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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we unpack the implications of Beijing's refusal to allow a meeting between U.S.-China defense ministers, spill on fresh Treasury sanctions targeting China's fentanyl connections and check in on the Dutch government's pending export restrictions on advanced microchips printing equipment. And we profile a fictional account of a future conflict over Taiwan that urges policymakers to "dispense with the myth of short, sharp wars." Our Brussels-based co-host Stuart Lau will be back on Tuesday.
Let's get to it. — Phelim
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US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin | Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images |
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Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu | AFP via Getty Images |
THE BIG CHILL: BEIJING NIXES U.S.-CHINA DEFENSE MINISTERS MEETING
At the moment, prospects are dim for a meeting between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu at the Shangri La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore later this week.
The Pentagon said Monday that Chinese authorities denied its request for the meeting — a move that defies President Joe Biden's prediction last month of a looming "thaw" in U.S.-China relations.
It also underscores Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping's willingness to selectively suspend high level bilateral contacts as leverage for more Beijing-friendly positions on issues including Taiwan and trade.
"Xi Jinping has made the political choice to stop this," said Chad Sbragia, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for China in the Trump administration. Barring Li from meeting Austin reflects Xi "betting that the United States will fold because of our interest in having stable communications."
China blames the Biden administration. The U.S. "is fully responsible for the current difficulties in China-US mil-to-mil exchanges," Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson senior col. Tan Kefei said in a statement on Wednesday.
A possible future Austin-Li meeting requires the U.S. to "show its sincerity and correct its wrong practices," Tan said. Beijing has complained that Li has been under sanctions by the U.S. government since 2018 for his role in purchase of Russian weaponry.
But the gamble robs Xi of a direct conduit to Biden administration worries about U.S.-China military frictions. Meetings between senior U.S.-China defense officials have traditionally allowed for "another meeting at the coffeepot where more direct communications could happen and people could be enlightened on what the real red lines were," said Raymond Powell, former senior defense official to Australia during the Trump administration.
Beijing suspended senior military contacts as part of a package of reprisals for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan in August. Since then the Pentagon has complained of multiple dangerous encounters with Chinese fighter aircraft over international waters in the South China sea. That included what the Pentagon called an "unnecessarily aggressive maneuver" during an intercept by a Chinese J-16 fighter pilot toward a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft last week.
Beijing blamed that on the U.S. and warned it will "continue to take necessary measures" against perceived "provocative and dangerous moves" by U.S. forces in the Indo-Pacific, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday. That rhetoric followed Xi's warning that China's national security issues are "considerably more complex and much more difficult to be resolved,” at a National Security Council meeting on Tuesday.
That makes Xi's apparent willingness to make bilateral defense minister contacts a diplomatic bargaining chip "escalatory and risky on China's part," said Kristen Gunness, former director of the Navy Asia Pacific Advisory Group at the Pentagon and now a researcher at the RAND Corporation.
And it suggests Beijing's diplomatic priorities with the U.S. may be elsewhere — given that Chinese Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao met last week with Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai.
But other senior U.S. officials are also getting Xi's cold shoulder.
The administration has also hit a brick wall in rescheduling Secretary of State Antony Blinken's Beijing trip canceled in February and in confirming potential visits to China by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Raimondo.
And while the White House has been publicly signaling its desire for a call between President Joe Biden and Xi for months, it has yet to happen. That means that the two leaders — who had five phone or video calls in Biden's first two years in office — haven't spoken since they met face-to-face on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Bali in November.
Two days of meetings between national security adviser Jake Sullivan and China's top diplomat Wang Yi in Vienna last month haven't broken the impasse. Both sides called the talks "candid, substantive, and constructive," but produced no timetable for a Biden-Xi call or confirmation of the Chinese government's willingness to welcome senior U.S. officials to Beijing.
Those efforts have drawn ridicule on Capitol Hill. The Biden administration "is acting like an ardent suitor on the world stage, desperately searching for a meeting with any Chinese Communist Party official who will have us," Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said last month.
Any further resumption of high-level diplomatic contacts is in limbo.
