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By PHELIM KINE
PRESENTED BY Government Accountability Institute
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we unpack the obstacles to President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping's vow to expand people to people ties, look at EU efforts to push Chinese telecom firm Huawei out of European communications systems and parse the perils of Hong Kong's new Article 23 security law. And we profile a book that tries to decipher Beijing's secret sauce in its growing global influence.
Let's get to it. — Phelim
Pandas — yes. People-to-people ties… not yet
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The good news: Panda diplomacy is alive and well, with a new generation of the cartoon-cute bears returning to U.S. zoos in the coming months.
The bad news: Efforts to restore U.S.-China people-to-people ties are struggling.
**A message from Peter Schweizer: In my 30 years as an investigative journalist, nothing even comes close to what I've uncovered in my new book Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans.**
President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping pledged in their meeting in November to increase in-person exchanges like cultural and business gatherings that withered when China's borders were sealed during the Covid pandemic. The plan: Revive shrunken U.S.-China flight connections to pave the way for "an expansion of educational, student, youth, cultural, sports, and business exchanges," a White House statement said.
U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns has said this sort of "people-to-people exchange" is essential to keep the relationship stable.
But it has been three months and flights are expected to get to only one-third of pre-pandemic levels by March 31. That reflects more than high ticket costs and flight routes that add hours to each trip in order to skirt Russian airspace.
There are also two big bureaucratic barriers that are kneecapping efforts to boost the numbers of U.S. and Chinese citizens — particularly students — to travel to each other's countries again.
That State Department travel advisory. Beijing has tried hard to entice Americans back to China by simplifying visa application procedures and announcing last month a Young Envoys Scholarship program aimed to bring 50,000 U.S. students to China over the next five years. That's ambitious — there are currently only around 1,000 U.S. students in China, according to data from the nonprofit U.S.-China Education Trust.
But the State Department's Level 3 "Reconsider Travel" advisory for China imposed in September 2020 warns of "arbitrary enforcement of local laws, including in relation to exit bans, and the risk of wrongful detentions." Those dangers are real. The nonprofit prisoner release advocacy organization Dui Hua Foundation estimates there are at least 200 unjustly imprisoned Americans in China and at least 30 who are subject to unlawful exit bans.
Universities are keen to reestablish summer language and cultural programs in China, "but they are being held back because parents don't want to send their kids into places where there are travel advisories," said Madelyn Ross, president of the U.S.-China Education Trust. That scarcity of U.S. students in China could put the U.S. at a long term disadvantage when it comes to managing the relationship in the future, Ross said.
Organizers of bilateral educational initiatives say that the travel advisory presents an inflated threat risk perception. "For the vast majority of American undergraduate students who might be contemplating going to China for language study the risk of an arbitrary detention or to exit ban is infinitesimal," said Neysun Mahboubi, director of the Penn Project on the Future of U.S.-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.
The State Department should adjust it to a less-severe level "as soon as possible," said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu. The State Department declined to comment.
Border entry hassles. China's Foreign Ministry and state media outlets have complained for months about allegedly abusive treatment of U.S.-visa bearing Chinese students by Customs and Border Protection agents at U.S. ports of entry. "Some of the students were interrogated, confined, forced into confession, induced and even deported without just cause," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said last month.
Beijing said the alleged mistreatment of Chinese students entering the U.S. is no accident. Instead it reflects the U.S. government "politicizing and weaponizing academic research, and overstretching the concept of national security to wantonly suppress and ill-treat Chinese students," the Chinese embassy in Washington said in an X post last month.
Supporters of U.S.-China educational exchanges say that rhetoric is justified and that it's a deterrent for Chinese students to come to the U.S. There are currently 290,000 Chinese students in the U.S., a 20 percent drop from pre-pandemic China lockdown levels, according to USCET data.
"It's happening to a bunch of Chinese students … It's an incredible impediment to people-to-people exchanges," said Stephen Orlins, president of the nonprofit National Committee on U.S.-China relations. Chinese students "don't know if it's going to happen to [them], so [they] conclude it's not worth going," to the U.S., Orlins said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that it doesn't single out Chinese citizens arriving in the U.S. for stricter scrutiny. "All international travelers attempting to enter the United States, including all U.S. citizens, are subject to examination," a CBP spokesperson said in a statement.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— BIDEN TARGETS CHINA'S PERSONAL DATA THREAT: Biden issued an Executive Order on Wednesday aimed to protect U.S. citizens' personal data from access by China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. Those countries buy or access via "commercial relationships of companies subject to their jurisdiction" Amercians' sensitive personal data and use it "to engage in malicious cyber-enabled activities, espionage, coercion, influence and blackmail," said the order's accompanying fact sheet. Beijing isn't pleased. "Without valid evidence, the U.S. jumped to an unwarranted conclusion and made groundless accusations against China," said Liu at the Chinese embassy in Washington.
