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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
With help from Jonathan Lemire
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we unpack President Joe Biden's summit with Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and preview how South China Sea tensions with China will loom large in today's U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral meeting. And we profile a book that warns that Beijing's "wolf warrior" diplomatic posture "isn't going to disappear completely anytime soon."
Let's get to it. — Phelim.
Biden toasts U.S.-Japan ties at summit with Kishida
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U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at an event Tokyo in May 2022. | Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images |
President Joe Biden and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida unveiled an upgrade in bilateral defense and security cooperation at their summit on Wednesday aimed to deter potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific.
Those initiatives include a new air missile network system that they'll develop with Australia, an upcoming military exercise in the Indo-Pacific that will include U.K. forces and an agreement to pursue U.S.-Japan co-production of advanced air defense missiles.
Biden said the U.S., Australia and the U.K. are exploring how to include Japan in the "Pillar 2" component of the AUKUS nuclear submarine co-production partnership. "Pillar 2" deals with joint development of advanced military technology in areas such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and quantum computing.
That possibility raised hackles in Beijing. "Japan needs to seriously reflect on its history of aggression, stop its involvement in small military and security groupings and truly embark on a path to peaceful development," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Tuesday in response to a question about Japan's possible AUKUS involvement.
Biden tried to distance the expansion of bilateral defense ties from China's growing assertiveness in the region. "It's not aimed at any one nation or a threat to the region," Biden said. Kishida said the quiet part out loud by referencing Taiwan and the two leaders' opposition to "unilateral attempts to change status quo by force or coercion" and said that the U.S. and Japan "will continue to respond to challenges concerning China through close coordination."
Kishida's drive to expand Japan's regional security role reflects how "all of this pressure from China has really stepped up and that has shifted [Japanese] public opinion in a way that has been significant and profound," said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), former U.S. ambassador to Japan.
China's leader Xi Jinping chose to mark the day of the summit by talking up "reunification" with Taiwan in a meeting with Taiwan's former president — and stalwart pro-unification advocate — Ma Ying-jeou. That piece of political theater aimed to send Biden and Kishida the message that Beijing's top priority remains taking control of Taiwan regardless of U.S. outreach to Tokyo.
Next stop: U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral
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The Chinese navy carry out military drills in the South China Sea. | AFP via Getty Images |
Biden and Kishida will sit down with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. today in Washington for a trilateral meeting to hammer out coordinated responses to Beijing's increasing belligerence in the South China Sea.
Beijing's on the menu. China's increasingly dangerous incursions in Philippine waters "is one of the reasons for the meeting because we are very concerned about what we've been seeing," said a senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity prior to the summit. Marcos "is coming under pressure from the PRC's aggressive tactics … what you'll see is a demonstration of support and resolve" from Biden and Kishida, the official said.
Sea of discontent. Over the past year, China has pushed its claim to the region with Coast Guard vessels that pummeled Philippine ships with water cannons, causing a collision between opposing ships that injured several Filipino sailors. That prompted the State Department to publicly remind China that the U.S.-Philippine Mutual Defense Treaty applies to these contested waters. Beijing has responded by blaming the U.S. for stoking tensions in the region. The U.S. military is "very, very concerned" about China's "dangerous, illegal and destabilizing" actions in the region," Indo-Pacific Command chief Adm. John Aquilino said Tuesday.
Marcos feels the heat. China's repeated incursions have put pressure on Marcos back home. "This brazen display of violence has to end — the summit should show that a Japan-Philippines-US alliance can be a credible deterrent to China's aggression," Philippine Sen. Risa Hontiveros of the opposition Citizens' Action Party told China Watcher.
Crowded waterways. Biden and Kishida will convey their resolve to deter Chinese adventurism in the South China Sea with more joint military patrols similar to the U.S.-Australia-Japan-Philippines exercise that occurred on Sunday, said a second senior administration official. The three countries will also convene their first trilateral Coast Guard patrol later this year, the official said.
No silver bullet. The joint plans are unlikely to change China's behavior overnight, if at all. Instead, "it's just one more piece of a broader strategy of imposing costs on China and letting them know this isn't going to be easy for [Beijing] to just take over and dominate" the region, said Scot Marciel, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department.
Beijing smells trouble. "We oppose cobbling together exclusive groupings and stoking bloc confrontation in the region," Mao at the Chinese Foreign Ministry said of the trilateral on Monday.
