| | | | |  | | By Phelim Kine | | 
Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, at right, shakes hands with Saudi national security adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban, at left, as Wang Yi, China's most senior diplomat, looks on, at center. | Luo Xiaoguang/AP Photo | | Hi, China Watchers. This week we scrutinize the implications of Beijing’s Iran-Saudi Arabia détente deal; check in on the bipartisan China-focus of the House subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific and crack open a dictionary that explains how the Chinese government’s definitions of common terms and concepts differ from those of the rest of the world. And with Taiwan now reopened to international travelers post-Covid controls, we profile a book that reveals how waves of Chinese tourists to the self-governing island have left many Taiwanese wondering if their cross-Strait brethren “were from a different planet.”
CHINA WATCHER IS DOUBLING UP!
The twists, turns and complications in China’s relationship with the U.S., the EU and their partners and allies come faster and more furious every week, reshaping geopolitics. That’s why from Tuesday, March 28, China Watcher will come to you twice a week, landing in your inbox at 5:30 a.m. EST every Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll be co-piloting this double-barrel blast of hot scoops, cool takes and deep dives with my colleague Stuart Lau from across the Atlantic in Brussels. You can look forward to double happiness — 双喜! — dose of China Watcher news as we connect the dots between D.C., Brussels and Beijing. But If you’d rather opt out of the new, improved twice-weekly China Watcher launching Tuesday, March 28 — we’ll miss you! — you can update your newsletter preferences here. Let’s get to it. — Phelim China’s role in brokering a hostility-reduction agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia last week is allowing Beijing to cast paramount leader XI JINPING’s signature Global Security Initiative from empty slogan to diplomatic blockbuster. While the Biden administration has limited its comment to brief public statements that downplay the deal (as POLITICO’s NAHAL TOOSI and I reported on Monday), Beijing is claiming victory. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson WANG WENBIN praised the deal on Tuesday as Xi’s very own “noble initiative” that is reaping “international acclaim.” Wang also pledged that Beijing is ready to broker more diplomatic successes in areas of the world where its economic heft can help nudge adversarial countries toward less hostile relations. The Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement is a “robust and successful effort to put the Global Security Initiative into practice,” said Wang at the Foreign Ministry. “It is our hope that more and more countries will join us in implementing the GSI to realize enduring peace and universal security.” U.S. officials and Middle East experts say Beijing’s ability to bring Riyadh and Tehran together eases the risk of conflict that could block the flow of oil and gas through the crucial Strait of Hormuz. And it may create a knock-on benefit by paving a cessation of the conflict in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia is backing forces facing off against Iran-supported Houthi rebels. But for Beijing, this is a payoff moment after two decades of efforts to foster China’s credibility in the region as a diplomatic alternative to the United States. Beijing appointed its first special envoy to the Middle East in 2002. The Foreign Ministry’s Wang on Wednesday credited current envoy ZHAI JUN’s “shuttling and good offices” with helping seal the Iran-Saudi deal. The agreement reflects how China’s economic strength is undermining U.S. regional dominance premised on military power and its role as arms supplier of choice. “The Chinese are adept at using economic power to build influence…[and] the Americans don't have that same capacity anymore,” said ROBERT S. FORD, former U.S. ambassador to Syria and senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. The U.S. is “actually falling behind the Chinese in terms of being able to compete economically for influence in the Middle East and other parts of the world like Africa,” Ford said. The promise of Chinese trade and investment is the secret sauce in Xi’s Global Security Initiative, which Beijing is marketing as an alternative to a U.S.-dominated international system wracked by instability. The GSI is the lynchpin of Beijing’s narrative that positions China as the logical successor to a U.S.-led system dismissed as “unilateralism and bullying” by then-Chinese Foreign Minister WANG YI in 2020. The Iran-Saudi deal aligns with GSI's principles and objectives by emphasizing regional stability and regional security structures “that don't rely on or even involve the United States,” said SHEENA CHESTNUT GREITENS, Jeane Kirkpatrick fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a GSI expert. And China may be looking to test some of its GSI rhetoric in Europe. Xi Jinping is reportedly planning to speak with Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY next week following a meeting in Moscow with Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. It’s expected that Xi will push the recently announced – but highly ambiguous – Chinese proposal to end the war. The meetings come amid U.S. warnings that China is considering sending weapons to Russia to aid its war on Ukraine. The U.S. should brace for future Chinese diplomatic successes. “The importance of economic issues in the Middle East and Africa means there are going to be more things like this in the years ahead.” said Ford, the former ambassador to Syria.
