| | | | | |  | | By David Wertime | The frosty silence your host described between Washington and Beijing last week has quickly turned into what might be called frosty dialogue. President Joe Biden and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping had a call Wednesday evening, U.S. time, on the cusp of China's major Lunar New Year holiday. The White House readout stressed Biden's focus on American interests, maintaining a "free and open Indo-Pacific," and Washington's "fundamental concerns" over the situations in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and "assertive actions" toward Taiwan. Analysts were generally quick to praise the readout for namechecking major U.S. complaints. Beijing's readout, which appeared as the top headline on state mouthpiece People's Daily, was longer, less specific and more conciliatory in tone, with a focus on controlling and isolating areas of "disagreement." It predictably referred to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan as "internal affairs." Xi also called for the re-establishment of "various dialogue mechanisms." Perhaps with this point in mind, Biden stressed in a post-call tweet that "I will work with China when it benefits the American people." The implication: when, and only when. Call it "America First 2.0," without the shredding of alliances the term came to connote under Trump. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi also a had a call last Friday, widely understood as a precursor to the Biden-Xi call, although the readouts differed so widely that they seem to describe two different conversations, with Washington stressing the need to "hold the PRC accountable for its efforts to threaten stability in the Indo-Pacific" and Beijing "[urging] the United States to rectify its mistakes." Viewed against that benchmark, Biden's call on Wednesday was a mild improvement. AN UPDATE, NOT A GOODBYE. This will be your host's final entry as host of this newsletter, as I focus on running Protocol | China. It's been a thrill to launch China Watcher and to see its readership blossom into a vibrant community, full of experts generous with their insights and time. I continue to believe that the trajectory of the U.S.-China relationship will determine whether this century is judged a bright or dismal one. It will be better off because of your attention to it. But China Watcher isn't going anywhere: we've lined up an impressive slate of guest writers over the next few weeks to contribute their expertise, insight and original reporting from Washington to Beijing. So stay tuned for some new voices and email chinawatcher@politico.com to let us know what you think. TRANSLATING WASHINGTON POTUS: We're in an era of "extreme competition" with China. In a Sunday interview with CBS , Biden called Xi "bright" and "tough," but also profoundly undemocratic. "I've said to him all along that we need not have a conflict. But there's going to be extreme competition. And I'm not going to do it the way that he knows. And that's because he's sending signals, as well. I'm not going to do it the way Trump did. We're going to focus on international rules of the road." Key to competition: leverage. Blinken told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Monday that "We have to engage China from a position of strength. And whether it's the adversarial aspects of the relationship, the competitive ones, or the cooperative ones which are there in our mutual interest, we have to deal with it from a position of strength." — "Strategic competition is the frame through which we see that relationship," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Friday, which suggests Blinken's ordering of terms — adversarial, competitive, then cooperative — is not accidental. The forced sale of social media app TikTok has been shelved. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the sale, which the Trump administration said it would force to ensure data security on the Chinese-owned platform, was on hold "indefinitely" as Biden undertakes "a broad review of his predecessor's efforts to address potential security risks from China." The plan is to "develop a comprehensive approach to securing U.S. data that addresses the full range of threats we face," National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horne told the Journal. | | | | TUNE IN TO 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 and start listening today. | | | | | PERSONNEL WATCH U.S. Trade Rep gets two key advisers. Harvard Law School vice dean (and previous China Watcher guest) Mark Wu will join USTR as senior adviser to chief trade rep Katherine Tai. And Brad Setser from the Council on Foreign Relations will join as her counselor. Who will lead the quietly powerful Bureau of Industry and Security? It's the office in the Department of Commerce that determines which Chinese companies get placed on the dreaded "entity list," essentially a blacklist. The Financial Times reported on Saturday that attorney Kevin Wolf was the frontrunner. American Enterprise Institute's Derek Scissors told the FT that BIS "is arguably the single most important bureau in government" for taking "serious action against China." The answer may help determine the fate of Commerce Secretary nominee Gina Raimondo, whose full nomination vote is being held up by Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) after she declined to commit to keeping Huawei on Commerce's entity list. Meet DoD's "China task force." DoD announced Wednesday that the body will be charged with delivering "a baseline assessment of department policies, programs and processes in regard to the challenge China poses." It will be led by special assistant to the Secretary of Defense Ely Ratner and include 14 other officials from across the department. DoD says the task force has four months to deliver its recommendations. Protocol | China has launched. The venture, backed by Robert Allbritton, publisher of Protocol and POLITICO, and led by China Watcher host David Wertime, tracks the intersection of technology and policy in the world's largest country. Sign up for our newsletter and learn more about our research here. This week's coverage includes the dangers of China's out-of-control microlending spree, the hyper-addictive e-commerce app foreign firms are itching to enter, and a look at how Steam is still operating a global platform inside China, against the odds. | | | WHO team in China: Lab origin for Covid-19 "extremely unlikely." The investigative team's access, which began Jan. 18, is tightly controlled, but the head of the fact-finding team, Dr. Peter Ben Embarek says he has seen enough from "initial findings" to debunk one talking point that frequently arose from the mouths of Trump administration officials. It's the kind of development that does not improve U.S.