News: The U.S.-China journo, nukes and drug problem

Thursday, May 5, 2022

The U.S.-China journo, nukes and drug problem

May 05, 2022

U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 15: U.S. President Joe Biden participates in a virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Roosevelt Room of the White House November 15, 2021 in Washington, DC. President Biden met with his Chinese counterpart to discuss bilateral issues. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) | Alex Wong/Getty Images

Hi, China Watchers. This week we peek under the hood at six months of progress — or lack of — in areas of bilateral cooperation since President Joe Biden's Nov. 15 virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. We'll also parse China's Pacific Island climate diplomacy, probe a narrative-bashing Xinhua interview with Ukraine's foreign minister and profile a book that documents Hong Kong's untold history of defiance to outsider rule. Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.

Let's get to it. — Phelim

In the aftermath of President JOE BIDEN and Chinese leader XI JINPING's Nov. 15 virtual meeting, administration officials revealed several new cooperation initiatives, backtracking on earlier assertions that the meeting would not produce specific deliverables.

The initiatives included an agreement on lifting restrictions on work visas for U.S. and Chinese journalists, closer collaboration on counternarcotics activities and bilateral talks regarding U.S. concerns about the rapid growth in China's nuclear arsenal.

Six months later, bilateral distrust that threatens Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN's conception of a U.S.-China relationship that is "collaborative when it can be" has stalled those goals. That will likely reinforce the administration's hard-edge approach to Beijing embodied in the new China strategy that Blinken will unveil in a speech later this month.

"As the political struggles between Washington and Beijing intensify, it almost becomes a norm in China to interpret every American policy move in the worst possible way," said TONG ZHAO, senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing. "The Chinese criticism against goodwill American gestures could work to discourage the United States from undertaking similar unilateral self-restraint measures, making it hard for any constructive interaction to get started."

The limited progress in addressing these issues is clearly a sensitive issue for the administration. China Watcher sought unsuccessfully to get comment from the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department and the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Journos in limbo. The clearest deliverable after the Biden-Xi call was an agreement to ease restrictions on journalists' visas. The agreement, which Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson ZHAO LIJIAN praised as "worth cherishing," aimed to end a standoff sparked in March 2020 when China expelled reporters for The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Beijing was apparently responding to a Trump administration move to slash the number of U.S.-based staff of Chinese state media organizations.

But six months later, many U.S. and Chinese journalists remain trapped in visa-issuance limbo. "I know that some visas have been granted for U.S. correspondents to return to Beijing … [but] it looks like baby steps, and I don't know if more visas have been granted for Chinese to come here," said STEVEN BUTLER, Asia program coordinator at the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists.

Those U.S. journalists who have received work visas for China are encountering lengthy delays in acquiring PU invitation letters, an extra bureaucratic hurdle for business travelers imposed by China's "zero-Covid" strategy, that are required for entry to the country, a person familiar with the matter told China Watcher.

The Chinese government says the Biden administration isn't honoring the deal. "We are unequivocally opposed to discriminatory practice on the U.S. side against Chinese media in the U.S.," said LIU PENGYU, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington. "It is hoped that the U.S. can honor its words, put relevant measures and policies in place as soon as possible, and work with China to create a favorable environment for the work and life of journalists in each other's country."

Counternarcotics blame game. National security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN hinted at a Brookings Institution event on Nov. 16 that Biden and Xi had agreed on renewed counternarcotics cooperation.

That's sorely needed. The synthetic opioid fentanyl, a drug approved for pain treatment, killed more than 64,000 Americans from April 2020 to April 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A recent Stanford-Lancet study warned that the U.S. synthetic opioid overdose death toll could rise to 1.2 million by 2029. "Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate," ANNE MILGRAM, Drug Enforcement Administration administrator, warned last month.

The Biden administration's National Drug Control Strategy released last month identifies China as the source of "a significant volume of non-fentanyl opioids and precursor chemicals to produce fentanyl, fentanyl analogues and other synthetic drugs." The strategy calls for the administration to "continue engagement with the PRC" to stop the flow.

That's not happening. Successful bilateral cooperation in combating the fentanyl flow peaked in May 2019 when Xi responded to U.S. pressure by making all forms of fentanyl subject to production controls and anti-trafficking measures. It prompted a drastic reduction in direct shipments of fentanyl and related compounds from China.