One big obstacle is Xi's pronouncement in March that the U.S. was seeking to "contain, encircle and suppress China." Biden needs to wrangle from Xi a less hostile public assessment of U.S. intent or "it's going to be difficult for the party and government apparatus in China to significantly adjust or moderate their approach," to the U.S., said Ryan Hass, former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council.
Meanwhile, stay tuned for potentially awkward moments between Austin and Li in Singapore later this week.
"They're going to be in the same room a lot, so not shaking hands or saying hello to each other is going to be pretty difficult," said Ret. Vice Adm. Robert Murrett, professor of practice at Syracuse University's Maxwell School for professional public policy. Austin "has the high ground — he doesn't need to avoid Li, so Li is the guy who is going to have to excuse himself to the men's room" to avoid encounters with Austin.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— AMBASSADOR XIE'S BIG APPLE OUTREACH: China's newly arrived ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, is wasting no time in pressing the flesh with friendly China-focused nonprofits and think tanks. Xie was in New York on Tuesday where he met representatives of the National Committee on U.S. China Relations. Xie followed that up with a meeting with Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haas. Think tanks play a "unique role" in U.S.-China understanding, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu tweeted of that encounter.
— TREASURY TARGETS CHINESE PILL PEDDLERS: The Treasury Department's Office of Financial Assets Control imposed sanctions on six individuals and seven entities based in China linked to the production of illicit synthetic opioids that kill tens of thousands of Americans every year. Those entities include Yason General Machinery Co., Ltd and the Chinese pill press supplier Youli Technology Development Co., Ltd., Treasury said in a statement on Tuesday. The sanctioned firms and individuals "were involved in creating counterfeit pills with false markings of legitimate pharmaceuticals, often laced with fentanyl, and likely bound for U.S. markets," Secretary of State Blinken said in a separate statement on Tuesday. "The U.S. has itself to blame for its domestic drug abuse," Mao at the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. Beijing suspended counternarcotics cooperation with the U.S. as part of a package of reprisals for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan in August.
— TAIWAN REP DENIES VP AMBITIONS: Taiwan's de facto Ambassador Bi-khim Hsiao batted back rumors that she may become the vice presidential running mate of ruling Democratic Progressive Party chair Lai Ching-te in next year's general election. "Getting involved in politics was my former job. I'm focused on doing my current job in representing Taiwan in Washington," Hsiao, a former legislator, told reporters on Tuesday. Taiwan's presidential election occurs on Jan. 13. You can read my interview with the self-governing island's Taiwan People's Party presidential candidate Ko Wen-je here.
Meanwhile, Taiwan's government is going all-in on asymmetrical weapons systems to help deter a possible future invasion of the self-governing island. Taiwan is in the market for "smaller, cost-effective, highly mobile survivable systems that will target an invading force and that would be strong enough to also deter ultimately any possible invasion," Hsiao said. Taiwan's defense system shopping list includes Stinger and Javelin missiles as well as weaponized drones.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
EUROPE EYES MEETING WITH LI: European officials heading to Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue may have better luck getting time with Li Shangfu than their U.S. counterpart. European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is expected to meet Li, according to three diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity. The German and Dutch defense ministers, who are also due to travel to the Singapore conference, could also meet with Li if the timing allows, two of the diplomats said. The most senior European leader in attendance is expected to be Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia.
Europe's message to Asia: EU's Borrell is going to call on Asian countries to do more to support Ukraine and condemn Russia. "Our member states' navies are engaged with naval exercises. We are ready to do more, but we need to make sure our cooperation is as operational as possible and a two-way street," according to Borrell's prepared remarks seen by POLITICO. "We must defend core security principles whenever and wherever they are threatened, from Ukraine to the South China Sea." Only Japan and Singapore have joined the West's sanctions against Russia, though many more countries voted to condemn Russia in the United Nations.
DUTCH MINISTER INTERVIEW ON CHINA: The Dutch government is set to publish the final text of the U.S.-engineered ban of the sale of advanced microchips printing equipment supplier ASML to China, "likely before the summer," Foreign Minister Wopke Hoekstra told POLITICO's Pieter Haeck and Jacopo Barigazzi.
