| | | | | |  | | By David Wertime | Every news week brings its share of light and heat to the U.S.-China relationship, but this last one has felt particularly suffused with the latter. A Chinese propagandist reacted to an offensive tweet from a U.S. senator by calling her a "lifetime b****." NBC reported on Chinese "super soldiers" and included an image of a Jean-Claude Van Damme action flick from the early 1990s. And Fox News host Tucker Carlson insisted he had a "smoking gun" in the recorded soliloquy of a Chinese academic laughingly saying something everyone already knows (or should know) is true. None of this reveals much about the bilateral relationship, but it does shift attention from major recent developments like a potential (messy) resolution to the case of Huawei exec Meng Wanzhou and U.S. sanctions on Beijing-friendly Hong Kong officials that could have real bite. China Watcher isn't here to take partisan sides. But we are here to help you understand what's substantive and revealing "signal" and what's just headline-grabbing "noise." Below is a guide. TRANSLATING WASHINGTON Signal: Huawei exec and lightning rod Meng Wanzhou may get to return home. On Dec. 3, the Wall Street Journal reported U.S. authorities are considering a deal with Huawei that would allow CFO Meng, now under house arrest in Canada and awaiting extradition to the U.S. on bank fraud charges, to go back to China under a "deferred prosecution" agreement. Jerome A. Cohen , Professor at New York University School of Law who has helped negotiate U.S.-China criminal prosecution deals, tells China Watcher this "would be a good way to call an end to the extradition IF Ms. Meng finally agrees to admit violation of the law and IF it is plainly agreed among the governments of the United States, Canada and the People's Republic of China that the two Michaels [Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor , in retaliatory Chinese detention since December 2018] will promptly be freed and permitted to leave China," and if Canadian Robert Schellenberg [convicted of involvement in a meth smuggling operation in China, then given the death penalty after Meng's capture] is not sentenced to death. If that doesn't work because Meng refuses to admit guilt — and she reportedly has resisted this deal for that very reason — Trump could pardon her. — This feels icky , particularly after years of U.S. and Canadian insistence that their justice systems are independent of politics. But Cohen says that "the exercise of American prosecutorial discretion occasionally must take into account important foreign policy considerations as well as other factors." — There's a way for China to save face here. "In order to give the appearance of vindicating Chinese justice, in their separate cases the two Michaels would probably have to be convicted and sentenced to prison for the periods they have already served in detention," Cohen says, "but they would also be sentenced to immediate deportation, as is common in some criminal cases involving foreigners." Signal: The U.S. sanctions 14 Chinese officials over the erosion of political freedoms in Hong Kong. The list of officials, released Monday, are all members of the powerful National People's Congress Standing Committee. They did not target the committee chairman, Li Zhanshu, the third most powerful man in China. But it was enough for Beijing to make what it called "solemn representations" to Robert Forden , charge d'affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, about the ills of U.S. meddling. — What's next: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has until Sunday, per the Hong Kong Autonomy Act passed earlier this year, to identify non-U.S. financial institutions that have knowingly done business with the sanctioned individuals. That almost certainly includes a number of major Chinese banks. Mostly noise: Mayor Pete, as his fans call him, could be the next U.S. ambassador to China. Axios' Hans Nichols reported Tuesday that President-elect Joe Biden is considering former Democratic primary foe and Iowa caucus winner Pete Buttigieg after passing him over for a Cabinet post or the U.N. ambassador gig, reportedly the former South Bend mayor's top choice. Buttigieg, now 38, would be the youngest U.S. ambassador ever tapped to station in the People's Republic. | | | | KEEP UP WITH THE WORLD FROM HOME: Our Global Translations newsletter, presented by Bank of America, layers international news, trends, and decisions with contextual analysis from the world's sharpest minds. At a time when traveling is a challenge, we can bring the world to you. For news, insight, and a unique perspective that you cannot find anywhere else, SUBSCRIBE TODAY. | | | | | — Reality check: "Age doesn't matter. They don't care," says Jorge Guajardo , who served as Mexico's ambassador to China for years, starting at age 37. "I never noticed it closing doors with central, provincial or municipal authorities. My age was an ice-breaking topic for five minutes at every meeting and then we'd get down to business. And Beijing assumes that whoever gets posted there is a country's most important ambassador, even if he or she isn't." — Reality check No. 2: "Everybody knows they do nothing," so the identity of the U.S. ambassador to China doesn't really matter, either. Some China watchers have clucked their tongues at the possible selection of a non-China expert to the