LISTEN UP: The Chinese disinformation network known as Spamouflage has never gotten much traction on social media. Then, a small number of accounts started pretending to be American. On the POLITICO Tech podcast, senior analyst Elise Thomas from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tells host Steven Overly how pro-Trump and anti-Biden tweets from a group with ties to the Chinese Communist Party may signal deeper concerns about 2024 election interference. Tune into it here.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— FIRST IN CHINA WATCHER: LAWMAKERS PUSH CHINESE TRANSLATION SERVICE BILL: Lawmakers will introduce a bipartisan bill later today that will require the federal government to create and fund an entity to translate into English important open-source materials from China, Russia and other countries of strategic interest. Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) and Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), outgoing chair of the House Select Committee on China, and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) are backing the creation of the Open Translation Center as both a public and government resource as well as a national security imperative. The U.S. "can't afford to be in a position where our competitors know more about us than we know about them … putting us at a strategic disadvantage," Castro said in a statement.
— CAMPBELL: CHINA'S RUSSIA AID THREATENS EUROPE: Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said the Biden administration has warned Beijing that its ongoing assistance in rebuilding Russia's industrial base threatens Europe and will have grave consequences for U.S.-China ties. "We have told China directly that if this continues, it will have an impact on the U.S. China relationship — we will not lie and say everything's fine," Campbell said at a National Committee on U.S. China Relations event on Tuesday.
If future Russian offensives allow Moscow to take more of Ukraine's territory, "that will alter the balance of power in Europe in ways that are frankly unacceptable from our perspective and we will see this not as just a Russian unique set of activities but a conjoined set of activities backed by China but also North Korea," Campbell said. The Chinese embassy defended what it called "normal cooperation" with Russia. "Such cooperation should not come under external interference or constraint —China will not accept the accusation and pressuring," Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in response to Campbell's warning. .
— CHINESE EMBASSY ASSAILS BORDER HASSLES, AGAIN: The Chinese embassy in Washington issued a fresh attack on what it says are unwarranted hassles, interrogations and deportations of Chinese "students and scholars" entering the U.S. "Nearly 300 Chinese citizens have been deported by the U.S. since July 2021, including more than 70 Chinese students with legal and valid materials," the Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu said in a statement Tuesday. Liu offered no comparative data regarding deportations in the years prior to 2021. The Department of Homeland Security didn't respond to a request for comment.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
CHINA HITS OUT AT EU OVER WIND TURBINE PROBE: China's Foreign Ministry issued a harsh reply to the EU's decision to curb China's green tech exports, most recently with an anti-subsidy probe into Chinese wind turbine installations in Europe (which China Watcher reported Tuesday).
"Many in the world are deeply unsettled by the EU's rising protectionist tendency. China is highly concerned over the EU's discriminatory actions against Chinese companies and even the entire industries," Mao at the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. "We hope the EU will not keep stressing the importance of fighting climate change on the one hand and yet damage the global efforts to deal with the issue on the other," Mao said, adding that the EU should "observe WTO rules and market principles."
U.K.'S LEAD CHINA CRITIC ON GENETIC DATA: The British government should impose restrictions on Chinese access to genetic data, a lead China critic in the Parliament told China Watcher. Iain Duncan Smith, formerly Conservative Party chair and now a leading lawmaker in the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, warned that Chinese genomics giant BGI Group could be a danger to the U.K.'s interests. "The U.K.'s position in this debate is a mess. Last year, the government admitted BGI was a 'danger point' in the U.K.'s science and technology ecosystem, yet it continues to allow BGI access to our genomics sector," Duncan Smith said. BGI, which has denied links with the Chinese government, has been blacklisted by the United States.
HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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— FIRST IN CHINA WATCHER: ACTIVISTS ASSAIL HK OFFICIAL'S U.S. VISIT: The visit to the U.S. this week of Hong Kong's Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, Chris Hui, has drawn fire from U.S.-based Hong Kong pro-democracy activists. Hui's visit is an attempt by Hong Kong's government "to normalize relations, legitimize itself and whitewash the current crackdown in Hong Kong," says a joint statement from twenty groups including Hong Kong Democracy Council and the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation — to be released later today.
Hui's trip comes just weeks after Hong Kong's government passed a new security law that legal experts warn will criminalize peaceful protest in the territory (details dished in this edition of China Watcher). That didn't prevent Hui from landing meetings with officials including New York Federal Reserve Bank CEO John Williams and the New York Stock Exchange vice president Chris Taylor, according to a Hong Kong government statement on Tuesday.
— XI REAFFIRMS CHINA-RUSSIA TIES: Xi Jinping used the occasion of a visit to Beijing by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to reaffirm the "no limits" partnership between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Xi made no mention of Putin's war on Ukraine, but praised "neighboring countries living in harmony" and expressed support for "the Russian side in combating terrorism and maintaining social security and stability" according to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement Tuesday.