"China had been expecting that in return it would get significant changes to the U.S.-China bilateral relationship — a lessening of the trade war during the Trump administration, and a much warmer relationship not defined as rivalry and competition from the Biden administration," said VANDA FELBAB-BROWN , senior fellow in the Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Brookings Institution. "It didn't and so [China] has backtracked very significantly from cooperation and the relationship on drugs has been very, very tense."

China has blamed wider U.S.-China tensions — particularly those linked to U.S. allegations of genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang — for roiling bilateral counternarcotics efforts. Beijing is furious that the Department of Commerce placed China's Ministry of Public Security's Institute of Forensic Science on a sanctions list for alleged ties to human rights abuses. And the Chinese government interprets the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic as a domestic demand-side issue unconnected to China.

"The US should see fault in itself … and take practical and effective measures to reduce the demand for drugs," said Liu of the Chinese embassy. "The last thing it should do is to constantly shift the blame and make accusations against other countries … it should immediately correct its mistakes, instead of asking for China's cooperation on the one hand and sanctioning Chinese counter-narcotics bodies on the other."

Nuclear standoff. The Biden-Xi virtual meeting also produced an agreement for bilateral talks about the rapid growth in China's nuclear arsenal and its recent development of a hypersonic missile system.

The administration started walking back that initiative within days. A National Security Council spokesperson downgraded it on Nov. 17 to "conversations with empowered interlocutors." Two days later, KURT CAMPBELL, National Security Council Indo-Pacific Coordinator, characterized those efforts as "the very early stages" of discussions on nuclear weapons and other security issues.

QIN GANG, Chinese ambassador to the U.S., rejected the prospect of U.S.-China nuclear negotiations in December and insisted the U.S. "take the prime responsibility to axe its nuclear arsenal" during a media briefing. That remains a precondition for U.S.-China talks on nuclear weapons. The U.S. should "verifiably slash its nuclear stockpile in a verifiable, irreversible and legally binding way to create conditions for other countries to join the nuclear disarmament process," Liu told China Watcher.

The Chinese messaging comes straight from the top.

"Mr. Xi appears to be sticking to his long-standing view that China needs a stronger strategic military capability in the face of perceived U.S. hostility," said Carnegie–Tsinghua Center's Zhao. "The Ukraine war has only worked to reinforce this perception. This means China believes it is time to further strengthen its nuclear forces rather than to restrain its growth."

TRANSLATING WASHINGTON

— USTR LAUNCHES CHINA TARIFF REVIEW PROCESS: The Biden administration said Tuesday it has begun soliciting feedback from U.S. industries about whether to extend soon-expiring tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese goods, POLITICO's STEVEN OVERLY reported (for Pros). A decision to maintain the tariffs imposed by former President DONALD TRUMP would transfer political ownership of the much-debated duties to Biden, who has maintained most of his predecessor's China trade policies despite U.S. corporate demands for tariff relief.

— NAVY CHIEF: CHINA NEARING 'MILITARY DOMINANCE': Admiral MICHAEL GILDAY, chief of naval operations, warned last week that the Chinese military's ability to "learn and evolve" is making it a formidable rival in the Indo-Pacific. "They've exceeded every deadline they've ever set for themselves. And so their deadline by 2050 really to be a global power by — it used to be 2035, and now it looks like 2027 to be regionally dominant militarily and economically," Gilday said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

— CONGRESS SEEKS WHO SEAT FOR TAIWAN: The House of Representatives last week passed a bill co-sponsored by Reps. YOUNG KIM (R-Calif.) and BRAD SHERMAN (D-Calif.) that will "direct the Secretary of State to implement a strategy to restore observer status for Taiwan in the [World Health Organization] and the WHO's decision-making body, the World Health Assembly." The Chinese government's hostility to the self-governing island has seen Taipei barred from most international forums, including the WHO and the WHA. Taiwan's Foreign Affairs Ministry backed that congressional effort with the release Monday of a promotional video, "Sweetness of Friendship," designed "to convey to the world the message of Taiwan's contribution to the world through medical cooperation programs."

Hot from the China Watchersphere

A tweet from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China calling for the release of detained journalists is pictured.