But Hoekstra is adamant it won't affect relations with China. "We've had an open conversation about ASML," he said, referring to his conversation with China's Foreign Minister Qin Gang during his visit to Beijing last week, adding that Beijing extended an invitation for Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to visit China as well.
Still, the ban is alive and well: National security concerns have increasingly become part of the global dialogue on chips, Hoekstra said. The Hague is worried about "what we see as civil-military fusion," intellectual property theft and "a non-level playing field," he said.
HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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— QIN GANG TALKS CARS WITH ELON: Tesla Motors and Twitter owner Elon Musk had a one-on-one with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Tuesday. Qin and Musk discussed "car industry development" and Beijing's hopes that Tesla will support China's "new energy vehicle industry," Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu tweeted on Tuesday. Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment.
— CHINA, INDIA WAGE JOURNALIST EXPULSIONS: China and India have each expelled the majority of accredited journalists from each other's countries. Delhi and Beijing have refused to renew the work visas of Chinese and Indian foreign correspondents in recent weeks in a reflection of deteriorating bilateral ties due to tensions over the two countries' disputed border, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. Beijing booted Indian reporters over longtime "unfair and discriminatory treatment" of Chinese journalists, Mao at the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
China expelled reporters for the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal en masse in 2020 in an apparent reprisal for a Trump administration move to slash the number of U.S.-based staff of Chinese state media organizations. Efforts to broker a bilateral deal to increase visa issuance for foreign journalists to work in China are in limbo.
— CANADIAN LAWMAKERS ALLEGE CHINESE INTERFERENCE: Canada's former leader of the opposition Progressive Conservative Party Erin O'Toole alleged that he and his party were targets of Chinese government electoral interference in last year's general election. Canada's top spy agency informed O'Toole of a Beijing-directed "active campaign of voter suppression" at him and his party, the lawmaker said on Tuesday. O'Toole's allegations follow Hong Kong-born Canadian lawmaker Jenny Kwan's revelation on Monday that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service warned her that Beijing has her marked as an "evergreen" political target due to her activism. POLITICO's Zi-Ann Lum has the full story here.
— TAIWAN VP: XI SHOULD 'CHILL OUT': Taiwan's Vice President Lai knows exactly how he'll engage with Xi Jinping in the — highly unlikely — event that the two politicians have dinner together someday. "I would urge him to chill out a little and not put everyone under so much pressure. People's wellbeing is the most important thing and peace benefits everyone," Lai said in a question and answer session with students at National Taiwan University on Sunday. "Taiwan does not have the so-called vice-president," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao said when asked about Lai's comments on Tuesday.
TRANSLATING CHINA
— XI JINPING WRITES IN: China's paramount leader can be a tough man to contact — just ask Joe Biden! But Xi pens written responses to foreign citizens who write him letters on various issues. Those missives have included replies to "dozens of letters from young foreigners" interested in Chinese language and culture. They have also included a letter to President Donald Trump about soy beans and pork in 2019.
It's unlikely Sen. Josh Hawley's (R-Mo.) letter to Xi in March touting Hawley's bill to "declassify government intelligence on the Covid virus" and referencing "lecturing, idiotic" efforts by unnamed Chinese officials to derail that bill met criteria for a Xi response (Hawley didn't respond to a request for comment).
Aspiring pen pals for the paramount leader face an initial obstacle — his mailing address. "We think the best address may be a Beijing address, but we are sorry that we are not aware of the specific address," the Chinese Embassy said in a statement.
Undeterred, China Watcher did a rough analysis of the categories of letters most likely to evoke a Xi response — attention White House! — to boost the chances that China Watcher readers with an itch to correspond with the paramount leader can join those lucky ranks. Key pointers:
Call him "grandpa"
High school students in a Chinese language immersion program program in Hungary wrote a letter wishing "Grandpa Xi" a happy Lunar New Year in January. In short order they reaped not only a written response from Xi — urging the kids to become "envoys of the China-Hungary friendship" — but a Chinese state media video report on the exchange of letters.