— USTR RAPS CHINA'S 'NON-MARKET' POLICIES: U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai reiterated U.S. grievances about Beijing's manufacturing and trade policies at the World Trade Organization's Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. Tai expressed U.S.concerns to Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao about China's "excess capacity of steel on the global market and the ongoing imbalances caused by China's state-led, non-market approach to trade policy," USTR said in a statement. That came after China's Commerce Ministry accused USTR of ignoring "the great achievements made by China in fulfilling its WTO commitments" and rejecting as false "claims that China has created overcapacity,'" in a statement published Monday.
— HAWLEY TARGETS MCKINSEY'S CHINA TIES: Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is demanding that the consulting firm McKinsey & Company choose between the U.S. and China. Hawley accused the firm of "helping totalitarian foreign powers undermine America" by producing a book under contract from Beijing. That book "advocated undercutting non-Chinese companies through explicitly anticompetitive practices — such as subsidizing domestic internet companies' bid to 'eventually take control of the industry from foreign firms,'" Hawley said in a letter sent Tuesday to McKinsey's Global Managing Partner, Robert Sternfels.
Hawley wants McKinsey to provide full details of its work for Beijing and warned that its past record of Chinese government contracts will "inform whether the American government, or anyone else, can safely trust your company's services in the future." McKinsey pushed back. "The central government of China is not, and to our knowledge has never been, a client of McKinsey. … We reject efforts to use a document McKinsey didn't write and work we didn't do to call into question our 75-year history of supporting the U.S. government," a McKinsey spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday.
— BILATERAL SCIENCE DEAL NOT DEAD YET: A landmark 45-year-old pact on U.S.-China science cooperation elapsed on Tuesday, but efforts to renew it continue. The U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement first expired in August but the Biden administration opted for a six-month extension to "amend and strengthen" it. The Chinese embassy in Washington dodged comment by referring China Watcher to a statement on Tuesday by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning who said only that "the two sides have been in communication on the renewal of the agreement." Talks are ongoing for another six-month extension, said a State Department spokesperson. The individual was granted anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
— PELOSI STALWART STIVERS TAKES HK ROLE: Jonathan Stivers, former senior adviser on human rights and China to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is the new Washington-based U.S. director for the non-profit Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation. Stivers will lead the group's efforts to "to design, implement, and coordinate public education and advocacy campaigns," the foundation said in a statement.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
CHINA'S SPECIAL ENVOY TO TOUR UKRAINE, RUSSIA, EUROPE: Beijing will dispatch special envoy Li Hui, a former ambassador to Moscow, to visit Russia and Ukraine later this week in a bid to mediate the now two-year-old war, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters Wednesday. The trip will also take Li to Poland, Germany, France and the EU headquarters in Brussels.
"As the conflict drags on, the most urgent priority now is to restore peace," said Mao, who continued to avoid calling it a war. China, she added, hoped to build consensus to "pave the way for peace talks."
China's move comes amid Western concerns over Beijing's "no limit" partnership with Moscow. While Beijing claims to be not taking sides in the war, it has provided the Kremlin with a crucial economic lifeline. It also made no mention of the need for Russia to withdraw its troops from Ukrainian territories — a key demand from Kyiv and the West.
Mao also issued a veiled note of disapproval toward French President Emmanuel Macron who raised the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine, saying: "We call on all sides to build consensus and accumulate conditions for deescalation and cease-fire."
EUROPE'S TELCO LEADERS GEAR UP FOR HUAWEI ALTERNATIVE: Calls are mounting among European telecom leaders to speed up the development of a key Western alternative to Huawei reliance. The technology, called Open Radio Access Networks, or Open RAN, opens up the 5G supply chain by allowing alternative software and hardware makers to connect their products with large players' systems. "We need more options," said Santiago Tenorio, head of networks strategy at Vodafone, one of Europe's largest mobile operators. Radio access networks — the masts and antennas that connect to phones — take up "the biggest share of our wallet and with the least number of vendors," he added. Mathieu Pollet has this story from Barcelona, where the Mobile World Congress is under way.
TSMC TO START CONSTRUCTION IN GERMANY THIS YEAR: Taiwan's world-leading microchip giant TSMC will begin construction for its first European plant in Germany in the second half of the year, Taiwan-based DigiTimes reported on Tuesday.
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HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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A snapshot of the portrait of former Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang at the Chinese Embassy in Washington | Courtesy of China Watcher |
— QIN GANG'S GONE; LI SHANGFU'S REMOVED: The case of China's now-former Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, took a twist on Tuesday — he resigned from his position as deputy of the national legislature. An announcement in state media gave no details of Qin's status or location. He was last seen in public in Beijing on June 25. Chinese authorities have never given any explanation for Qin's downfall, fueling lurid speculation over his fate. Qin's bio page remains on the Foreign Ministry website — grab a souvenir screenshot before the censors move in!
