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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
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GOOD MORNING. Welcome to China Watcher’s European edition, brought to you by Stuart Lau from Luxembourg. Phelim Kine will report from the U.S. on Thursday.
TSAI IN EUROPE
FIRST OF ITS KIND: Taiwan’s ex-President Tsai Ing-wen spoke in Prague yesterday, marking her first European engagement since she stepped down earlier this year. Attending the Forum 2000 conference, she shook hands with NATO general-turned-Czech President Petr Pavel and visited the grave of democracy icon Václav Havel. Beijing warned the Czechs not to receive her, but to no avail. According to Pavel’s office, he has no plan to meet Tsai one-on-one before she carries on her trip to Brussels later this week.
Defend democracy: In her speech, Tsai emphasized the need for Taiwan to remain democratic. “It is evident to me, that democracy is truly the only game in town for Taiwan, and life in Taiwan is unquestionably free and democratic,” she said, on a day that Beijing was launching military drills around the island.
Hybrid threats: Tsai said Beijing is seeking to weaken Taiwan via a raft of tactics. “Through gray-zone activities, military threats and invasions, and cognitive and information warfare, authoritarian regimes are now aiming to erode citizens’ confidence in democratic institutions and polarize democratic societies,” she said.
PAVEL’S MESSAGE TO BEIJING: Without directly referring to the Chinese military drills this week, Pavel called on Beijing to show “self-restraint” on the Taiwan Strait. He also urged China to use its influence to help end the war in Ukraine.
TOP ENVOY HOPES CHINA WON’T RETALIATE: Speaking to Stuart in Luxembourg, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský downplayed the sensitivity of Tsai’s trip. “Madame Tsai is visiting a traditional conference, Forum 2000,” he said. “We have [a] stable relationship with China, definitely. Czechia is not doing anything to unnecessary provoke China.
But support for Taipei remains: “Of course, we are very careful observing the situation in Taiwan’s Strait. Any kind of military escalation is not welcome, and we should protect the freedom of navigation there,” Lipavský said. “And of course, we have [a] very thriving relationship with Taiwan on an economic and scientific basis.”
NEXT STOP — BRUSSELS: As we reported last week, Tsai will visit the European Parliament in Brussels on Thursday. We’ll keep you posted.
EU-CHINA FIGHT UP IN THE AIR: The European Commission is looking into unfair competition between European and Chinese airlines since the latter continue to fly the shorter route connecting Asia and Europe via Russian airspace. The EU is responding to KLM’s call on The Hague and Brussels to see how to help level the playing field. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf has more.
FINLAND STATE VISIT
STATE VISIT IN TWO WEEKS: Finnish President Alexander Stubb will make a state visit to China on 28–31 October. According to the press release, Stubb will discuss with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping bilateral relations between Finland and China, the Ukraine war, and other current security and international issues.
Exclusive preview from top Finnish envoy: Speaking to Stuart on the margins of the EU foreign ministers’ meeting here in Luxembourg, Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, part of Stubb’s delegation, said the Finns would seek to talk China out of deeper collaboration with Russia.
“We deplore to have seen Russia become a sort of a junior partner to China,” Valtonen said, calling it “extremely clear” that Moscow “is severely dependent on China now — not only for its imports of dual use products, which it also uses in its military operations in Ukraine and possibly elsewhere, but also all sorts of trade that is happening between those countries and which is also essentially circumventing the sanctions which other countries have put in place.”
She added: “So we are worried about this, and I think it shouldn’t be in China’s interest to
help a rogue state such as Russia keep up its military action.”
Also in focus: Finland also wants to use this state visit — just days before the U.S. presidential election — to focus on climate and trade. Finnish Climate and Environment Minister Kai Mykkänen and his agriculture counterpart Sari Essayah, will travel to Beijing and Shanghai alongside a Finnish business delegation.
INDO-PACIFIC IN NATO
DEFENSE DEBUT: NATO defense ministers will meet their four Indo-Pacific (IP4) partners — Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand — for the first time in Brussels this Thursday and Friday, a NATO press rundown says. This follows similar get-togethers on the leaders’ level and among foreign ministers.
Beware of China: “Allies will discuss with the IP4 and EU the growing security cooperation between Russia and China and the implications that this has for Russian persistence on the
battlefield in Ukraine,” according to a letter sent to the Dutch parliament by Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans. (H/T Laura Kayali.)
Threats everywhere: “This growing cooperation of Russia with Belarus, Iran and North Korea raises concerns and is a challenge for both the Indo-Pacific and the Euro-Atlantic region,” Brekelmans added. “The security of the Euro-Atlantic region can thus not be separated from developments in East Asia, partly due to increased threats and challenges that are not limited to a specific region, such as in the cyber, hybrid and non-proliferation domains.”
Views from Washington: The U.S. has been one of the staunchest advocates for NATO to pay closer attention to China. “You frequently hear from the Indo-Pacific partners and NATO allies, we’re focused on increasing defense production, so that’s a theme that really resonates both in the Indo-Pacific and Europe,” a senior U.S. official said.
INTERVIEW CORNER
RAHM EMANUEL, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan (and unofficially Washington’s chief China critic in the Indo-Pacific), has recently coined the idea of an “economic NATO” to protect like-minded countries from Chinese economic coercion.
Here’s what he has to say:
Group of 50: According to Emanuel, the time is ripe for the U.S. to form an economic coalition with countries facing either economic coercion or trade disadvantages as a result of China. “It’s not United States-China. It’s United States with 50 countries where China stands alone because their actions created an opportunity for us to fill a void,” he said in a phone interview last week.
Article 5 for coercion: Emanuel, former President Barack Obama‘s chief of staff, said countries signing up to a U.S. concept of economic alliance can be covered by what resembles the Article 5 guarantee under NATO (“an attack on one is an attack on all.”) ” Having an Article 5, like [a] principle embedded into an economic alliance, will have its own deterrence,” he said.
Take a cue from EU: The European Union’s anti-coercion instrument, designed after member country Lithuania was bullied by China for showing support for Taiwan, was a good example, he said.
Time to reach out to developing countries: With China’s economic influence, many developing countries are feeling the economic pain domestically, according to Emanuel. He cited a Chilean example from August, where the country’s largest steel plant had to temporarily shut down because of surging imports from China (where the stagnant real estate development is driving cheap exports of these construction materials.) “This provides a window of opportunity for the United States to exert leadership,” he said.
TBD: It will be up to the Kamala Harris administration to decide how to follow up if she wins, he said.
A few words on the new Japanese government: Emanuel didn’t want to add too much to new Japanese PM Shigeru Ishiba‘s campaign pledge for creating an Asian NATO. “He’s already said it’s a long-term goal… There’s not much for me to say,” he said.
But Emanuel praised Ishiba’s will to keep the hard-earned Tokyo-Seoul rapproachement going forward, including trilateral U.S.-Japan-South Korea military exercise in a few months. “We have a lot of momentum built off of the last three years. Our goal is not to let any grass grow under our feet and keep that momentum,” he said.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
STATE SLAMS PLA DRILLS AROUND TAIWAN: : The U.S. State Department has condemned Beijing's launch of massive military exercises around Taiwan on Sunday in an apparent response to the island's President Lai Ching-te's national day speech on Thursday. "Military provocations to a routine annual speech is unwarranted and risks escalation," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement Sunday. Beijing dismissed those concerns. The U.S. should "stop arming Taiwan, and stop sending any wrong signal to the 'Taiwan independence' separatist forces , Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Monday in response to to Miller's statement. The People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theater Command is deploying "troops of army, navy, air force and rocket force to conduct 'Joint Sword-2024B' drills in the Taiwan Strait and the north, south and east of the island of Taiwan," Chinese state media reported Sunday.
CHINA TAKES BACK ATLANTA'S PANDAS: Four giant pandas on loan from China to Zoo Atlanta returned to China on Sunday. That return " is in line with Zoo Atlanta's giant panda agreement with China, which expires this month," Zoo Atlanta said in a statement Sunday. That prompted a "welcome home" message on X from China's ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng. Xie has praised pandas as U.S.-China "envoys of friendship" and touted the renewal of panda loan programs with zoos in both San Francisco and Washington this year as important symbols of bilateral ties..
LAWMAKERS WANT ANSWERS ABOUT 'SALT TYPHOON': Top lawmakers on the House Select Committee on China revealed Friday they want answers from U.S. telecom firms about the impact of a security breach by "Salt Typhoon," a hacking group linked to China's Ministry of State Security. Committee chair John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) and ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) sent letters to the chief executives of Verizon, AT&T and Lumen Technologies to invite them to a closed-door briefing on when the firms learned of the breach and what they're doing to secure their systems from future cyber intrusions. "It is clear that we face a cyber-adversary the likes of which we have never confronted before, and we must urgently enhance our nation's approach to cybersecurity," the letter said.
BEIJING BLASTS BLINKEN AT ASEAN MEETING: U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken's criticism of Chinese maritime behavior in the East and South China Seas in a speech to ASEAN country leaders reaped a sharp rebuke from Beijing. The U.S. "upgrading deployment of weapons and military activities in the South China Sea to incite confrontation and create tensions… are the biggest source of instability in the South China Sea," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning Friday. Mao's comments were a response to Blinken's assertions the previous day at an ASEAN leaders meeting in Vientiane, Laos that Beijing was committing "increasingly dangerous and unlawful actions in the South and East China Seas, which have injured people and harmed vessels from ASEAN nations." That was a reference to China Coast Guard's increasing aggressive incursions into Philippine waters of the South China Sea and around Japan's Senkaku islands.
HEADLINES
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NEW YORK TIMES: What China's leaders grasp about another Trump term.
MANY THANKS: To editor Christian Oliver and producer Lola Boom.
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