| | | | |  | | By Ryan Heath | Presented by the Renew Democracy Initiative | Follow Ryan on Twitter | Send tips and insights to rheath@politico.com China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s toothless legislature, is in session. That matters not for what the members say, but for what their votes indicate about Xi Jinping's long-term plans. On Sunday the body rubber-stamped a relatively low economic growth target of "around 5 percent" for 2023 — a sign that third-term Xi will not be as wedded to economic growth as he and predecessors were over the past four decades. There's also a 7 percent defense budget increase on the way: even so, that leaves the Chinese military budget at barely half the purchasing power of the U.S. military. Delegates will this week confirm Xi's third term as supreme ruler. Prime Minister Li Keqiang is bowing out as premier before the official retirement age — leaving the party fully in the hands of Xi loyalists. It’s a big week for the United Nations, with negotiations for a high seas treaty concluding successfully over the weekend, and two major conferences now underway (more below).
| | | | A message from the Renew Democracy Initiative: Putin is waging a war against freedom, and the people of Ukraine are his latest target. We must remain committed to providing military and humanitarian support for Ukraine to ensure freedom and democracy prevail. Supporting Ukraine now will ensure that Russia can't threaten us later. Join us in telling Congress to hold Putin and Russia accountable for war crimes. | | | THE WEEK AHEAD MONDAY A United Nations Least Developed Countries conference in Qatar will run through Thursday, for the first time in 15 years. Only six countries have graduated from the LDC label to a higher status. Companies including Microsoft — which announced several new digital infrastructure and skills partnerships over the weekend — are offering a new partnership push intended to change that dynamic. Microsoft President Brad Smith told Global Insider: “This is not a philanthropic exercise, but rather a business imperative —– And a call to action for all of us to do more." TUESDAY European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen begins a Canada and U.S. trip that starts with a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women is convening in New York, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will impose sweeping gender parity rules in politics and business to coincide with International Women’s Day, a Spanish government spokesperson told Global Insider. The law will mandate that all parties alternate strictly between a man and a woman when drawing up their candidate lists. Women will need to make up at least 40 percent of ministerial posts, and take up at least 40 percent of corporate board seats. FRIDAY Von der Leyen will meet with U.S. President Joe Biden. The pair will talk about China, climate and to try to mend fences over the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act. WHERE TO JOIN GLOBAL INSIDER: Catch up with recent Global Insider-led panels, below. Privacy: Who’s Winning? As long as it takes: the EU commitment to Ukraine
| | | | DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS– DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID. | | | | | | | | PERCEPTIONS OF AMERICA AROUND THE WORLD A Morning Consult survey series casts light on how the U.S. is seen around the world — not just on one or two political issues or leaders, but across a swathe of political, cultural and economic touch points. What may surprise some readers: America’s richest and closest allies, often in the Anglosphere, have the most criticism to share. Some of the highlights: Republicans have a Trump problem: It’s the former president, not the party itself, which suffers global disapproval. U.S. cultural exports remain a dominant force in Africa and South America: From movies to food to digital, American soft power continues to set the country apart from geopolitical rivals. Guns remain America’s Achilles' heel: The U.S. does a terrible job at managing the overwhelming number of guns in the country, and their deadly effects, according to the Morning Consult data. America’s closest allies are the most critical: an average of just 5 percent of Australians, Canadians, Britons, Germans, French and Japanese think gun violence is well-managed in the U.S. Religious and racial freedom — for some: There are patterns across the data on religious freedom in the U.S. and on race relations — including that Canada, Australia and the U.K. are the most skeptical of how Americans handle these issues. Poland was the only country surveyed in which respondents said America treated people of color better than their own country did. ELECTION CORNER ESTONIA — KALLAS SET FOR ANOTHER TERM: Estonia’s centrist Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was the clear winner of last night’s parliamentary election, with her party coming first. Predictions that far-right EKRE — which campaigned against Estonia’s staunchly pro-Ukraine stance — might win more seats and make it harder for Kallas to form a government didn’t materialize. Results: Kallas’ Reform Party improved its results, winning 38 of 101 seats — four more than in 2019. Second-placed EKRE won just 17 seats. In Brussels, Reform is part of Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renew Europe group. More here by POLITICO’s Charlie Duxbury. E-stonia wins: More than half of the