AI, the US has to evaluate and counter what our most dangerous enemies can do with frontier AI.
This agenda calls for three circles of international cooperation: among core participants in coalition defense; among AI producers; and among the wider community worried about the risks.
This agenda envisions a historic public-private partnership, with at least ten major issues on the table, as the government will rely on best-in-world private help for coalition defense.
The rise of powerful open-weights models creates special risks. At a minimum, governments must have their own independent capacity to evaluate the dangers before such models are deployed.
Alex Colville, China Media Project, November 27, 2024
A new AI tool allowing users to generate text based on the speeches of China’s top leader shows just how difficult it is to create tech that is both cutting-edge and politically compliant.
Aligning artificial intelligence with ethics and social values is a global challenge. But in China, there is a further dilemma as AI becomes more powerful and pervasive: how to ensure that large language models (LLMs), the building blocks of AI, adhere to the country’s rigid Communist Party orthodoxy.
As the leadership’s redlines on public discussion are ever-shifting, one answer to this dilemma could be “Easy Write” (写易), a new AI text generation tool launched by the CCP’s flagship newspaper People’s Daily (人民日報). Unlike other LLMs, it uses only Party-vetted sources to generate writing for an intended user base of state media staff and other government employees. Users can choose between information drawn from People’s Daily archives, Xi Jinping’s “important speeches” (重要讲话), or both.
The People’s Daily describes the tool, released early this year around the time of the annual Two Sessions political meetings in Beijing, as a “mainstream values LLM.” The word “mainstream” refers, in this context, not to generally accepted ideas but to the consensus political view as determined by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Party-state media.
The software is the brainchild of the State Key Laboratory of Communication Content Cognition (传播内容认知全国重点实验室), a research laboratory under People’s Daily and the Ministry of Science and Technology that is responsible for improving the reception and dissemination of Party propaganda online — including through AI. The People’s Daily says it was created to “better inspire” the daily reading and writing skills of Party organizations, state-owned enterprises, and official media outlets. A how-to instruction guide on the platform notes the LLM can also help “promote Xi Jinping’s thought” online.
But with AI results are never so simple. And our test drive of Easy Write suggest that in some cases it could make things difficult.
59. US targets China's chip industry with new restrictions
Reuters, December 2, 2024
60. Biden unveils scaled down chip curbs
Ari Hawkins, Politico, December 2, 2024
61. Latest US clampdown on China's chips hits semiconductor toolmakers
Karen Freifeld and David Shepardson, Reuters, December 2, 2024
62. ASML not changing guidance after new US crackdown on China chip exports
Toby Sterling, Reuters, December 2, 2024
63. After China's mineral export ban, how else could it respond to U.S. chip curbs?
Eduardo Baptista, Reuters, December 3, 2024
64. A three beats waltz: The ecosystem behind Chinese state-sponsored cyber threats
Sekoia Blog, November 13, 2024
Executive Summary
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) are the three main state actors conducting state-sponsored offensive cyber operations for the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
From 2021 onward, Sekoia observed that operations attributed to China were mostly linked to the Ministry of State Security (MSS) rather than the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Still, since the 2015 PLA reform, malicious cyber activity attributed to MSS-sponsored entities increased, while activity attributed to the PLA depleted.
Provincial departments of the MSS and the MPS enjoy a large degree of autonomy to conduct cyber operations and rely on private companies to outsource offensive capacities.
In addition to state actors, civilian actors also took part historically in state-sponsored operations. This is the case of the first communities of patriotic hackers, which conducted hacktivist campaigns in reaction to geopolitical events, and were progressively integrated into state-sponsored operations.
The role of patriotic hackers in Chinese cyber offensive capacities is highlighted by their participation in the development of malicious payloads used by China-nexus APTS, such as PlugX and ShadowPad. This proximity was encouraged by the policies of Xi Jinping, who made Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) a national strategy in 2015.
The CCP policy regarding activities of patriotic hackers changed after 2002, leading patriotic hackers to stop hacktivism and professionalise. Today, many of these individuals work for private companies and maintain parallel activities like cybercrime.