A tweet from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China calling for the release of detained journalists is pictured. | Congressional-Executive Commission on China via Twitter/POLITICO screenshot

— REPORT: CHINA STILL THROTTLING MEDIA FREEDOM: China remains "the world's largest prison for journalists, and its regime conducts a campaign of repression against journalism and the right to information worldwide," Reporters Without Borders said in its 2022 World Press Freedom Index , published Tuesday. With a total of 110 journalists behind bars, China's media freedom ranking stands at 175 out of 180 countries surveyed.

— SOLOMON ISLANDS TO RESTRAIN CHINESE POLICE: A Solomon Islands diplomat pledged Monday that his government will prevent potentially abusive conduct by Chinese police dispatched to the country under a secretive security agreement with China. "We will try and do our best in terms of dealing with them to make sure that what is happening in other countries … like Hong Kong, doesn't happen in our country," ROBERT SISILO, Solomon Islands' High Commissioner to Australia, told ABC Radio. Sisilo was referencing heavy-handed tactics by Hong Kong police against pro-democracy protesters in the territory. Meanwhile, Solomon Islands Prime Minister MANASSEH SOGAVARE on Wednesday responded angrily to an Australian analyst's call for "regime change" in the country to derail the security pact. "In other words, we are threatened with invasion," Sogavare told lawmakers.

— HK FUND MANAGER ISSUES CHINA WARNING: China's " zero-Covid" policy of mass urban lockdowns has pushed the country into a "deep economic crisis," WEIJIAN SHAN, whose company PAG manages $50 billion in private equity investment, said last week in a rare expression of public discontent from China's usually compliant business community. "We know from foreign firms in China, and their lobbying chamber organizations that boards are becoming wary and skeptical of the governance regime in China, ostensibly because of Covid management, but also a host of underlying issues and practices," said GEORGE MAGNUS, associate at Oxford University's China Centre. "So it would be surprising if medium- [to] large-size private firms in China with big payrolls didn't feel the same."

Translating China

An aerial view of a strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and a lagoon is pictured.

FUNAFUTI, TUVALU - NOVEMBER 28: An aerial view of a strip of land between the Pacific Ocean (R) and lagoon on November 28, 2019 in Funafuti, Tuvalu. The low-lying South Pacific island nation of about 11,000 people has been classified as 'extremely vulnerable' to climate change by the United Nations Development Programme. The world's fourth-smallest country is struggling to cope with climate change related impacts including five millimeter per year sea level rise (above the global average), tidal and wave driven flooding, storm surges, rising temperatures, saltwater intrusion and coastal erosion on its nine coral atolls and islands, the highest of which rises about 15 feet above sea level. In addition, the severity of cyclones and droughts in the Pacific Island region are forecast to increase due to global warming. Some scientists have predicted that Tuvalu could become inundated and uninhabitable in 50 to 100 years or less if sea level rise continues. The country is working toward a goal of 100 percent renewable power generation by 2025 in an effort to curb pollution and set an example for larger nations. Tuvalu is also exploring a plan to build an artificial island. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images) | Mario Tama/Getty Images

— CHINA'S WINNING PACIFIC ISLAND CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: China has helped power its diplomatic inroads in the Pacific Islands — symbolized by its security pact with Solomon Islands — by addressing regional concerns about the existential threat posed by the climate crisis. The Pacific Elders' Voice, which consists of former regional government leaders, reinforced that concern Friday. "The growing military tension in the Pacific region created by both China and the United States and its allies, including Australia, does little to address the real threat to the region caused by climate change," the organization said in a statement.

Those concerns aren't exaggerated. PETTERI TAALAS, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization, warned in November that the Pacific islands are "increasingly vulnerable" to climate change impacts, including "changes occurring in ocean circulation, temperature, acidification and deoxygenation, as well as rising sea level."

The Trump administration adopted a policy of climate change denial and withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement in 2020. But China has made climate change a key prong of its regional diplomatic outreach. Xi announced in 2015 the creation of a $3.1 billion China South-South Climate Cooperation Fund to help developing countries mitigate the effects of climate change. And last week, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister XIE FENG launched a China-Pacific Island Countries Climate Action Cooperation Center in Shandong's Liaocheng City. The center will build Pacific Island nations' "capacity to cope with climate change," Xie said in a speech.