— BEIJING BASHES YELLEN'S CONCERNS: The Chinese government went out of its way to publicly dismiss Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's concerns about the potential impact of Chinese industrial overcapacity on the U.S. economy. "To politicize overcapacity or any other economic and trade issue and arbitrarily link them to security goes against the law of economics and harms one's own industries and the stability of the global economy," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao said Tuesday as Yellen returned home from several days of meetings with China's senior leadership.
— REPORT: CHINESE FISHERS WREAK OCEAN HAVOC: China's fishing fleet plying the southwest Indian Ocean is a menace to fish and people alike, according to a report published Thursday by the nonprofit advocacy group the Environmental Justice Foundation. "Illegal fishing and human rights abuses were found to be commonplace on Chinese vessels in the [region], including routine shark finning, the deliberate capture and/or injury of vulnerable marine megafauna, and crews suffering from physical violence, abusive working and living conditions, intimidation and threats," said the report. "China is a responsible country and deeply committed to science-based conservation and sustainable use of international fisheries resources," Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu said in response.
TRANSLATING TIKTOK
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Silicon valley's TikTok nemesis says the app has "lost the war of ideas"
A key behind-the-scenes driver of the anti-TikTok bill that passed the House last month is Jacob Helberg. The bill will compel TikTok's Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, to either sell the app to a U.S. buyer or take it off the U.S. market. Helberg is a senior policy adviser to Palantir Technologies' CEO Alex Karp and sits on the congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Helberg is widely credited with rallying the Silicon Valley tech sector against TikTok and took that coalition's support to lobby House lawmakers over the past year. China Watcher quizzed Helberg on the outlook for TikTok as some in the Senate call for slower deliberation on a version of last month's House bill.
In a statement last month, TikTok described the House bill as "a ban" on the app and urged the Senate to throw it out in the interests of the "170 million Americans who use our service."
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What's up with the TikTok bill in the Senate?
My main concern with the Senate is the introduction of a poison pill in the bill. It's clear that the Senate may try to make amendments and include provisions that are unpassable. The bill needs to stay simple and narrow — it has to be a scalpel, not a hammer. This bill — which is narrowly focused on TikTok — cannot become a sweeping federal privacy bill. Those are two different issues.
What happens If the Senate TikTok bill flounders?
If anything happens to this Senate bill, it will be a Pyrrhic victory for TikTok. Tiktok has been effective over the last 18 months at winning small tactical battles — they have successfully torpedoed the Restrict Act and delayed policy action on a number of different fronts. But they've lost the bigger war of ideas. Regardless of what happens to this bill, TikTok will continue to be under repeated scrutiny and repeated attack in Washington.
HEADLINES
The Saturday Paper: How it feels to live under surveillance by China
Washington Post: The new border fearmongering: China is 'building an army' in the U.S.
World Politics Review: For China's economy, excess capacity is a feature, not a bug
Foreign Affairs: Putin and Xi's unholy alliance: Why the West won't be able to drive a wedge between Russia and China
HEADS UP
— BLINKEN CHINA-BOUND 'SOON': Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be traveling to China hot on the heels of Yellen's visit which ended earlier this week. Blinken's visit "will be coming up soon and we think this will be a major visit," Deputy Secretary of State Campbell said at a National Committee on U.S. China Relations event on Tuesday. Blinken's visit will "display other elements of the relationship in terms of education, business, and we expect him to see the senior leaders as well," Campbell said.
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
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Max12Max, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
The Book: China's Rising Foreign Ministry: Practices and Representations of Assertive Diplomacy
The Author: Dylan Loh is an assistant professor of public policy and global affairs at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most important takeaway from your book?
The importance and influence of China's diplomats and its foreign ministry has increased both externally and internally under Xi Jinping. It actually has some autonomy to influence policy. It cannot act in a way that is not aligned with top leaders' wishes but beyond this, the foreign ministry has a number of surprising tools that enable diplomats to sanction, cajole and/or arm-twist other countries.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
That the People's Liberation Army has less influence and power over China's foreign ministry than generally assumed. Instead, the PLA is ceding considerable coordinating, and practical functions to the foreign ministry. That gives MOFA more influence and far greater say in management of tense relations in areas such as the South China Sea or in Beijing's border disputes with India.
What are the implications of a "rising foreign ministry" in Beijing for bilateral efforts to cool the rancor in U.S.-China relations?
Assertive diplomacy alone won't be decisive in either heating up or cooling down the U.S-China relationship. There are bigger structural forces at play as well — the fraying international order, persistent and intensified U.S-China competition. But the style of diplomacy we see from China certainly plays a role in the overall relationship. Right now, we are seeing greater efforts by Beijing to repair its relationship with the U.S., so Chinese diplomats have been a little bit less "wolf-warrior"-like. But that tendency isn't going to disappear completely anytime soon.
Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.
Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Jonathan Lemire, Steven Overly 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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