post, but the U.S. ambassador often is not a China hand and anyway generally does "nothing," Guajardo tells China Watcher. That's partly because many U.S. agencies have their own liaisons stationed in Beijing, and China policy is run out of Washington. Meanwhile, Beijing severely restricts who the ambassador can meet and any other avenues of engagement, including the Chinese press and its internet. Even Chinese-speaking diplos are frustrated, as interlocutors insist they talk in English, which is then laboriously translated to Chinese, then back in the other direction when the Chinese side speaks. The upshot: the ambassador spends a lot of time isolated in a not-very-nice house. "The U.S residence in Beijing is an old one. I remember [former U.S. Ambassador to China] John Huntsman complaining about the bed. It's not a plum position," Guajardo says, advising Biden to instead send Buttigieg to Canberra, where he would be closely watched for signals on U.S. support for pushback against Beijing and could publicly debate China's ambassador to Australia. — More consequential for bilateral ties will be Biden's choice of his top trade negotiator, Capitol Hill trade lawyer Katherine Tai. As POLITICO reported Wednesday, Tai is fluent in Mandarin and looks set to garner bipartisan support to lead USTR, a post currently filled by Robert Lighthizer. One early order of business: it will fall to Tai to review the Phase One trade deal Lighthizer brokered, which China's fallen short of honoring in its purchases of U.S. goods and services. Mostly noise: Trump's outgoing Director of National Intelligence says China "poses the greatest threat to America today," but the evidence offered is … underwhelming. In the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 3, John Ratcliffe insists, correctly, that he's "entrusted with access to more intelligence than any member of the U.S. government other than the president." Yet, his lead bit of evidence is a Chinese wind turbine manufacturer that cost the U.S. 700 jobs — certainly not trivial, but not earth shattering. Then of course, there are the 286,000 Americans dead from Covid-19, which originated in China but is very much being transmitted from the mouths of (often maskless) Americans now. Surely that rates higher. — "American intelligence is usually pretty porous when they want to be with the press — and they are certainly not usually bashful with sharing stories that will strengthen their case," Rafaello Pantucci , a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank, tells China Watcher. "You would have expected a newer range of info, not simply a repeat of stories that are already for the most part in circulation ... It felt to me like a swansong statement by someone who felt that they wanted to make their voice heard one final time." Noise: Chinese "super soldiers?!?" Remain calm. After Ratcliffe's WSJ op-ed referred to "human testing" on PLA members "in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities," NBC news ran a breathless piece on Beijing's forthcoming "super soldiers" (not Ratcliffe's words) complete with a screen grab from a Jean-Claude Van Damme action movie. But one of the authors of a report cited in the NBC article, Elsa Kania , tells China Watcher that any reference to "super soldiers" is "hype," and that while Ratliffe's statement on human testing is "plausible," it is also " hardly surprising, and certainly multiple militaries are pursuing research in this general direction." Kania adds that "while human performance enhancement may bring to mind dystopic or science fictional scenarios, ways in which the PLA is known to be pursuing relevant research on this topic today can be more mundane, such as efforts to enhance pilots' effectiveness despite the stresses of combat conditions." Mostly noise: One young Chinese spy poses for a lot of pics, then flies the coop. A Tuesday report in Axios by Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and Zach Dorfman is most notable for what it doesn't say. It's carefully reported, and describes how Katherine Fang, a Chinese student in the Bay Area working on behalf of Beijing, fundraised and volunteered for, posed for (lots of) photos with, and in two cases had liaisons with, various local and national U.S. politicians. It's careful not to overstate its claims, so notice what's not there: Fang didn't donate directly to campaigns (which on the federal level cannot accept contributions from non-citizens), and didn't learn or pass on any classified info. There's also no implication or data showing she is part of a wave of Chinese students doing this sort of thing. The report also makes clear that there's no evidence Eric Swalwell (D-Ca.), namechecked in the report for his office's "close ties" with Fang, did anything wrong — for his part, Swalwell's office cut all contact with Fang after it received a "defensive briefing" from the FBI on her activities in 2015. | | Hot from the China Watchersphere | | Signal: Confessions from a former Marxist. Before she was a dissident living in the United States, Cai Xia was a devoted member of the Chinese Communist Party and instructor at its prestigious Central Party School, so steeped in its ideology that colleagues jokingly called her "Old Mrs. Marx." Perhaps that was her problem; in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Cai depicts the modern day CCP as bereft of ideological direction, full of people