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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we get Australian Ambassador to the U.S. Kevin Rudd's take on Xi Jinping's view of U.S. politics, spill on a U.S.-China prisoner swap, examine Beijing's problem with North Korean troops deployed to Russia and look back at a heroine of China's #MeToo movement. And we profile a book that argues that U.S. China experts are partly responsible for the U.S. abandonment of "engagement" with Beijing.
Let's get to it. — Phelim.
Kevin Rudd: Xi sees "the decline of the U.S."
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Australia's ambassador to the U.S., Kevin Rudd, has some informed hunches about China's leader Xi Jinping's views of U.S. politics. Rudd has met Xi many times in his former roles as Australia's prime minister and foreign minister. He has also recently written a book about the Chinese leader. Rudd spoke to POLITICO in his position as a China scholar, not as an Australian government official.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
How does Xi Jinping see this messy, polarized moment of the U.S. democratic process?
Xi and the senior Chinese leadership's view is summarized in Xi Jinping's aphorism, "the rise of the East and the decline of the West" … and that we are now living in a period of great historical change the likes of which we have "not seen in 100 years."
These are not just propagandistic phrases. They also reflect the underlying Chinese analysis of where America’s comprehensive national power lies at the present versus where China’s lies. He sees the forces of history moving decisively in China’s direction.
Xi spent a few days in Muscatine, Iowa in 1985 and more than 90 hours one-on-one with then-Vice President Joe Biden during the Obama years. How might that have honed Xi's views of the U.S.?
I’m sure that President Biden’s long conversations with Xi Jinping reflected a confidence in America’s future global, strategic and regional strategic political role that I think matters in Xi’s assessment of American self-confidence.
But the underpinnings of Xi's analysis are always shaped by the copious streams of analysis which come into the Chinese system on how the U.S. economy is performing, the level of social discord and division within the U.S., the durability of the American political system and their analysis of the evolution of U.S. military power as well.
What for Xi is the optimal U.S.-China relationship?
Xi Jinping ideological literature says it’s important for the United States to adopt a "correct view of history." That the forces of historical materialism and dialectical materialism have now brought about these inexorable forces of change in support of China’s rise and the decline of the U.S. and the West. And that it would be useful for the United States to accept that historical reality and therefore to cease being belligerent in defending U.S. and Western interests against China’s rise, and thereby to withdraw geopolitically and geo-strategically from East Asia and the West Pacific.
Xi Jinping's ultimate aspiration is that China, rather than the United States, will lie very much at the center of the international rules-based system of the future.
Who's Xi rooting for in next week's U.S. presidential election?
Nice try. I'll leave it to POLITICO and the rest of the U.S. media establishment to reach that conclusion over the next couple of weeks.
SECRET TRADE: The U.S. swap to free David Lin
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The Biden administration brought home David Lin, a U.S. citizen jailed in China since 2006, through a swap for an unidentified Chinese citizen in U.S. custody last month, Phelim and POLITICO's Robbie Gramer scooped on Wednesday.
Three people familiar with the deal said that an exchange took place, but did not identify the Chinese citizen who was returned to Beijing.
Lin, a Chinese-American pastor who lived in California, had been serving a life sentence for what the U.S. government said were bogus charges of contract fraud.
Unlike the very public prisoner exchanges that the U.S. has struck with Russia in recent years, the State Department has kept the agreement under wraps since Lin's Sept. 15 release.
"Sometimes in diplomacy, the less said, the better. This is one of those occasions,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at the time.
That lack of transparency aligns with Beijing's secrecy reflex on sensitive diplomatic issues. It also coincides with the administration's ongoing efforts to free Mark Swidan and Kai Li, two other Americans behind bars in China whom the State Department considers "wrongfully detained."
Phelim and Robbie have the full story here.
Looking to Beijing to lean on North Korea
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The U.S. wants Beijing to help put the brakes on close ally North Korea's dispatch of thousands of combat troops to Russia.
Economic leverage. The Biden administration is in direct contact with Chinese government officials to express U.S. concern about North Korean troops in Russia. That "robust" outreach aims "to make clear that we think this ought to be a source of concern for China as well as other countries in the region," State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters Wednesday. The Biden administration wants Beijing to apply its economic influence on North Korea — China provides some 90 percent of its imports and exports — to push Pyongyang to withdraw those troops.
Reason for China to be worried. Beijing sees Russia's stronger ties with North Korea as "deeply disconcerting" because it reduces Pyongyang's traditional dependence, said Victor Cha, former National Security Council director for Japan and Korea and now Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Crickets from Beijing. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian limited his comments Wednesday about the matter by stating that "China's position on the Ukraine crisis and the Korean Peninsula issue is consistent." Beijing routinely urges "deescalation" in Ukraine —while shipping Russia lethal weaponry— and a "political settlement" for both Ukraine and the Korean Peninsula.