Qin isn't the only disgraced former senior Chinese official to have a change in status this week — former Defense Minister Li Shangfu has been removed from the list of members of China's powerful Central Military Commission with no explanation, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday. Beijing fired Li in October, two months after he disappeared from public view for reasons unexplained.
— CHINA-RUSSIA TIES 'BEST IN HISTORY': Senior Russian and Chinese officials marked the anniversary of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine by toasting their tight bilateral ties. Russia-China relations are "at their best in history," China's Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong and Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Rudenko Andrey Yurevich said in a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement published Wednesday. With a nod to the Biden administration's Indo-Pacific Strategy, which aims to curb China's growing economic, diplomatic and military footprint in the region, the two officials pledged to "strengthen communication and coordination in Asia-Pacific affairs."
— MARSHALL ISLANDS: LEGISLATIVE LOGJAM HARMS TIES: Marshall Islands' President Hilda C. Heine has warned of the impact of congressional failure to pass legislation that would provide financial support for her country and fellow longtime U.S. Pacific island allies Palau and Micronesia. That delay in funding tied to the renewal last year of strategic agreements with those three countries means U.S. ties with those countries are "gradually being destroyed by party politics," Heine said on Tuesday, per The Guardian. Joseph Yun, who the State Department appointed as special presidential envoy to renew the strategic agreements in 2022, has warned that the legislative deadlock makes the three countries vulnerable to diplomatic inroads by Beijing.
TRANSLATING HONG KONG
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— DRAFT SECURITY LAW REAPS INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM: The public consultation period for Hong Kong's draft security law, Article 23, closed on Wednesday. The draft law — required under the territory's Basic Law, or constitution — targets "any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion" aimed at Beijing. The Hong Kong government says the law will "plug the relevant national security loopholes" in the existing national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 which equates peaceful protest with sedition.
Critics abound. The draft law neither aligns with international standards nor protects rights and freedoms, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron said in a statement Wednesday. The bill's "vague provisions will criminalize peaceful exercise of human rights & have a detrimental impact on human rights defenders," a United Nations' human rights expert, Mary Lawlor, said on X on Monday. The Hong Kong government insists that the law won't target "reasonable and genuine criticisms." That's cold comfort for Hong Kong pro-democracy activists. "Article 23 will mean whatever the CCP wants — the situation is bad, it's likely only going to get worse," said Yaqiu Wang, China research director at the nonprofit advocacy organization Freedom House, in an X post on Wednesday.
**Peek behind the scenes of EU digital and tech regulation with MEPs at the POLITICO Tech & AI Summit, happening this April 16 in Brussels. Get ready to discover news on Europe's future digital priorities with us and check out our available passes on our website**
HEADLINES
China Media Project: The risky business of Hong Kong journalism
The Diplomat: Why China doesn't have an opposition leader like Navalny
Foreign Policy: Beijing's post-election plan for Taiwan
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
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Bloomsbury Academic |
The Book: Advantage China: Agent of change in an era of global disruption
The Author: Jeremy Garlick is director of the J. Masaryk Centre of International Studies at the Prague University of Economics and Business
What is the most important takeaway from your book?
China is steadily gaining political and economic influence in the Global South while the U.S. and the EU have been slow to react. There needs to be not only more awareness of the fact that this is happening, but also of how China is doing it and why Beijing's overtures have been appealing to many developing countries.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
How unable or unwilling the U.S. and the EU are to learn from increasing Chinese global influence. They continue to use the same approach, thinking that their existing methods will serve even though they have not been working well.
It is misguided to think that you can convince potential partners in the developing world to follow your repeated strictures about human rights and democracy when you are not consistent in the example you set. And if nothing substantial is being offered — for instance, a program of infrastructure investment — and respect for the wishes of Global South countries is also lacking, how can the Global North expect the Global South to want to follow its model?
What is China's most powerful geostrategic advantage over the U.S., and how might the U.S. best counter that edge?
China is gaining partners but not necessarily friends. While Beijing is acquiring greater influence in key regions such as Central Asia and Africa, many countries still remain wary, even afraid of Chinese intentions. China still lacks soft power — the ability to attract. The U.S. should better exploit its considerable advantages in areas such as business and entertainment to draw more countries to its side. Washington also needs to offer a coherent investment program aimed at the Global South.
Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Mathieu Pollet and digital producers Tara Gnewikow and Fiona Lally.
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 pkine@politico.com and slau@politico.eu.
**A message from Peter Schweizer: It's often said that China is in a cold war with America. The reality is far worse: the war is hot, the body count is one-sided, and America's elite are complicit. My new book Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye While China Kills Americans exposes corruption on both sides of the aisle and corporate malfeasance from America's financial behemoths. As is my investigative trademark, Blood Money is packed with hard evidence and relies on zero unnamed sources. You'll be hearing about these revelations for months to come. Get your copy to learn about tomorrow's headlines today.**
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