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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we examine Beijing's key messaging on its relations with the U.S. from this week's annual meeting of China's legislature, scoop an initiative to slap a State Department "Do Not Travel" advisory on Xinjiang and unpack Congress' move to — finally — try to ban TikTok from U.S. app stores. And with Monday marking the fourth anniversary of the start of the Covid pandemic, we profile a book that argues that China's response to the emergence of Covid in Wuhan, China, in late 2019 reflected a "stunning case of epidemiological tunnel vision."
Let's get to it. — Phelim
Wang Yi decries "unfathomable absurdity" of U.S. sanctions
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Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi speaking at the 2023 Munich Security Conference | Johannes Simon/Getty Images |
China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi briefed the media Thursday in Beijing on China's view of its relations with the rest of the world. Wang's press conference on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, laid out Chinese leader Xi Jinping's U.S.-China policy trajectory in 2024.
Wang said that U.S.-China relations had improved since Xi met with President Joe Biden in San Francisco in November. But he complained that "U.S. misperceptions toward China continue and U.S. promises are not truly fulfilled."
Here are the five key takeaways from Wang's briefing:
U.S. sanctions rankle. Wang accused the U.S. of "devising various tactics to suppress China" and said that Biden administration sanctions on Chinese entities are "reaching bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity." Wang hinted that despite a Biden-Xi agreement to convene bilateral talks on the risks of artificial intelligence, Beijing suspects the U.S. seeks to stifle China's AI development efforts. "A tendency to create small yards, high fences in AI development would result in mistakes with historical consequences…and undercut humanity’s ability to tackle risks and challenges," Wang said.
The Taiwan friction point. Wang predictably reiterated Beijing's claim to the self-governing island and warned that China "will never allow Taiwan to be separated from our motherland." He took aim at Taiwan's allies by cautioning that those who "support Taiwan independence will get burned for playing with fire."
Russia-China ties are rock solid. Wang signaled no daylight between Beijing and Moscow despite Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine. He noted that "Russian natural gas is fueling numerous Chinese homes and Chinese-made automobiles are running on Russian roads." Wang said that "major countries should not seek confrontation" with either Russia or China and warned that "theCold War should not be allowed to come back."
South China Sea tensions will persist. Wang made clear that Beijing isn't about to retreat from its ongoing campaign of harassment of Philippine vessels in Manila's territorial waters. Without mentioning the Philippines, he said China would continue to resist "unwarranted provocation" in the region. And with what could be seen as a nod to the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty, he urged "certain countries outside the region not to make provocations, pick sides, and stir up trouble and problems in the South China Sea."
Expect no help with Ukraine and Gaza. Wang called the suffering of Gaza's civilian population "a tragedy for humanity and a disgrace for human civilization." But beyond reiterating support for the two-state solution, Wang offered no assistance in dealing with Gaza's worsening humanitarian crisis. Likewise with Ukraine. Wang touted China's support for an "international peace conference recognized by both Russia and Ukraine," but gave no signal that Beijing is willing to pressure Moscow to stop the bloodshed.
Premier Li's underwhelming Work Report
The other most-watched event at the National People's Congress this week was Premier Li Qiang's delivery of his annual Work Report on Tuesday. It's both a self-assessment of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's performance in the previous year and an indicator of policy direction for 2024.
The 39-page document was heavy on jargon, questionable economic data and praise for Xi, but light on substantive indications for how Beijing will navigate the twin headwinds of a sputtering economy and fraught relations with Washington.
The unexplained cancellation of the premier's press conference — an annual tradition since 1993 — meant there was no opportunity for the media to try to grill Li for specifics.
That decision is "emblematic of a regime that places greater emphasis on Xi" over other members of the CCP's senior leadership, said Nirav Patel, former deputy assistant secretary of State in the Obama administration and now the CEO of the U.S.-based Asia Group consultancy.
The report projected economic growth of "around 5 percent" in 2024, referenced CCP opposition to Taiwan independence and said China needs to ensure that Hong Kong is governed by "patriots."
"I wouldn't say it's a nothing burger, but I don't think that there's very much here to take away for signs of any inflection in Chinese foreign policy," Jessica Chen Weiss, former senior adviser to the State Department's policy planning staff, said at an Asia Society Policy Institute briefing on Wednesday.
Beijing's plan to increase military spending by 7.2 percent this year — matching that of 2023 — did raise some eyebrows. "The fact that they're willing to admit year after year that they're increasing their [armed forces] budget by a greater percentage than their GDP is growing basically says that the Deng Xiaoping years of 'hide and bide' are slowly going away," said Ivan Kanapathy, former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council from March 2018 to July 2021.
He called it " a clear intentional signal," of the CCP's emphasis on military might.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— FIRST IN CHINA WATCHER: LAWMAKERS URGE TOUGHER TRAVEL WARNING FOR XINJIANG: The Congressional Executive Commission on China wants the State Department to impose its most severe travel advisory — "Level Four Do Not Travel" to China's troubled Xinjiang region. State currently applies a Level 3 "Reconsider Travel" advisory to China. A failure to raise the travel risk rating for Xinjiang "may place Americans traveling to the region at undue risk … [and] also risks endorsing the whitewashing of atrocity crimes and the continuing persecution of Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims," commission Chair Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Co-Chair Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken sent on Wednesday.