| | The House Indo-Pacific Subcommittee’s China Agenda | | The new House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party is grabbing the headlines. But the House Subcommittee on the Indo-Pacific is another Hill hub of China-focused debate and legislation. Subcommittee chair YOUNG KIM (R-Calif.) and ranking member AMI BERA (D-Calif.) recently spoke separately with China Watcher about their priorities and potential challenges. Their responses have been edited for length and clarity.
How big a priority is China in this subcommittee’s agenda?
Kim: I will be focused on the implementation of my bill — the Arms Exports Delivery Solutions Act — which became law last year through the National Defense Authorization Act. We want to make sure that our allies, especially Taiwan, who have already paid billions of dollars in backlogged arms sales, get answers to why there is a delay in delivering them, especially when there is a constant CCP threat to Taiwan.
Bera: China will certainly play a significant role in the various topics that the subcommittee takes on. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-Texas) will probably use the full committee to lay out an agenda on U.S.-China relations. So Young Kim may use the subcommittee to address other areas — East Asia, bilateral U.S-Japan-Korea, ASEAN, Southeast Asia — that are not directly focused on China but relate to China.
Are we in a Cold War with China?
Kim: China has not made it very secret that their intention is to be the world's dominant leader, both economically and militarily. So whether or not we're in a Cold War, we all know what the CCP’s goal is and we need to be prepared for that eventual potential conflict.
Bera: No, and I try to avoid using the Cold War analogy because I think the competition that we have with China is different than what we saw between the United States, NATO and the Soviet Union. Certainly, there's an economic competition and an influence competition. But I think much of the world is still pretty united around the set of values that are Western values — free markets, freedom of navigation —and I think many of China's aggressive actions actually push those coalitions much closer together.
What are the potential challenges to bipartisan cooperation on the subcommittee?
Kim: A lot of people talk about how Congress is broken and how partisan we are. When it comes to countering the CCP I don't think there is any disagreement. I enjoy working with Ami Bera. We were co-chairs of a congressional study group on Korea, we've had numerous trips together and we've worked in a bipartisan way. He may be a Democrat and a Republican, but as the saying goes, political differences stop at the water’s edge.
Bera: I think there'll be a lot of cooperation on how we strategically compete with China, how we support Taiwan's ability to defend itself and how we practice strategic deterrence to hopefully, make sure China doesn't do any adverse actions.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT…
U.S.hammers out AUKUS nuclear sub sale details The three-phase, multi-decade agreement will culminate in Australia designing and delivering to its forces three-to-five nuclear-powered submarines. Those boats – which Australia will start to receive in the early 2040s – will feature Virginia-class technologies from the U.S. The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Wang called the deal “typical Cold War mentality.” POLITICO’s ALEX WARD and PAUL MCLEARY have the full story here. TRANSLATING WASHINGTON —FIRST IN CHINA WATCHER: MERKLEY, RUBIO TARGET CHINA’S TRANSNATIONAL REPRESSION: Sens. JEFF MERKLEY (D-Ore.) and MARCO RUBIO (R-Fla.) will introduce legislation later today aimed at curtailing Beijing’s harassment and intimidation of overseas activists and critics. The Transnational Repression Policy Act will empower U.S. authorities to “hold foreign governments and individuals accountable” for such abuses. The bill’s text doesn’t mention any specific countries. But the FBI has launched multiple prosecutions in recent years against individuals implicated in transnational repression targeting “U.S. residents whose political views and actions are disfavored by the PRC.” The Chinese government’s targets in the U.S. have included representatives of Hong Kong, Uyghur and Tibetan communities in the United States. “The U.S. must devise a strategy to counter these criminal tactics and ensure that the CCP cannot harass or attack individuals on American soil,” Rubio said in a statement. —FBI BUSTS BILLIONAIRE CCP CRITIC: The FBI arrested outspoken Chinese government critic and exiled property developer GUO WENGUI (aka “MILES GUO” and “HO WAN KWOK”) on Wednesday on charges including wire fraud, bank fraud money laundering. Guo fled China in 2014 from what he said were politically-motivated corruption charges and struck up an alliance with right-wing provocateur and President DONALD TRUMP’s former chief strategist, STEVE BANNON. Guo’s stab at protest hip-hop, “Take Down the CCP,” briefly topped the iTunes U.S. charts in 2020. —U.S.