Recent leaks from the Chinese IT company I-SOON revealed important details about the current hack-for-hire ecosystem in China. State actors subcontract cyber offensive services at the provincial and the city levels.
State actors increasingly outsource cyber offensive capabilities to private entities, a trend fueled by ministries like the MSS collecting vulnerabilities from researchers and companies. These vulnerabilities are then weaponized and used as exploits in state-sponsored operations.
The companies providing cyber offensive capacities to state actors are historical tech giants, but also smaller companies offering niche digital services, like I-SOON. China-nexus APTs are likely to be a mix of private and state actors cooperating to conduct operations, rather than strictly being associated with single units.
Military and Security Threats
65. China and North Korea Throw U.S. War Plans Out the Window
Raphael S. Cohen, Foreign Policy, December 2, 2024
66. China readying satellite-based kill chain, key U.S. commander says
Shinnosuke Nagatomi, Nikkei Asia, December 4, 2024
67. The US Government Fentanyl Case Against China, Canada, Mexico
Sam Cooper, The Bureau, November 28, 2024
68. The corruption scandal gripping China’s army
Ian Williams, The Spectator, December 2, 2024
69. Beijing sharpens tone over US missile launcher in the Philippines
Leilani Chavez, DefenseNews, December 3, 2024
70. China, Russia militaries conduct joint air patrol over Sea of Japan
Reuters, November 29, 2024
71. Chinese, Russian military planes enter South Korea's air defence zone, Seoul says
Reuters, November 28, 2024
72. China blasts US arms sale to Taiwan, President Lai's US transit
Reuters, November 30, 2024
73. U.S. officials say they still have not expelled Chinese telco hackers
Joseph Menn and Cate Cadell, Washington Post, December 3, 2024
74. The Secret Pentagon War Game That Offers a Stark Warning for Our Times
William Langewiesche, New York Times, December 2, 2024
One Belt, One Road Strategy
75. Bolivia announces $1 bn deal with China to build lithium plants
AFP, France 24, November 27, 2024
76. China’s New Port Has Peru Targeting $30 Billion Farm Exports
Marcelo Rochabrun, Bloomberg, December 4, 2024
77. Myanmar plans security firm with China to protect resource, infra projects
Nikkei Asia, December 2, 2024
78. Pakistan’s Reliance on Chinese-Built Power Plants Is Strangling Its Economy
Saeed Shah, Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2024
79. China and Nepal sign deals as Xi refines BRI commitments
Ck Tan, Nikkei Asia, December 3, 2024
Opinion Pieces
80. FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts
Zak Doffman, Forbes, December 5, 2024
Timing is everything. Just as Apple’s adoption of RCS had seemed to signal a return to text messaging versus the unstoppable growth of WhatsApp, then along comes a surprising new hurdle to stop that in its tracks. While messaging Android to Android or iPhone to iPhone is secure, messaging from one to the other is not.
Now even the FBI and CISA, the US cyber defense agency, are warning Americans to use responsibly encrypted messaging and phone calls where they can. The backdrop is the Chinese hacking of US networks that is reportedly “ongoing and likely larger in scale than previously understood.” Fully encrypted comms is the best defense against this compromise, and Americans are being urged to use that wherever possible.
COMMENT - My advice… switch to Signal. End to end encryption is the only logic choice.
81. Trump Can Cut a Great Deal with Europe. Really.
Hal Brands, Bloomberg, December 5, 2024
The world’s most successful alliance needs a transformation and, paradoxically, Donald Trump might just be the leader who delivers it. His presidency offers a timely opportunity for the US and Europe to update the terms of their strategic bargain — if Trump can resist the temptation to trash that relationship instead.
The post-1945 bond between America and Europe changed the course of history. The creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 stabilized a violent, war-ravaged continent. Transatlantic cooperation defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War and created the core of a thriving democratic world. Yet every alliance needs to be updated periodically, and it’s time for Washington and its allies to revisit the terms of their relationship again.
The fundamental problem is the combination of Europe’s military weakness and America’s Pacific preoccupation. Even as some countries, such as Poland, make themselves into serious military powers, too many remain incapable of contributing meaningfully to the common defense. And as the US grows more concerned about a potential fight with China, it simply can’t prioritize Europe to the same degree as before.