Smith and Merkley also sent letters to three travel firms — Wild Frontiers Adventure Travel Ltd., Geographic Expeditions, Inc. and Abercrombie & Kent USA LLC — urging them to "cease operations of tours to [Xinjiang] until the conditions that led to the genocide determination by the U.S. Secretary of State … no longer remain." Specific travel destinations are "never meant as an endorsement of that government's policies or practices," Geographic Expeditions, Inc. said in a statement. Neither of the other two firms responded to a request for comment.
— DOJ BUSTS AI-THIEVING GOOGLE ENGINEER: The Department of Justice has charged a former Google engineer with stealing the firm's "cutting edge" artificial intelligence innovations. The suspect, a Chinese citizen named Linwei Ding, allegedly "stole artificial intelligence-related trade secrets from Google while secretly working for two companies based in China," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement on Wednesday. POLITICO's Josh Gerstein has the full story here.
— STATE SLAMS CHINA'S NAUTICAL 'DANGEROUS MANEUVERS': The State Department is criticizing what it calls aggressive tactics by Chinese Coast Guard units in Philippine waters in the South China Sea. Chinese vessels employed "dangerous maneuvers and water cannons" against Philippine ships on a March 5 resupply mission to the grounded Philippine naval vessel Sierra Madre, injuring several Filipino sailors, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Wednesday. His statement included a reminder that the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty "extends to armed attacks on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft — including those of its Coast Guard — anywhere in the South China Sea."
The State Department message triggered Beijing. Miller's statement "disregards the fact and confuses right with wrong," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Wednesday.
— LAWMAKERS: LET'S MAKE TIKTOK TOAST: A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers introduced a bill on Tuesday that will ban TikTok and other software from Beijing-linked internet technology company ByteDance. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act will block U.S. users from accessing TikTok "unless the application severs ties to entities like ByteDance that are subject to the control of a foreign adversary," said a joint statement by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chair of the House Select Committee on China and committee ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), who introduced the bill. "We want to ensure divestment, not censorship. If an entity other than a CCP-controlled entity owns TikTok, Americans can still share whatever content they like, no matter how bad the dance moves may be," Gallagher told reporters on Wednesday.
The bill won praise from Brendan Carr, senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission. The legislation will "definitively resolve the serious national security threats that TikTok poses by banning the app or requiring that it genuinely sever ties to the CCP," Carr said in a statement on Tuesday. TikTok is ticked-off. "This bill is an outright ban of TikTok, no matter how much the authors try to disguise it. This legislation will trample the First Amendment rights of 170 million Americans and deprive 5 million small businesses of a platform they rely on to grow and create jobs," the company said in a post on X on Tuesday.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
CHINA'S SPECIAL ENVOY TOURS EUROPE: EU officials found themselves listening to Russia's propaganda during a meeting on Monday with Li Hui, the Chinese special envoy for Russia and Ukraine, according to a European official granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the closed-door discussion. Li, fresh from a visit to Moscow, told his EU interlocutors that Russia was winning the war over Ukraine, suggesting that it would make sense for the EU to hold talks with the Kremlin before Ukraine's ultimate defeat, the official told China Watcher.
The EU officials shot back, saying it would be non-negotiable for European countries to boost support for Kyiv. "I stressed EU unrelenting support for [Ukraine] and urged China to refrain from supporting Russia's illegal war of aggression, which is an existential issue for [the EU]," the EU's top Asia diplomat Niclas Kvarnström wrote on X after the meeting with Li.
EU LAWMAKERS SIGN OFF ON FORCED LABOR RULES: EU lawmakers and government representatives agreed on Tuesday to back a proposed ban on imports made by forced labor, paving the way for a final vote in the European Parliament and the 27 member countries. Dutch lawmaker Samira Rafaela, who co-leads work on the file, told POLITICO's Antonia Zimmermann that the law "is ground breaking in the field of human rights." Under the new rules, the 27 EU countries' national authorities, such as customs agencies, would be able to remove from their market any products that are found to have been made using forced labor. Antonia's full story is available to POLITICO Pro Europe subscribers.
EU STEPS UP PLANS TO HIT CHINESE E-CARS: The EU will register any Chinese electric vehicles arriving on European shores from today, in what industry insiders believe is a preparatory move to slap retroactive duties if these cars are found to have benefited from Chinese state subsidies after an investigation later this year. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said in a legal note that it "has at its disposal sufficient evidence tending to show that imports of the product concerned from the PRC are being subsidized," in the forms of direct funding, forgone government revenue or government discount for goods or services. It also alleged "critical circumstances in the form of massive imports in a relatively short period," adding that more than 177,000 Chinese electric vehicles were sold to the EU market in just four months leading to January.