ballots were cast electronically, which likely helped get a record turnout of 63 percent. Estonian leaders often pride themselves in having built a “digital society” and government, where most administrative tasks can be performed online. NIGERIA — “IT’S MY TURN” KLEPTOCRAT DECLARED WINNER: Bola Tinubu, a wealthy kleptocratic “godfather” of Nigeria politics — who campaigned on the slogan “it’s my turn” — has been declared the winner of the country’s presidential election. Peter Obi, who placed third in official tallies, rejected the results and said he will contest them in court. Obi has twice won court challenges overturning gubernatorial elections. International observers have criticized the lack of transparency in the election count. Chatham House’s Matthew Page criticized Western governments for being more interested in military relations with Nigeria than in supporting good governance: “They appear to have turned a blind eye, deepened their engagement with the country’s heavy-handed, highly corrupt military, and done little to prevent Nigerian kleptocrats from spending unexplained wealth in London, New York and elsewhere,” while also overlooking actions like a local Twitter ban and forced abortion program in Nigeria’s army.
| | | | A message from the Renew Democracy Initiative:   | | | RUSSIA CORNER RUSSIA AND IRAN WORRIES: Gulf states and Israel have directly lobbied Russia not to arm Iran, Semafor’s Jay Solomon reported, worried that doing so will affect the balance of power in the Middle East by building up Iran's air force. CHIEF OF WAGNER MERCENARY GROUP WARNS OF RUSSIAN FRONTLINE COLLAPSE: Yevgeny Prigozhin said on his Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Sunday that Russia’s front lines near Bakhmut could collapse if his forces did not receive more ammunition “For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: is it just ordinary bureaucracy or a betrayal,” Prigozhin wrote. Prigozhin raged against top Russian defense officials last month. UNITED NATIONS CORNER OCEANS TREATY NEGOTIATED: Last week was a big week for the world’s oceans — the subject of three major conferences. On Saturday night in New York City, two decades of efforts culminated in a new legally binding treaty being agreed to protect the high seas — the two-thirds of our oceans lying outside national boundaries known as “exclusive economic areas.” The treaty will be the basis of “marine protected areas” — the global equivalent of national parks for the high seas. The treaty negotiations were notable in featuring consistent input from the U.S., U.K., EU and China, alongside a coalition of developing countries. When ratified by national legislatures, the treaty will complement a World Trade Organization fishing agreement that gets rid of more than $20 billion in fishing subsidies. The end goal: have 30 percent of the world’s ocean protected from overfishing, mining and other disruptions. Meanwhile … At the 2023 Our Ocean Conference in Panama, the U.S. delegation headed by climate envoy John Kerry made $6 billion of commitments across 77 announcements, mostly focused on climate action such as greener shipping, offshore renewable energy and sustainable fishing. ENVIRONMENT — GABBING IN GABON Gabon hosted a One Forest Summit on protecting the world’s largest forests attended by French President Emmanuel Macron, but the event was missing two other key players: Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Congo President Félix Tshisekedi. Around 90 percent of Gabon is covered by trees, and its government wants to be paid in carbon offset markets for forest preservation. Typically those markets pay only for newly planted trees, not the preservation of existing ecosystems. Akim Daouda, the head of Gabon’s sovereign wealth fund, told Bloomberg that the easiest route to replacing oil production revenue is allowing logging — and that the country needs financial incentives to choose another path. GERMANY’S SCHOLZ ON TOUR Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited Washington on Friday without any media, any big delegation or any fanfare like a state dinner. Tense discussions over China are one reason: The U.S. is consulting with allies on whether to jointly impose sanctions on Beijing if China supplies weapons to Russia, something that would put Germany in a tight spot given its strong trade relations with China. Berlin and Beijing: Scholz on Sunday said China had declared it won’t supply Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine, suggesting that Berlin has received bilateral assurances from Beijing on the issue. Read the full story here. Scholz was speaking at a press conference with the EU’s von der Leyen, who told reporters that the EU has received “no evidence” so far from the U.S. that Beijing is considering supplying lethal support to Moscow. If the EU were to sanction Beijing, “this would put China on the same level as Iran, against which the EU recently imposed sanctions, as a supplier of weapons,“ said Michael Roth, a Social Democrat like Scholz who chairs the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and who is open to the idea. Berlin and Washington: The absence of a press conference after the Biden-Scholz bilateral was noted by reporters, but is a sign of a press-shy Biden as much as any sign of tense bilateral relations. So far in 2023 Biden also failed to meet the press after meetings with Japanese PM Kishida Fumio, Dutch PM Mark Rutte, and Brazil’s President Lula.
