| | | | | |  | | By David Wertime | The State Department is criticizing "malign" Chinese tech policy, the White House spokeswoman is demanding an inquiry into the origins of Covid-19 and Taiwan is getting a profile boost early in a new president's tenure. Tonally, the new president's China policy so far isn't that divergent from the previous one's. Beijing probably thought candidate Joe Biden's talk about Chinese ruler Xi Jinping being a "thug" was just campaign posturing, to be walked back as soon as he entered the White House and surrounded himself with technocrats schooled in Washington's ways. But a surprising amount of the time, politicians do what they say once they're elected, and Biden's team is acting as it vowed it would — keeping tough on China, if by different and more multilateral methods. The acid test will be whether the results are any better. It's always helpful when political expediency and good policy align. Biden's team appears to share their predecessors' dim view of China's ability to keep its word; and they have the political wind at their backs, with Americans of both parties seeing less opportunity and more threat from the world's other major power. | | | POLITICO Exclusive: The U.S. must put replacing Xi at the center of its China policy by leveraging splits in the CCP elite, says a major critique of the Chinese leadership published today in POLITICO Magazine . The upshot: Xi "presents a serious challenge to the whole of the democratic world" and needs to be "replaced by the more traditional form of Communist Party leadership." "China can become a different type of global great power than that envisaged by Xi," the article says. America's "overriding political objective should be to cause China's elite leadership to collectively conclude that it is in the country's best interests to continue to operate within the existing U.S.-led liberal international order rather than build a rival order." Many in the party would prefer a China without Xi, says the author, a former senior government official with deep expertise and experience dealing with China. POLITICO granted anonymity at the author's request. "The political reality is that the CCP is significantly divided on Xi's leadership and his vast ambitions," it states. "Senior party members have been greatly troubled by Xi's policy direction and angered by his endless demands for absolute loyalty. They fear for their own lives and the future livelihoods of their families. Of particular political toxicity in this mix are the reports unearthed by international media of the wealth amassed by Xi's family and members of his political inner circle, despite the vigor with which Xi has conducted the anti-corruption campaign." The Atlantic Council is publishing a longer version of the article. In calling for what's essentially leadership change, but not regime change , the author suggests a course both more and less aggressive than the Trump administration's path. It's more aggressive because it sets its sights squarely on Xi. It's less aggressive because it assumes that the CCP is an entity that will continue to be around, one with which the U.S. can work if the right officials are in place. — Reality check: It's possible that whoever theoretically could replace Xi is still worse for U.S. interests or harsher in eliminating dissent. The author writes that "under all five of its post-Mao leaders prior to Xi, [the CCP] was able to work with the United States," therefore "the mission for U.S. China strategy should be to see China return to its pre-2013 [i.e. pre-Xi] path." But there's no guarantee leaders in the mold of Deng Xiaoping or Jiang Zemin would be as solicitous toward U.S. interests today, helming a nation soon to surpass the U.S. in economic might. Nor is it clear the CCP would again choose men like them in this moment.