**Discover POLITICO Tech & AI Summit and join us on April 16 onsite in Brussels! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to hear from Margrethe Vestager. Apply for the Afternoon pass today, or register to follow the summit online**
HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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— EVASIVE PANDA CRASHES TIBETAN FESTIVAL: An allegedly Beijing-aligned hacking group has been caught waging a cyberattack that piggybacked on one of Tibet's biggest religious celebrations last month, POLITICO's Joseph Gedeon writes in. The Evasive Panda hacking crew attacked the website for the annual Monlam Festival, a major Buddhist celebration held in India that draws Tibetans from around the world, the cybersecurity firm ESET said in a research report published today. The timing suggests the hackers sought to target activists and organizations in the Tibetan diaspora that visited the site. ESET also found that Evasive Panda compromised the software pipeline for some Tibetan translation apps, inserting malicious code into program installers to bolster the reach of the surveillance effort.
Asked for comment, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said "I'm not aware of the specifics you mentioned…[but] the so-called claim that 'Beijing-aligned cybercrime organization' [was to blame] is completely fabricated."
— BEIJING BRISTLES AT UN RIGHTS CRITICISM: Volker Türk, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, has triggered Beijing by criticizing Chinese policies in Xinjiang and Tibet. In a speech in Geneva on Monday, Türk urged Chinese authorities "to implement the recommendations made by my office and other human rights bodies in relation to laws, policies and practices that violate fundamental rights, including in the Xinjiang and Tibet regions." Beijing pushed back. Those two regions enjoy "social stability, economic growth, solidarity among all ethnic groups and harmony among various religious beliefs, and the people there are living a happy life," the Foreign Ministry's Mao said on Tuesday.
— TAIWAN RUSHES TO REINFORCE TUVALU TIES: Taiwan has dispatched a senior diplomat to the Pacific island country of Tuvalu to shore up ties amid Beijing's efforts to woo Taipei's regional diplomatic allies. The self-governing island's deputy minister of foreign affairs, Tien Chung-kwang, was due to arrive in Tuvalu on Wednesday to participate in "a series of celebrations in the wake of the appointment of Feleti Teo as Tuvalu's new prime minister," Taiwanese state media reported Tuesday. Tien will meet with Tuvalu's Foreign Minister Paulson Panapa "to exchange views on cooperation programs between the two countries," Taiwan's foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Tien's mission reflects Taipei's concerns about the fragility of those ties after Tuvalu's ambassador to Taiwan announced in January that his country was considering switching diplomatic recognition to China. Days prior, Nauru — another longtime Taiwan ally in the region — dropped its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in favor of Beijing. That reduced the number of countries with formal ties to the self-governing island to 12.
— INDIAN BASE TARGETS BEIJING'S MALDIVES ALLIANCE: India has responded to Beijing's new military ties with Maldives by opening a naval base just 78 miles from the island country. India officially opened the base on Wednesday, just two days after Maldives announced a new military alliance with Beijing. The Indian Navy said the base is for "extending capacity building, operational reach and sustenance in the region," Reuters reported Wednesday. The Maldives inked a deal with Beijing on "provision of military assistance gratis to the Republic of Maldives, fostering stronger bilateral ties," the Maldives Defense Ministry said in an X post on Monday. That follows the Maldives ordering India in January to withdraw its military personnel deployed to the country by March 15.
HEADLINES
Al Jazeera: Money, power and the peril of courting Chinese nationalism
Taipei Times: Lessons from the war in Ukraine
The Japan Times: Young Hong Kongers who defied Xi are now partying in China
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
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Brady McNamara/Xinhua/Alamy Live News/Chinatopix via AP |
The Book: Wuhan: How the Covid-19 outbreak in China spiraled out of control
The Author: Dali L. Yang is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most important takeaway from your book?
With strong scientific capabilities and experience with SARS and other emerging infectious diseases, China was remarkably prepared to respond to the coronavirus outbreak. By the time the Chinese health authorities officially announced the verification of the novel coronavirus around January 9-10, 2020, key decision makers thought they had contained the outbreak.
They couldn't have been more wrong, with enormous consequences for Wuhan, the rest of China and beyond.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
The paralysis of China's health emergency response system. Multiple channels of epidemic information were blocked. There was a glaring leadership vacuum. China's Centers for Disease Control senior leadership was considerably late in reviewing epidemiological data on cases admitted prior to January 3, 2020, and in recognizing the importance of cases unconnected to Wuhan's Huanan market [the suspected origin of Covid] as indications of viral spread. It was a stunning case of epidemiological tunnel vision.
Did Beijing repeat any of the mistakes of the SARS outbreak in 2003, and what's the risk of these issues recurring if/when another deadly pathogen emerges in China?
In the aftermath of SARS, China set up a national online disease reporting system to better respond to infectious disease outbreaks. This system failed to function as expected for the submission of early cases in December 2019 and early January 2020.
They also played down the severity of the outbreak publicly and didn't trust the public with information about the novel coronavirus and the SARS-like symptoms of patients infected with the coronavirus.
Should another deadly pathogen emerge in China, a lot will depend on the nature of the pathogen as well as whether there is good leadership and judgment to effectively make use of China's capabilities to handle the outbreak.
Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.
Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Josh Gerstein, Joseph Gedeon, Antonia Zimmermann 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.
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