| | | | LISTEN TO POLITICO'S ENERGY PODCAST: Check out our daily five-minute brief on the latest energy and environmental politics and policy news. Don't miss out on the must-know stories, candid insights, and analysis from POLITICO's energy team. Listen today. | | | | | | | | EU TIGHTENS ETHICS RULES FOR STAFF AS QATAR CONTROVERSY GROWS: The crackdown comes after POLITICO revealed top EU transport official Henrik Hololei took free flights from Qatar Airways during key aviation talks between the EU and Qatar. EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly will conduct an investigation. Meanwhile jailed MEPs Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella will remain behind bars after losing their appeals to be released while authorities continue the sprawling Qatargate corruption probe. Kaili will spend at least two more months in jail; Tarabella at least one more month. UK AMBASSADOR IN MOSCOW RUNS INTO ETHICAL QUESTIONS: Alf Torrents, husband of Britain's ambassador in Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, has run the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce lobby group since 2017, designed to boost trade with Russia, the Daily Mail reported. THE U.S. LAWMAKER WHO USED TO WORK AT THE U.N.: Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) worked as the “Big Data Lead” in UNICEF’s Innovation Unit and is now the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Africa and on the House Armed Services Committee. More in Mark Leon Goldberg’s Global Dispatches podcast. Jacobs’ grandfather Irwin Jacobs founded tech giant Qualcomm. BRAIN FOOD PODCAST: Finnish ambassador: Here’s the right way to poke the Russian bear, interview by Ryan Lizza. SHORT READ: The China Consensus: Do Almost Nothing, by AEI’s China specialist Derek Scissors that takes DC to task over its inaction on China, despite all the recent hearings and rhetoric: “The famous bipartisan China consensus is to rant and rave, and not do anything that might actually come at a price.” BOOK: “The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941,” by Robert Kagan. Here Kagan examines America’s rise to global superpower status, looking at the costs of both isolationism and war, and how the U.S. ended up profiting. ONE FUN THING CAN AN AI CHATBOT DO FOREIGN POLICY? My colleagues tested the waters with ChatGPT and sent the answers to Ned Price, the State Department’s top spokesperson. His response to the new competitor: “Not bad at all, but no one’s job is in jeopardy. To the extent these answers capture our policy, I sure hope the algorithm is pulling from the transcripts of my briefings. To the extent these answers are off, I sure hope the algorithm isn’t pulling from the transcripts of my briefings.” Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Sophie Gardner SUBSCRIBE to the POLITICO newsletter family: D.C. Playbook | Brussels Playbook | London Playbook | Paris Playbook| Ottawa Playbook| EU Confidential | | Digital Bridge | China Watcher| China Direct | Berlin Bulletin | D.C. Influence | EU Influence | London Influence | Paris Influence
| | | | A message from the Renew Democracy Initiative: Victory for Ukraine is victory for us all. As Putin continues to wage a senseless and brutal war on the people of Ukraine, the United States must remain committed to providing military and humanitarian support for Ukraine to ensure that freedom and democracy prevail.
The safety and stability of the free world is at stake. Supporting Ukraine now will ensure that Russia can’t threaten us later.
Join us in telling Congress to hold Putin and Russia accountable for war crimes. | | | | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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