-CHINA MILITARY CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS GAP: Beijing and Washington lack adequate crisis communications systems to cope with a military emergency. “We don’t have the kind of stable, steady, predictable, uninterrupted military-to-military communications channels that we think would be responsible and most effective for ensuring that there is no miscalculation, no accident, no mistake, no possibility for unintended escalation,” national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN told reporters on Monday. The fact that China’s new defense minister, LI SHANGFU, has been on a U.S. Treasury sanctions list since 2018 likely won’t improve communications anytime soon. —GALLAGHER SLAM CHINA’S ABUSES IN TIBET: Rep. MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, attended a protest against Beijing’s human rights abuses in Tibet on the doorstep of the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. on Friday. Beijing is committing “cultural genocide against the Tibetan people,” Gallagher and committee ranking member RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-Ill.) said in a statement. | | Hot from the China Watchersphere | | | 
Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, center, shakes hands with First Vice President of Honduras Ricardo Alvarez. | Fernando Antonio/AP Photo | —HONDURAS DITCHING TAIWAN FOR CHINA: Honduras will break diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of establishing ties with Beijing. “I have instructed Foreign Minister EDUARDO REINA to manage the opening of official relations with the People's Republic of China,” Honduran President XIOMARA CASTRO said in a tweet on Tuesday. Honduras’s decision “accords with the trend of history,” said Wang at China’s Foreign Ministry. Honduras’s decision supports Beijing’s strategy “to suppress Taiwan’s international space,” the island’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. With that switch, there are now just 13 countries that diplomatically recognize Taipei. —CHINA’S CENTRAL BANK TARGETS U.S. ‘CONTAINMENT’: The People’s Bank of China is parroting Xi Jinping’s rhetoric from last week of U.S. efforts at “containment, encirclement and suppression” of Beijing. Chinese central bankers will adopt “the spirit of struggle and properly respond to the U.S. and Western containment and suppression” of China, the bank said in a statement published on Wednesday. —CHINESE PREMIER LI QIANG DISSES DECOUPLING: China’s new Premier LI QIANG made clear that Beijing will remain hostile to congressional efforts to “decouple” U.S-China economic ties. “Some in the United States have been trumpeting the idea of decoupling with China… how many people can truly benefit from this kind of hype? China and the United States can and must cooperate,” Li said in his inaugural press conference at the conclusion of the annual meeting of China’s parliament on Sunday. —BEIJING TELLS MANILA: DISINVITE U.S. ‘BULLY’: The Chinese embassy in Manila has lashed out at the U.S.-Philippine agreement last month to expand U.S. military presence in the country. That deal is like “inviting a bully into our community,” the embassy said in a statement on Sunday. Deepening U.S.-Philippine military ties may “bundle the Philippines into the chariots of geopolitical strife,” the statement said. | | | | 