Mention Muscatine
Xi spent two weeks in Muscatine, Iowa, doing agricultural research in 1985. Chinese state media has since lionized Xi's Muscatine connection as a symbol of U.S.-China friendship. And those links pay off in correspondence terms: In a response to a letter last year from Muscatine resident Sarah Lande — who Xi first met there in 1985 — he declared their friendship "an important foundation for the development of bilateral relations."
Praise the CCP
A group of 45 overseas students from 32 countries at Peking University hit Xi's letter reply sweet spot by praising Chinese Communist Party governance. The letter to Xi mentioned the CCP "has committed itself to developing the economy, eradicating poverty and actively assisting other countries in fighting Covid-19," Xi said in his response reported by state news agency Xinhua. Xi described those efforts as part of the CCP's dedication to "human progress."
Name yourself "China"
A Bangladeshi girl named Alifa Chin shared her life story in a letter to Xi, prompting both a written response and extensive state media coverage last month. Chin said she owed her life to a Chinese military doctor whose intervention during a "dangerous time" in Chin's mother's life allowed for her safe birth. "To express his gratitude, the father named the baby Chin, which means 'China' in Bengali," China's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
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HEADLINES
VOA: Taiwanese election drama is a subversive hit in China
Wall Street Journal: Claudia Rosett at Tiananmen Square: The Communist Party pulls the trigger
HEADS UP
— JAKE SULLIVAN TALKS NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION: Biden administration concerns about China's growing nuclear arsenal will be part of national security adviser Jake Sullivan's talking points in a speech he'll make Friday at 9 a.m. EST at the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association in Washington, D.C. The in-person meeting's theme is "Reducing Nuclear Threats in a Time of Peril" and you can register here.
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
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Courtesy of Casemate Publishers |
The Book: White Sun War: The Campaign for Taiwan
The Author: Mick Ryan is a retired major general in the Australian Army.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most important takeaway from your book?
We must do everything in the diplomatic, economic and military spheres to prevent a war over Taiwan from occurring. Not only is there a profound humanitarian need to avoid war, but the outcomes of such a war could be very different and much worse than either we or the Chinese might imagine. Once war begins, emotion and 'sunk costs' begin to influence strategy and policy — and given that this would be a scenario involving large scale casualties on all sides, it is hard to predict where such a war might escalate or end.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
In 1944 the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff conducted a study for an invasion of Taiwan — or Formosa as it was then known — as part of their advance towards Japan. It was called Operation Causeway.
The study estimated that over 230,000 troops would be required to retake the island from the 98,000 Japanese garrisoned on the island — including 32,000 ground troops — and U.S. forces would need over 1.6 million tons of materials to support the invasion. It estimated 24,000 friendly casualties in the first two months of the operation. The plan — which the U.S. Joint Chiefs never executed — allocated allied naval forces including 50 aircraft carriers, around 300 surface warships, about 250 cargo ships and around 2,600 landing craft of all types.
The scale of an operation needed to land in Taiwan in 1944 was massive, and today it would be either similar or larger.
The scale of an operation needed to land in Taiwan in 1944 was massive, and today it would be either similar or larger.
Your book is fiction, but what lessons might the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries take from it in planning for a potential conflict across the Taiwan Strait?
We need to dispense with the myth of short, sharp wars. When large, populous and wealthy nations fight, they have the resources to do so for a long time, raising the costs on all sides.
Autonomous weapons systems have many interesting capabilities, but are we really preparing our people through training and education to exploit the opportunities of an environment where there might be 100 times as many robots as humans in the battlespace? The best technology used poorly — with bad warfighting concepts or in the wrong kind of organizations — wont give us the edge we need.
Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.
Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Stuart Lau, Zi-Ann Lum, Pieter Haeck, Jacopo Barigazzi, Matt Kaminski, Jamil Anderlini, and digital producers Tara Gnewikow and Dato Parulava. Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Would you like to contribute to China Watcher or comment? Email us at pkine@politico.com and slau@politico.com
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