Faltering influence. The State Dept may be overestimating China's sway with Pyongyang. North Korea's deepening economic and security ties with Russia makes Pyongyang less dependent on Beijing. North Korea has lubricated that relationship with sales of munitions for Russian President Vladimir Putin's military. That's fueled a new assertiveness that's included North Korea openly pushing back earlier this year on Chinese plans to build telecommunications facilities along their shared border.
Kim's deaf ear. That means that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "will unlikely be swayed by PRC pressure, even if Beijing chose to apply some," said Ret. Rear Adm. Michael Studeman, former Commander of the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Money and missiles. Pyongyang may be calculating that the payoff for supplying Russia what South Korean Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun called "cannon fodder mercenaries" in a joint press conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Wednesday outweighs the costs of Beijing's possible disapproval. "This is a cash on the barrel proposition," for North Korea, said David Rank, a former charges d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and veteran Korea desk official at the State Department.
The sweeteners don't stop there. North Korea is likely angling for Russian "cutting edge technology" including those for "tactical nuclear weapons" that could fuel an "escalation of security threats on the Korean peninsula," Kim added.
Sanctions resistant. Even an expansion of North Korea's existing international sanctions regime — imposed for its refusal to give up its nuclear weapons program — is unlikely to deter Pyongyang. The regime is "amazingly self-reliant — even if large parts of the population starve for a while, that doesn’t really seem to have a major impact on them," said Robert Sutter, a former national intelligence officer for East Asia and the Pacific who is now an international affairs professor at George Washington University.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— CHINA'S 'REVISIONIST' THREAT: Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated U.S. concerns that China —in league with Iran, North Korea and Russia— is a "revisionist" threat to the so-called "rules-based international order." Those four countries are "aggressively challenging our interests and values and are determined to alter the foundational principles of the part of the international system," Blinken said in a speech at the Foreign Service Institute Wednesday.
Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, echoed those concerns. "You see all of these adversaries of ours and to the West coordinating and working in a way that is very destabilizing," Turner said at an Atlantic Council event Wednesday.
Blinken said that Biden administration’s efforts to revive U.S. influence among Pacific Island countries — a region where Beijing is making diplomatic inroads — are paying off. That has included the opening or planned opening of five new U.S. embassies in countries including the Maldives, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, Blinken said.
— FRESH SANCTIONS FOR CHINESE EXPORTERS: The Biden administration rolled out a round of new sanctions Wednesday targeting firms boosting Russia's war on Ukraine. Fourteen Chinese firms implicated in exports of machine tools and microelectronics that benefit President Vladimir Putin's war machine made the list, the State Department said in a statement. Those companies are "exporting dual-use goods that fill critical gaps in Russia's military-industrial base," Blinken said in a separate statement.
The Chinese government is crying foul. "The U.S. makes false accusations against China's trade with Russia, just as it continues to pour unprecedented military aid into Ukraine — this is typical double standard," said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu.
— BEIJING 'DEPLORES' NEW TREASURY INVESTMENT CURBS: The Chinese government has promised reprisals for new Treasury Department restrictions on outbound investment in high tech sectors of China's economy. Beijing "deplores and rejects" the rules "and will take all measures necessary to firmly defend its lawful rights and interests," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Tuesday. Those regulations, which were unveiled Monday, forbid U.S. investors from steering cash into Chinese firms developing artificial intelligence, quantum information technologies and microelectronics and semiconductors that could have military applications. POLITICO's Ari Hawkins has the full story here (for U.S. pros!).
Bipartisan House legislation aimed to enshrine such restrictions in law is in limbo after Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) declined to include it in his Beijing-targeted "China Week" legislative spree last month. The Senate has inserted a companion bill backed by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) into its National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025 but it's uncertain whether it will make it into the NDAA's final version. That's because House Financial Services Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) remains wary of what he considers overly-expansive restrictions. McHenry praised the Treasury rules' focus on military technologies but said he remains "skeptical of a sectoral approach to regulating outbound investment," in a statement Monday.
That's fueling impatience on Capitol Hill. "Congress should build on these [Treasury] rules and address a broader set of technologies and transactions that threaten our national security," Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chair of the House Select Committee on China, said in a statement Tuesday.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
XI COZIES UP TO PRO-PUTIN SLOVAK LEADER: One of the European Union's strongest supporters of Putin, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, begins a six-day visit to China today. This marks Beiing's latest effort to shore up European countries ahead of the U.S. election, and amid worsening EU-China ties.