The Ukraine war, which caused a burst of transatlantic unity in 2022, momentarily concealed this divergence. But now it is accentuating the problem, as the prospect of an end to US aid to Kyiv reveals just how bare Europe’s armories are, and how pathetic its defense industrial base really is. If Trump negotiates an end to the war in Ukraine that overwhelmingly favors Putin, it would split Washington and its European allies further.
Improving security isn’t the only challenge. The US needs Europe on its side, economically and technologically, against China. But many European countries remain reluctant to come along. This year, the leaders of France, Germany and the European Union all met with China’s Xi Jinping to discuss economic cooperation. Meanwhile, tensions between Washington and Brussels over trade were shelved, rather than solved, during Joe Biden’s presidency. Into this unsettled situation walks the destabilizing figure of Donald Trump.
Unlike his predecessors, Trump has zero sentimental attachment to NATO or Europe. He certainly doesn’t see the world through the democracies-versus-autocracies framework that Biden favored. Trump has called the EU America’s worsteconomic competitor and threatened to pummel it with tariffs. He has even implied he might gut NATO, by leavingdefense-spending delinquents on their own if Russia strikes them.
Fortunately, a full US withdrawal from NATO is unlikely. Quitting the alliance would cause a bipartisan revolt in Washington. It would also deprive Trump of valuable negotiating leverage. If the president-elect is smart, he’ll use that leverage to renegotiate the transatlantic bargain.
The outlines of this new compact are relatively simple. European countries would set much higher military spending floors — say, 3% of GDP, up from the existing 2% goal — and establish concrete timelines for getting there within a half-decade. They would focus, in particular, on capabilities needed to blunt Russian aggression on Europe’s Eastern front, including tanks, artillery and tactical aircraft.
The EU would also come into closer alignment with US curbs on investment in China’s high-tech sector, restrictions on certain sensitive tech exports (the company that makes the most important semiconductor-manufacturing equipment is Dutch), and planning on what sanctions to impose if China attacked Taiwan.
In exchange, Trump would forego a new trade war with Europe. He would develop a long-term, US-European program for supporting Ukraine while the war continues and giving Kyiv meaningful security guarantees — inside or outside of NATO — thereafter. Most critically, Trump would pledge to keep American troops in Europe, and to continue treating the continent’s security as a solemn obligation, even as the allies assume greater responsibility for collective defense.
Such a bargain won’t solve every problem: The EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism and its treatment of US tech giants might remain points of dispute. But it would create a more balanced, globally effective free-world community and give Trump a big win of the sort he craves.
None of this will be easy. Trump would have to overcome his instinctive dislike of Europe, and recognize that there is more profit — politically and geopolitically — in building the continent up than in tearing it down. Yes, it would require him to go back on his tough talk on tariffs and Ukraine, but let’s face it, consistency has never been one of the man’s strong points.
In addition, Trump would have to resist the temptation to empower Europe’s illiberal populists, like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who view China and Russia more as allies than foes. He would have to take on a complex, multi-issue negotiation with uncharacteristic discipline and subtlety. And at some point, he’d have to stop threatening to cast Europe to the wolves.
There are also challenges on the other side. Some European countries understand that the continent needs much more military power; others may object to being bullied by an American president that their populations detest. Forging a new bargain with the US will demand unity and purpose, but key countries — such as France and Germany — are will demand unity and purpose, but key countries — such as France and Germany — are politically weak or even paralyzed right now.
Yet if the path ahead is hard, the alternatives are terrible. One is a Trump presidency that sows so much turmoil and division that the relationship never really recovers. Another is a scenario in which the US and its friends spend four years stumbling from one self-inflicted crisis to another, while their autocratic enemies move with the strength and determination the transatlantic community lacks.
Second terms are about legacies. Trump must decide if he wants to be the president who broke the transatlantic alliance, or the one who made it great again.