more interested in getting ahead and flattering their superiors than adhering to, or for that matter understanding, Marxist doctrine. — Big scuttlebutt: Party members grumble that Chinese ruler Xi Jinping ain't that smart. Everyone knows Xi has a well-earned rep for ruthlessness. But according to Cai's article, one Central Party School colleague confided in her that Xi also suffered from "inadequate knowledge." That's a charge that could sting. Xi frequently and purposefully laces his speech with florid Chinese phrases, attempting to present an image that's simultaneously stern, avuncular, and learned. Perhaps it's a mirage. But we should remember "that Cai's examples come from a very specific group of people — establishment Party theorists — and they occurred right at the beginning of [Xi's] first term," Julia Bowie , editor of the Party Watch Initiative at the Center for Advanced China Research, tells China Watcher. Signal: There are still some ways to know what people in China are thinking. Journalist Ian Johnson wrote in SupChina last week about the work of David Ownby , a professor of history at the Université de Montréal, who publishes an important blog translating major Chinese thinkers, Reading the China Dream. "It's obvious Xi wants to stifle plurality, but it's not clear to me that he's succeeding in broad terms or can keep it up," Ownby told SupChina. "There are a lot of smart Chinese out there and they keep generating lots of material." | | | Signal: Chinese scientist's publication of the genome was an act of individual courage, not CCP transparency. Chinese authorities frequently hold up early publication of the Covid-19 genome to prove they've been forthcoming. In fact, the decision to do so came down to a quick conversation and a split-second decision by Yong-Zhen Zhang , a professor at the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center and School of Public Health, after an Australian researcher with whom he'd worked, Eddie Holmes, asked him to upload it to the web. "I asked Eddie to give me one minute to think,'" Zhang told Time Magazine in August. "Then I said ok." Scientists worldwide got to work quickly. One firm that's developed an ultra-effective vaccine, Moderna, had its vaccine designed a mere two days afterwards. Dr. Zhang's lab was later shut down, although he's since been bestowed with awards. But his courageous gut decision saved countless lives. It's all detailed in an arresting narrative last week from University of North Carolina professor and self-described techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci. Mostly noise: A Chinese academic says China has had "friends at the top" of U.S. politics, and the American right pounces. What Renmin University deputy dean Di Dongsheng told a live audience in Beijing on Nov. 28 was mostly true, but also mostly obvious. Di referred to "friends in high places" in the U.S. that helped China smooth rough patches in the relationship from 1992 through 2016, prior to Trump's arrival. He was undoubtedly referring, in part, to Wall Street, which Beijing clearly thinks has long held significant sway over D.C. policymaking, largely because it has. As to China's many "friends," Di could well have been referring to Presidents Bill Clinton and particularly George W. Bush , both of whom were generally (and not secretly) friendly to Beijing, not to mention Bush's treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, who forged deep relationships in China while chairing Goldman Sachs. Di, who does not work in government, also refers to Hunter Biden's activities in China ("some details there!" he laughs) and to an unnamed Western friend with a Wall Street background and Chinese citizenship who once helped him book a time slot at the Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, DC to present Xi Jinping's new book of speeches. It's loose talk Di possibly regrets, but it doesn't rise to the level of scandal. | | | | KEEP UP WITH THE GLOBAL HEALTH AGENDA IN 2021 : As hopeful Covid-19 vaccine news continues to emerge, the focus is on how different countries plan to prioritize distribution. If nothing else, the past year has revealed how critical it is to keep up with the politics, policy, and people driving global health. Our Global Pulse newsletter connects leaders, policymakers, and advocates to the people and politics impacting our global health. Join the conversation and subscribe today. | | | | | CHINA AND THE WORLD Signal: Britain's Passport Office is handing out British National (Overseas) passports to Hong Kongers about once every 11 seconds, according to a Friday report in Bloomberg. British authorities have granted over 200,000 BNO passports to Hong Kong residents this year, and the pace in October was so fast it comes to "more than five every minute" based on an eight-hour workday." Meanwhile, the U.S. plans to receive all of 15,000 refugees in all of 2021. Your host wrote in May that the U.S. could offer refugee status if it was serious about extending a lifeline to Hong Kongers looking for freer pastures. It hasn't done so, and this remains a missed opportunity. Thanks to: Editor John Yearwood, Shen Lu, Luiza Ch. Savage, Matt Kaminski, Ryan Heath. Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Stories we should follow and haven't? (Reasoned) complaints? Email davidwertime at politico dot com.
| | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment