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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we look at President Joe Biden's China policy swan song options for his final months in office; parse Beijing's shortfalls in curbing chemical exports fueling the U.S. fentanyl crisis and examine the geostrategic implications of unfilled U.S. ambassadorial slots. And we profile a book that argues that perceptions that the past era of U.S.-China economic engagement created a Chinese national security threat are "wrong-headed and inaccurate."
Let's get to it. — Phelim.
Programming note: We'll be off for the next two weeks but we'll be back in your inboxes on Tuesday August 20.
BIDEN’S CHINA POLICY LEGACY LAP
U.S. President Joe Biden meets with China’s President Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the White House in 2021 | MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images |
President Joe Biden has five months to put final touches on his legacy of managing U.S.-China ties — what Secretary of State Antony Blinken calls the U.S.' "most consequential relationship."
Don't expect major breakthroughs — Beijing may decide to wait out the results of the November presidential election. But there's room for modest initiatives before Biden leaves office on Jan. 6, 2025. Here are some of the options we see:
Talk to Xi. Biden's next — and likely last — chance for a one-on-one with Chinese leader Xi Jinping will be in November, post-election, at the APEC meeting in Lima and the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro. Biden could use those venues for a sideline meeting with Xi to talk him through the implications of the election result, regardless of who wins.
Biden can "share his insights on the new president, post-election politics, and offer his advice on do's and don'ts — helping the Chinese to avoid mistakes and perhaps helping them to recognize more constructive approaches," said Danny Russel, former assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Get out there. A Biden farewell tour of friendly Indo-Pacific countries would lend symbolic support to the leaders of countries including Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines who have drawn closer to the U.S. — and further from Beijing — during his presidency. That would give Biden a platform to showcase the AUKUS agreement his administration brokered with the United Kingdom and the U.S. to help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines aimed to offset China's rapidly growing naval power.
Bonus points for Biden if he points Air Force One toward friendly Pacific Island countries including Tuvalu, Palau and Papua New Guinea that are in the crosshairs of intense U.S.-China rivalry for influence.
"What better way to show the Pacific islands really do matter … than have the president visit the Pacific before he leaves office," said John T. Hennessey-Niland, former U.S. ambassador to Palau.
Sound off on Taiwan. As he heads for the door, Biden could consider hardening U.S. messaging about Taiwan and how the U.S. references ongoing military harassment across the Taiwan Strait that began in 2022.
"Every large-scale [Chinese] entry event into Taiwan's air and maritime space that we let pass without noting publicly is one where we’ve ceded some space to China to control the narrative," said Lauren Dickey, former acting director for Taiwan at the Pentagon.
Get cracking on crisis communications. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Adm. Dong Jun in May resulted in a commitment to convene a military "crisis-communications working group by the end of the year," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Those worried about a Trump presidency want Biden to get cracking on that right away. Biden should make the creation of that working group a priority "because with the prospect of Trump coming in, we could be facing very rapid and very destabilizing shocks to the relationship," argued Jake Werner, acting director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute think tank.
There are some in Beijing who are equally eager to get crisis comms going. Military crisis communications "are critically important," said retired Snr. Col. Zhou Bo, a Chinese military expert and a senior fellow at Tsinghua University's Center for International Security. The agreement to establish them is "one of the achievements by the Biden administration [so] he should have all reason to see it realized," Zhou said.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— CHINA'S ONGOING EXPORTS OF FENTANYL CHEMICALS: Administration efforts to curb Chinese imports of precursor chemicals that Mexican cartels process into fentanyl have had mixed results. Despite U.S. pressure on China to curb illicit financing for fentanyl producers, shut down precursor chemical producers and shutter online marketing sites for precursor chemicals, "there continues to be a significant supply of precursor chemicals out of the PRC," a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday in a briefing about Biden's new national security memorandum aimed to disrupt international fentanyl supply chains. That failure will top the agenda of meetings with a visiting delegation of Chinese officials on U.S.-China counternarcotics cooperation that landed in Washington on Wednesday, the official said.
That official ruffled feathers on Capitol Hill by dismissing assertions by the House Select Committee on China in April that Beijing is subsidizing exports of fentanyl and fentanyl chemical precursors. "We do not have any information to support that finding," the official said.
In response, a committee spokesperson said the committee "has briefed the National Security Council and dozens of other administration officials on the evidence on a bipartisan basis, and officials from multiple executive branch agencies have confirmed that they have no information to contradict the evidence produced." The individual was granted anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak on record about this issue.
— LAWMAKERS: IOC, WADA ARE CCP 'CO-CONSPIRATORS': A bipartisan group of lawmakers took verbal cudgels to the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency for perceived failures to provide accountability for Chinese Olympic athletes implicated in a doping scandal at the 2021 Tokyo Games. Those include committee member pressure on organizers of the 2034 Salt Lake City Olympics to scuttle a Department of Justice probe into that scandal. "We may not be able to bring the CCP officials responsible for these crimes to justice but we can hold their foreign co-conspirators accountable," John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the China Select Committee, told a press briefing Tuesday.
Moolenaar and a group of fellow lawmakers including committee ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) and Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) unveiled legislation at that briefing that would empower the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy to withhold U.S. funding to WADA "until we are confident that a fair and impartial review is done and that our athletes are competing on a fair on an even playing field," Van Hollen told reporters. Despite the bill's bipartisan backing, the polarization on Capitol Hill in the run-up to a hotly-contested presidential election makes it unlikely the bill will pass in this Congress. WADA responded by calling the legislation "politicization of anti-doping" and warned it "does not benefit athletes from the U.S. or anywhere else," in a statement on Wednesday. The IOC didn't respond to a request for comment.