-China ties, but puts a rhetorical floor under it — one China's diplomats, who have floated theories of a U.S. origin without basis, would do well to match. China's Covid-19 lockdown didn't last all that long. "While the economic pain was severe early in the crisis, most businesses closed for only a couple of weeks, if at all," The New York Times reported Friday. "Few contracts were canceled. Few workers were laid off, in part because the government strongly discouraged companies from doing so and offered loans and tax relief to help." That may explain how China was able to salvage a reported 2 percent of GDP growth in 2020; many skeptics have insisted a months-long lockdown must have shaved off more growth, but the lockdown may have bypassed many Chinese businesses, even if their workers were stuck at home. China experiences a "Clubhouse spring." As Protocol first reported last week, the invite-only audio chat app quickly became red-hot among Chinese elites (after Elon Musk talked it up on Twitter). China blocked the app on Monday, but it's provided a heartening glimpse at a world without the Great Firewall of Censorship — which, lest we forget, is neither necessary not inevitable. In Foreign Policy, journalist (and Berlin resident) Melissa Chan writes that "at times, participants have acted like exhilarated West and East Berliners converging along the breached wall of the divided city in 1989, the unfettered opinions of Chinese citizens reaching out past their own Iron Curtain, China's Great Firewall." Your host spent about an hour in a chat room dedicated to roasting Hu Xijin, China's top English-language propagandist. It had the punch-drunk feel of a good open mic night: Users from China, Australia and Japan presented elaborate roasts, wrapped in sarcastic praise for "Old Hu." He responded on Weibo that an uncensored internet is "in conflict" with China's system of governance. | | | What if there were no Great Firewall? Clubhouse provided a tantalizing if brief look at what that might mean. How might the absence of the "GFW" change China, or the world? Your host polled leading experts. Global social media would be better, while Chinese internal repression would be worse, says Molly Roberts , professor of Political Science at University of California, San Diego. "We would have less international political polarization. We think filter bubbles might cause political polarization within the U.S. — the GFW artificially creates separate social media bubbles. International public opinion and public opinion within China would be closer together without it." Roberts also laid out some less expected second-order effects to tearing down the wall: — "It would decrease inequality. The people who can get around the GFW and gain access to more information are already better educated and wealthier on average. Removing the GFW would reduce this informational inequality within China." — "There would be more repression within China. Without being able to filter out foreign websites by blocking them, we'd see even more substitution of strategies to other forms of censorship — fear (deterring speech on foreign websites) or flooding (pushing online propaganda onto foreign websites)." — "We'd have better social media. The GFW creates a tax on foreign platforms within China. Without it, Chinese social media firms would compete more directly with foreign social media firms. This competition would likely be good for consumers around the world." | | | | THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO OFFICIAL WASHINGTON: February is short month, but there is a lot in store. From the impeachment trial to the Covid relief package to intraparty squabbles, our new Playbook team is on the case. Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza and Tara Palmeri are canvassing every corner of Washington, bringing you the big stories and scoops you need to know – and the insider nuggets that you want to know – about the new power centers and players. "This town" has changed. And no one covers this town like Playbook. Subscribe to the unofficial guide to official Washington today . | | | | | Dismantling the GFW will not create a utopia, says Yale Law School scholar Yangyang Cheng. "In a China without the GFW, domestic discourse would still be constrained by censorship and poisoned by propaganda. Linguistic barriers and other socioeconomic hurdles would still restrict access to non-Chinese websites. The GFW has been an important and effective tool of information control by the Chinese government, but it functions as part of an elaborate system. Its power should be acknowledged but not exaggerated, and its hypothetical dismantlement would not automatically usher in a liberal utopia. It was a "precious, and fleeting opportunity to see the counterfactual of what China, the Chinese internet and Chinese public opinion would look like had there not been censorship," Lotus Ruan of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto says. "Of course we should not romanticize Clubhouse or overestimate how removing censorship would drastically change China or the world. But Clubhouse did offer a lively example that echoes what late Dr. Li Wenliang said: 'A healthy society should not have just one voice.'" Thanks to: Luiza Ch. Savage for being a constant advocate and guide, John Yearwood for his sure and patient editor's hand, Matt Kaminski for believing in this project from Day 1, Shen Lu for her tireless sleuthing and her sharp and empathic eye, Emily Cadei for the occasional edits and late nights, Ryan Heath for camaraderie and a flood of invaluable tips, Doug Palmer for keeping me in the loop, Richard Wertime for his loving and careful weekly feedback (and for teaching me to be a writer in the first place), and Diane Wertime for forgiving the many late nights at my laptop and encouraging everything I do. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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