82. From Paris to Beijing. Trump's USA, Meloni's Italy and the new world order according to Sisci [ORIGINAL IN ITALIAN]
Francesco Sisci, Formiche, December 8, 2024
[GOOGLE TRANSLATE] The scene in Paris for the demonstration to inaugurate Notre Dame was dominated by French President Emmanuel Macron , the host, and US President-elect Donald Trump , who arrived wearing the colours of Ukraine.
Trump's expression was frowning but his words and gestures were those of someone who wants to communicate a new relationship with a key country of the European Union with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky . The United States has asked the latter to lower the age of conscription but has essentially confirmed its military support in any case in search of a peaceful solution from a point of strength.
Yesterday, the fall of Damascus to Turkish-backed militias, the flight of Russian forces from the port of Tartus (Syria, the only support in the Mediterranean for Moscow's fleet), reminded Vladimir Putin of the fragility of his position in Ukraine. Bashar al Assad 's Syria fell in 11 days, without Russian and Iranian support. Today Russia and Iran are weaker.
But it is China that is the specter that looms on the American horizon. On December 6, David Perdue , newly appointed American ambassador to Beijing, wrote a programmatic article on his mission. China is defined as an “existential threat to the United States” because its Communist Party has an illiberal program of global hegemony. Neither Russia nor the Middle East, as dangerous as they are, represent a similar risk. Perdue says that Beijing’s challenge calls for a new type of war that is not the traditional one or the one fought during the Cold War.
There is no need to delude ourselves into thinking that European countries will also be called upon to take part in this clash, and we will have to see how they will respond. Also because with Chinese support, the search for peace with Russia in Ukraine is more difficult.
In this context, Trump was affable and kind to the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni . Newt Gingrich , Trump's ideologue and husband of the former American ambassador to the Holy See, Calista Gingrich , praised in a tweet the policies on emigration of the government in Rome.
But there is a structural problem and a contingent one that torments bilateral relations. The structural one: the American question is China. In this field, Italy is not giving (and it is unlikely that it will give) a significant contribution. The contingent one: Italy does not spend on the armed forces that do not behave in a very linear way (the ships in the Red Sea do not shoot at the Houthis, nor does the Italian command of the Unifil stop the Hezbollah or withdraw from Lebanon). It is not realistic to think that Trump will rely on Meloni to create his consensus in Europe. European leaders have already crowded at the court of the new president and the United States has no interest in being mediated by others.
In the complex of the enormous challenges of America today, Italy can be a burden, it is complicated and it is not important. Too much fuss for the peninsula is a game that is not worth the candle. That said, it is not a vote of no confidence for Meloni. She represents a kind of stopper that keeps a situation under control, and therefore it is fine at least for now.
At the same time, Trump is gambling his second term with the bet of tariffs on trade and massive deregulation. The Doge program (a name with Venetian echoes) promises to cut trillions in every public sector. This is the true sign of a country that wants to widen the gap with China as much as possible.
On the contrary, in Italy Meloni protects the arrogance of small monopolies of taxi drivers or beach attendants. There is no liberalization, not even the minimalist ones requested by the European Union. Italy is a country of intrigues. It is easy to bring down a government, almost impossible to build something. Trump's America is an efficiency-oriented one, it runs against China, it cannot get bogged down by Italy.
So the spaces of Meloni, of any other party, or of Italy are those that remain. From Washington it seems that no one will fight against this government or the Belpaese but it is also unlikely that they will draw their clothes for it. Will Italy be able to spend more on weapons and use them when necessary? Will Rome be able to liberalize and cut the bureaucratic grip on the country? For this reason, differentiated autonomy and the premiership are a counterproductive battle. The fight against judges is perhaps useful but not done like this, frontally.
These are issues that need to be addressed if Meloni really wants to have an impact. If she wants to remain alone in power, that's fine.
83. China's Minerals Export Ban Has a Silver Lining for the US
Liam Denning, Bloomberg, December 3, 2024
84. Spate of random killings rooted in China’s social and economic despair
Audrey Jiajia Li, South China Morning Post, December 4, 2024
85. America Must Get Its Mind Right to Defeat China
James Holmes, National Interest, December 1, 2024