"A good part of China's international climate negotiation posture is geared towards gaming some diplomatic points, in particular, creating solidarity with developing countries," said MICHAEL DAVIDSON , assistant professor of engineering and policy at the University of California San Diego. "The four [Trump] years of interregnum, where the U.S. was essentially a climate pariah, didn't help our diplomatic efforts with countries that are most affected by climate change. And I know the new administration and [Biden climate envoy] JOHN KERRY in particular, are trying very hard to repair those bridges … but that takes time."

— XINHUA'S RUSSIA-TRASHING INTERVIEW SPARKS SPECULATION: China's state news agency Xinhua published a Chinese-language interview with Ukraine's Foreign Minister DMYTRO KULEBA on Saturday hinting at a possible Beijing backpedal on its public alignment with Russia's Ukraine invasion. China has so far abstained from condemning Moscow while Chinese state media has consistently trumpeted China's Foreign Ministry assertions of the U.S. as the conflict's "culprit."

The Kuleba interview challenged that narrative by explicitly referencing Russian "aggression" and the need for Chinese intervention. "We hope that China will call on Russia to cease fire from the position that the situation must not escalate," Kuleba said in written answers to Xinhua questions.

Kuleba also flagged the conflict's consequences for China. "The global food crisis and economic problems caused by the Russian invasion of our territory would pose a serious threat to the Chinese economy," Kuleba said.

"There's a message to the Chinese people that there's something more going on [in Ukraine] that maybe you were not aware of and to the Russians a subtle message that … the Americans are going to cut us off if we continue to trade in a way that they feel violates the sanctions," said HOWARD STOFFER, associate professor of national security at the University of New Haven. "It's a pinprick, but it's definitely one that will be felt and it'll be brought to the attention of [Russian Foreign Minister SERGEY] LAVROV."

HEADLINES

Society: "Hong Kong Universities in the Shadow of the National Security Law"

The Telegraph: "How the West got China so catastrophically wrong"

Washington Post: "China's aggressive efforts to bring back fugitives grow more brazen"

HEADS UP

— U.S.-E.U. TRADE-TECH COUNCIL MEETING: The U.S.-EU Trade and Tech Council, a bilateral grouping designed to align U.S. and E.U. policies in areas including trade, microchips and artificial intelligence, will meet May 15-16 in France. Expect relevant elements of the Biden China strategy to make the agenda.

One Book, Three Questions

The cover of the book

The cover of the book "Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong" is pictured. | Riverhead Books

The Book: "Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong"

The Author: LOUISA LIM is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, co-host of the China-focused Little Red Podcast and author of the award-winning " The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited."

What is the most important takeaway from your book?

Hong Kong's precolonial history as a place of defiance, including rebellions against the centrally imposed salt monopoly from the 12th century. I was fascinated by the bifurcating British and Chinese narratives of Hong Kong's history, and how much they omitted the voices of Hong Kongers. The British colonial government even prevented the teaching of Hong Kong's own history in schools — including the history of its acquisition as the spoils of Opium Wars — to avoid a distinct sense of identity from coalescing, and to head off any discontent against the British.

What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching and writing the book?

An archive of interviews by senior Hong Kong advisers — known as the Unofficials — done by political scientist STEVE TSANG in the 1980s and '90s. This gives an inside view of Beijing's and London's negotiations over Hong Kong's return, and restores Hong Kong voices to the historical record. The Unofficials had lobbied for safeguards to protect Hong Kong, and felt like they had been abandoned. I also hadn't realized how much MARGARET THATCHER distrusted the Chinese leadership; she even called them 'savages' to the Unofficials. That anti-Chinese attitude percolated throughout the British establishment, poisoning attitudes toward Hong Kongers.

What does your book tell us about the trajectory and future of U.S.-China relations?

This is not a book about U.S.-China relations. The lessons of relevance pertain to Beijing's willingness to bulldoze through the agreements it had itself drafted, and to sacrifice Hong Kong's status as an international city for political ends.

Thanks to: Ben Pauker, Matt Kaminski, digital producer Setota Hailemariam and editor John Yearwood.

Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Would you like to contribute to China Watcher or comment on this week's items? Email us at chinawatcher@politico.com.