— CARDIN: U.S. DIPLOMAT DEFICIT BENEFITS BEIJING: The U.S. is yielding diplomatic influence to China by failing to approve and deploy ambassadors to countries where China already has an established diplomatic presence, Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned Tuesday. "There are more than 20 countries where China has an ambassador in place and the United States does not. That means we are not playing on a level playing field. That means we are giving up a strategic ability to compete in those countries," Cardin said at a committee hearing. Senate rules allow for any single senator to delay or block the approval of ambassador nominees. That's a tactic Republican lawmakers have deployed for the past year by conditioning approval of ambassadors in exchange for Democrats passing GOP policy initiatives. Meanwhile "China's ambassadors are pressing the flesh, cutting deals, getting their narrative out in local media outlets," Cardin argued.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
— GERMANY SUMMONS CHINESE AMBASSADOR OVER CYBERATTACK: The German Interior Ministry announced Wednesday that the Chinese state was behind a "serious" cyberattack on the country's national mapping agency, BKG, in 2021 and summoned the Chinese ambassador to the Foreign Ministry, Antoaneta Roussi reports. "This severe cyberattack on a federal agency shows how great the danger is from Chinese cyberattacks and espionage," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said in a statement.
— EU TO CALL ON CHINA TO FUND CLIMATE ACTION AT COP29: The European Union plans to pressure emerging economies such as China to contribute funding for climate action in developing nations at global negotiations in November, according to a document seen by POLITICO's Zia Weise. In the document, dated Jul. 26, the EU calls for an expansion of the target's "contributor base" reflecting the "evolving nature of respective capabilities" since the 1990s. The statement does not mention any specific country, but European diplomats and officials have sought to push Beijing in particular to contribute funding, given China is the world's second-largest economy but also the top emitter of planet-warming greenhouse gasses.
— TSMC TO BREAK GROUND IN GERMANY: The Taiwanese microchip manufacturer TSMC will start work on its long-awaited German factory in just a couple of weeks, Pieter Haeck writes in. A groundbreaking ceremony for the new €10 billion factory in the eastern German city of Dresden is scheduled for Aug. 20, the company said in a statement shared with POLITICO on Tuesday. The factory in Dresden is a joint venture of TSMC and three European partners: Germany's Bosch and Infineon, and Dutch NXP.
HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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— BEIJING BRISTLES AT U.S.-PHILIPPINE DEFENSE TIES: The Chinese government has decried a Biden administration move to provide $500 million to the Philippines in Foreign Military Financing.
Manila's efforts "to seek security assurance from external forces will only lead to greater insecurity and turn oneself into someone else's chess piece," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Wednesday. That financing, which Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN and Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN announced in Manila on Tuesday, will support the Philippines' "territorial defense mission and contribute to regional security," the State Department said in a statement Tuesday.
— CHINA ANNOUNCES DRONE EXPORT CURBS: China's Commerce Ministry announced an export ban on aerial drones with potential military uses and related equipment on Wednesday. That followed the introduction of bipartisan legislation on Tuesday by Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla) and Mark Warner (D-Va.) that would classify products produced by Chinese drone manufacturer DJI Technologies and other Chinese drone firms as "telecommunication equipment that poses an unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States," said a statement from Scott's office. The lawmakers also made the bill an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 2025. DJI called allegations of its products' security risks "more about geopolitical issues and market competition rather than actual security risks" in a statement in January.
— BEIJING DENIES FOREIGN LAWMAKER BULLYING: The Chinese government has denied allegations that it tried to dissuade foreign lawmakers from attending a meeting in Taiwan this week. Politicians from countries including Colombia, Bosnia and Slovakia complained earlier this week that Chinese diplomats had urged them to avoid attending a summit of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, the Associated Press reported. The alliance "is hellbent on attacking China on various issues and spreading lies and rumors about China and has no credibility to speak of," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin said Tuesday. The alliance is a group of more than 100 lawmakers —including Reps. Darin LaHood (R-Ill.) and Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) — dedicated to thwarting China's perceived threats to democratic countries.
HEADLINES
ABC News: Pacific Island nations owe ‘astronomical’ debts to China. Can they repay?
New York Times: Why Chinese propaganda loves foreign travel bloggers
Washington Post: Walking the line: Chinese migration surge tests President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinpin
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War | David M. Lampton |
The Book: Living U.S.-China Relations: From Cold War to Cold War
The Author: David M. Lampton is professor emeritus of Chinese studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and founding director of the China programs at the American Enterprise Institute and the Nixon Center.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most important takeaway from your book?
The current critical consensus of how the Sino-American relationship was managed from Nixon to Obama is wrong-headed and inaccurate.
The essence of this consensus is that self-interested corporate leaders, misguided and opportunistic political leaders and senior government officials and China specialists confused their hopes for democracy and a globally responsible China with their actual prospects. The charge is that they helped create the principal threat now facing America. This book challenges that simplistic and misleading narrative.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
The degree to which both sides have forgotten the many positive legacies of the engagement period following Nixon's trip to meet Mao in 1972. Cooperation ranged from cancer research to land use planning in ecologically unique areas and common opposition to Moscow's incursions into Georgia in the Caucasus region in 2008.
You've said that reducing bilateral tensions requires giving a "human face" to the relationship — how can that be done given record levels of mutual suspicion and hostility?
There are only about 500 American students and scholars in China, meaning that we will have a dwindling number of citizens who know China from the inside out. Restarting the Fulbright Program in China and extending the soon-to-expire 1979 bilateral Science and Technology cultural and educational framework is essential.
Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.
MANY THANKS TO: Heidi Vogt, Antoaneta Roussi and digital producers Emma Cordover and Catherine Bouris. 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 slau@politico.eu.
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