| | Hot from the China Watchersphere | | More China hands join the administration. Council on Foreign Relations fellow Mira Rapp-Hooper will join the State Department's Policy Planning staff, its internal think tank, as a senior adviser on China working for newly confirmed Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Another CFR fellow, Brad Setser, will join the administration in a trade-related role, and has been a major part of the transition team's decision to shift China trade policy away from emphasizing China's opening its capital account (read: investment banks) and more toward worker interests. At Radio Free Asia, Bay Fang, who began her career as a correspondent in Beijing, will retake the helm as president. The leadership at U.S. government-funded media outlets were turned over fast after Biden fired widely criticized pro-Trump CEO Michael Pack and replaced him with interim CEO Kelu Chao in one of his first foreign policy acts as president. | | | | THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO OFFICIAL WASHINGTON: The new Playbook team got off to fast start last week with a series of big scoops. The reporting foursome of Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza and Tara Palmeri will roam every corner of Washington, bringing you the big stories you need to know–and the insider nuggets that you want to know–about the new power centers and power players in Washington. "This town" has changed. And no one covers this town like Playbook. Subscribe today. | | | | | Watchers of China and tech propose a major tech forecasting office. A paper leaked to Axios on Tuesday and authored by some names you'll recognize — including former NSC official Christopher Kirchhoff, China hand Elizabeth Economy and longtime China tech investor Gary Rieschel — calls for a National S&T Analysis Center (NSTAC), an independent entity using open-source information to help government and industry work from a similar script in understanding science and tech trends globally. This sounds an awful lot like a bigger, government-backed version of Georgetown's Center for Strategic and Emerging Technology. (CSET founder Jason Matheny is one of the paper's authors.) The paper anticipates "technological bifurcation" between the U.S. and China and also recommends the creation of a "T-12," essentially a global forum for major tech democracies. as well. Kirchhoff told China Watcher the paper was written to help Biden's transition team. — One goal of the NSTAC: de-silo knowledge in government. "There is a serious disconnect between what the USG thinks is 'confidential' or 'top secret' and what the leading scientists in the AI or Semi feel deserves that designation," one of the authors told China Watcher. "It is so difficult to extend the umbrella of 'clearance' to the people who really know what is going on. We need to create a more flexible system." — Smart idea: a hierarchy for combating Chinese "platform risk." The paper acknowledges that Chinese technology platforms (say, TikTok) can pose serious risks to U.S. interests. But it sets out a hierarchy of responses, from acceptance, to specific technical requirements the U.S. could require Chinese companies to adhere to, to proactive tech that mitigates future risks — and failing all that, a ban. It's a nice reminder that the U.S. toolbox contains more than blanket bans. FROM THE CHINESE INTERNET Quick, do you recognize the older gentleman selling delicious jianbing? | 
POLITICO Screengrab via Shen Lu: Weibo.com | Nope, it's not a grandfather who's been slinging the delectable snacks for decades; it's Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Chinese web users are getting in on the Bernie meme game. Here's our favorite: | 
POLITICO Screengrab via Shen Lu: Weibo.com | This Covid-19 appropriate meme shows Sanders standing vigil against any "outsiders" trying to enter a Chinese village. Thanks to Shen Lu for spotting this. TRANSLATING WASHINGTON John Kerry's "no trade" clause. In his debut Wednesday presser as Biden's climate envoy, Kerry insisted that U.S. interests related to "serious differences" with China will "never be traded for anything that has to do with climate." This will not inspire joy in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, but nervous senators, particularly Republicans, will cheer it. During earlier questioning, Secretary of State Tony Blinken faced concerns from some like Mitt Romney (R-Utah) that the U.S. would trade away too much for climate unity. Beijing is quietly pushing for talks with the Biden camp. The Wall Street Journal's Lingling Wei and Bob Davis reported Saturday that Chinese diplos, including Yang Jiechi, are trying to arrange a face-to-face to clear the air and focus on areas of cooperation. It looks like the "back-channel outreach" is likely to fail; the Biden camp is busy reviewing the last administration's China policy and has clearly taken pains to get officials on the same page before engaging. — Reality check: Don't expect climate or Covid cooperation to "reset" anything. On Wednesday, press secretary Jennifer Psaki said the U.S. expected a "robust and clear" investigation into Covid-19's origins, including boots on the ground in China. And Kerry's been clear climate cooperation won't trump other major sticking points in bilateral