Decoding China Dictionary; illustrations: Anna Formilan; layout: Eve Rogers | —YOUR HANDY CCP VOCAB CHEAT SHEET: Elements of the CCP’s vocabulary are often at odds with commonly accepted definitions of those terms outside of China. And just in time for the post-National Party Congress meeting debut of Xi Jinping’s new senior leadership we have the second edition of the online Decoding China dictionary produced by China specialists including MALIN OUD, KATJA DRINHAUSEN and DAVID BANDURSKI. Here are excerpts from a trio of our favorites, edited for length and clarity. Freedom of Speech Article 35 of China’s Constitution states that “citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.” In practice, the CCP places substantial restrictions on the exercise of freedom of speech, which is regarded as potentially destabilizing to the regime. Officials often stress that “freedom of expression does not equal free expression,” by which they mean that speech must be curtailed in the interests of the general population. Journalism The CCP asserts the Marxist view of journalism, which places the Party’s interests at the heart of press activity and demands journalists uphold a “correct political direction” and “emphasize positive propaganda.” Since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in late 2012, authorities have stressed the need for “positive energy,” which obliges not just journalists but all networked citizens to be defenders of the Party and the national image. Rule of Law In China’s “socialist rule of law system with Chinese characteristics” the legal system is under the Party’s leadership and supervision. The CCP ultimately sees the law as a tool to ensure stability and order, as well as being a means to justify and maintain Party rule. Arguably it is so different from the international principle of rule of law that it should perhaps not be translated as “rule of law.” HEADLINES Foreign policy: Is America’s China policy too hawkish?
SCMP: The inside story of a U.S. spy in China’s release 50 years ago, and its lessons amid spy balloon row
Commonweal: Remembering ‘228’ in Taiwan HEADS UP —BIDEN-XI CALL LOOMS. MAYBE. SOMETIME: President Biden aims to have a phone chat with Xi Jinping “at some point in the coming period,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday. “I can’t give you a date, because there’s no date set — but President Biden has indicated his willingness to have a telephone conversation with President Xi once they’re back and in stride coming off of the National People’s Congress,” Sullivan said. Beijing is playing hard to get. “Communication should not be carried out for the sake of communication,” the Foreign Ministry’s Wang said on Tuesday. | | One Book, Three Questions | | | 
Ian Rowen | The Book: One China, Many Taiwans: The Geopolitics of Cross-Strait Tourism The Author: IAN ROWEN is an associate professor in the department of Taiwan culture, languages and literature at National Taiwan Normal University. Responses have been edited for length and clarity. What is the most important takeaway from your book? Tourism has been one of China’s most visible economic strategies aimed at achieving political control of Taiwan. But tourism aggravated tensions across the Taiwan Strait – it polarized Taiwanese society, and pushed Taiwanese further toward support for national self-determination. In the process, Taiwan split into two: Taiwan performed as a part of China for group tours, versus the Taiwan of everyday life experienced by local residents and some independent tourists. That amplified a conflict between those business, civil society and state actors bent on sustaining a China-oriented tourist industry and those that did not. What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching and writing this book? That the more people spend time with each other — at least in tourism settings — the more they might misunderstand each other. The more Chinese tourists rubbed shoulders with Taiwanese, the more they felt like they were among fellow Chinese nationals. But the more Taiwanese interacted with Chinese, the more they felt like they were from a different planet. What does your book tell us about the trajectory and future of U.S.-China relations? In the early 2010s, the conventional wisdom was that Taiwan was being economically swallowed by China, and political capitulation was just a matter of time. Money and people flowed under the pretense that Taiwan was part of “One China,” even if only a handful of people were profiting. This all changed in 2014 when the Taiwanese public made it very clear, by protesting and voting, that they welcomed such flows but not at the expense of their sovereignty. Taiwan has now chosen to go its own way, and the fantasy of “peaceful unification” and pretense of Taiwan as part of “One China” is over. Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com. Thanks to: Mike Zapler, Heidi Vogt, Nahal Toosi, Alex Ward, Paul McCleary,Matt Kaminski and digital producer Sinobia Aiden. 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. | | | | Follow us | | | | |
No comments:
Post a Comment