ties. — Beijing should be asking itself: What can it do, not say, to show good faith? Washington's grown understandably skeptical of more talking. "Our commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid." New State Department spokesperson Ned Price took pains to emphasize continuity of Taiwan policy in a Saturday response to China's weekend warplane exercise over the Taiwan Strait. "The United States maintains its longstanding commitments as outlined in the Three Communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act, and the Six Assurances." DoD official Drew Thompson wrote on Twitter that the bomber missions, which "increased in size and frequency long before President Biden came into office," is not necessarily a signal to the new administration, but rather a test, one it seems to have passed. "Amnesty" for grant disclosures involving Chinese money? After a wave of Trump-era indictments against Chinese academics for alleged inadequacies in disclosing Chinese government funding sources, there may be a detente. The WSJ's Melissa Korn and Aruna Viswanatha reported Jan. 22 that Justice officials are considering something "similar to a program designed more than a decade ago to encourage Americans with Swiss bank accounts to report those accounts" — declare now what wasn't declared before, and soon, and escape further consequence. Clearly implied is that the Justice Department feels previous prosecutions went too far. UC-Merced political science professor Haifeng Huang tells China Watcher he's worried that the term "'amnesty,' even if used colloquially, may have negative implications for scholars like Chen, since it may make the public think that they have committed wrongdoing but are pardoned, even when the actual evidence is thin." — Academics at MIT are incensed at charges against their colleague Gang Chen. In an open letter , over 100 MIT faculty are calling the criminal complaint "a complaint against all of us and insisting "Gang routinely, consistently and extensively credited … scientific collaborations and funding in his publications available on public databases...his CV … contains 62 references to China." — What's to become of the DOJ's "China initiative?" It seems destined for a bureaucratic side drawer. | | | | TUNE IN TO NEW EPISODE OF GLOBAL TRANSLATIONS: Our Global Translations podcast, presented by Citi, examines the long-term costs of the short-term thinking that drives many political and business decisions. The world has long been beset by big problems that defy political boundaries, and these issues have exploded over the past year amid a global pandemic. This podcast helps to identify and understand the impediments to smart policymaking. Subscribe for Season Two, available now. | | | | | CHINA AND THE WORLD Xi Jinping gives a Davos-without-Davos speech full of daggers. Without naming the U.S., Xi warned pointedly on Monday in a speech at the World Economic Forum that "to build small cliques or start a new Cold War, to reject, threaten or intimidate others... will only push the world into division." Xi's speech included what POLITICO's Ryan Heath rightly calls an "eyebrow raising" comment: "Multilateralism should not be used as pretence for unilateralism … selective multilateralism should not be our option." Sound like digs at the Biden team's stated plans to rally other democracies together to counter Beijing. — Yale Law School professor Taisu Zhang tells China Watcher the speech was "effective," given that much of the world ex-U.S. "would prefer not to fully choose sides between the U.S. and China." (Angela Merkel would appear to agree .) Zhang says Xi's jab at "selective multilateralism" came because "China doesn't have any choice in the matter: unlike the United States or the EU, it has no truly useful 'small circle' of natural allies it can rely on," meaning it must insist on "global multilateralism." On that note: who will "win" 2021? Yes it's reductive, but worth thinking about for this reason: China clearly did far better in 2020, particularly economically, than its ignominious start would indicate. It claims to have grown its economy by 2 percent and overtook the U.S. as the world's top target for foreign direct investment. Its Covid-19 response was partly successful due to what Gavekal Dragomonics' Andrew Batson told the WSJ is the CCP's comfort with "campaign-style" governance. "Local officials in China are really accustomed to being told, 'OK, drop whatever you were doing yesterday and switch everything to this today,'" he said. — But the vaccine push called on a different set of muscles, and the U.S.' products so far are demonstrably more effective. Add to that an emerging global vaccine backlash against China as its promises on delivery and quantity have frequently fallen short of what it's been able to deliver. "Officials in Brazil and Turkey have complained that Chinese companies have been slow to ship the doses and ingredients," The New York Times' Sue Wee-Lee wrote on Monday . "Beijing officials who had hoped the vaccines would burnish China's global reputation are now on the defensive." Thanks to: Editor John Yearwood, Matt Kaminski, Shen Lu, Ryan Heath and Luiza Ch. Savage. 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 | | | | |
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