Fico will meet Xi Jinping in Beijing then travel to the eastern province of Anhui and the commercial capital, Shanghai. Chinese state-run outlet Global Times notes that Slovakia was one of only five EU countries that voted against the EU's tariffs against Chinese electric vehicles, "signaling its support for China."
GERMAN CARMAKERS EXPAND FURTHER IN CHINA, REPORT SHOWS: Germany's big auto companies have made significant new investments in China despite Europe's call for derisking, driving EU's new investment in China to a record €3.6 billion, according to a research report by Rhodium Group, shared with POLITICO ahead of its publication later on Thursday.
"To a greater extent than ever before, EU investments in China are being driven by Germany and its carmakers," the report said, noting that German foreign direct investment made up 57 percent of total EU investments in China in the first half of 2024. The finding shows that — despite the slowing Chinese economy — German business interest remains closely interlinked with China.
FRANCE TO SLAM CHINA OVER COGNAC: The French government plans to directly confront China over what Paris calls "unacceptable" retaliation against the EU'S decision to slap tariffs on the heavily subsidized electric vehicles Beijing exports to the bloc, POLITICO's Paris reporter Giorgio Leali reports. Junior trade minister Sophie Primas is expected to press her counterpart Wang Wentao during a visit to Shanghai on China's decision to enact duties on brandy imports and new probes targeting the dairy and pork sectors.
FINNISH PRESIDENT URGED XI TO ENGAGE UKRAINE: Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who's on a state visit to China, apparently gave Xi a dressing-down over China's peace initiative for Ukraine. "I pointed out that peace cannot be negotiated without Ukraine," Stubb said, according to his office. Xi, on his part, said China’s ready to work with "all concerned parties, including Finland, to continue playing a positive role in promoting a peaceful settlement of the crises." Since the war started, Xi had not met Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — while having already sat down with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin three times this year.
HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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— CANADA: CHINA 'MOST ACTIVE CYBER THREAT': A new assessment by Canada's cyber spy agency warns that Chinese "threat actors" have compromised at least 20 government networks in Canada over the past four years, POLITICO's Kyle Duggan writes in. Chinese "cyber threat actors have compromised and maintained access to multiple government networks over the past five years, collecting communications and other valuable information," said the National Cyber Threat Assessment report, released Wednesday by the Communications Security Establishment Canada, the country's national cryptologic agency. The report singles out Beijing and its "expansive and aggressive cyber program" as the single "most sophisticated and active state cyber threat" to Canada ahead of those posed by Russia, North Korea, Iran and — for the first time — India.
— SURVEY: CHINESE SPLIT ON HARRIS, TRUMP: Chinese respondents in an Asian regional survey are divided on the cost-benefit ratio of the results of next week's U.S. presidential election. Some Chinese respondents recoil at Trump's tariff threats and "implicitly favor continuity under Harris," according to the results of a recent survey of people in nine Asian countries — plus Australia — published Tuesday by the Washington-based East-West Center, a nonprofit research organization. Others see geopolitical gain in a contentious election result that feeds "continued U.S. domestic dysfunction and protectionist policies eroding U.S. leadership in Asia, making way for China's ascent," said the report.
Respondents in Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Philippines, Taiwan, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Australia have "more concern about a second Trump administration than a potential first Harris administration, driven mostly by expectations that a Trump administration will be less predictable than a Harris administration," the survey report said.
— REPORT: HONG KONG PEDDLING CHINESE PROPAGANDA: Hong Kong authorities in the U.S. are spigots for Chinese government propaganda at the state and municipal level in the U.S., said a report published Tuesday by the nonprofit pro-democracy group the Hong Kong Democracy Council. Those propaganda conduits include the official Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices in Washington, New York and San Francisco which promote Chinese Communist Party "foreign policy priorities like the Belt & Road Initiative [and] maligning Hong Kong's democratic movement," the report said. The report prompted Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), co-chairs of the Congressional Executive Commission on China to urge their colleagues in an X post Wednesday to pass legislation that will restrict the diplomatic privileges of those entities. The Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Washington declined to comment.
TRANSLATING CHINA
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— ‘WHERE'S PENG SHUAI?' —FORGOTTEN #METOO HEROINE: Women's tennis in China was back in the news earlier this month when Coco Gauff of the U.S. won the Women's Tennis Association China Open finals. Absent from that coverage was any mention of Peng Shuai, a Chinese tennis star whose disappearance three years ago this Saturday made her a focus of China's #MeToo movement. WTA chair Steve Simon suspended China-based competition in November 2021 in response to Peng vanishing after posting on her Weibo account details of alleged sexual abuse by former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli. Zhang has not publicly responded to that accusation and there is no evidence Chinese authorities have investigated it. The WTA conditioned a resumption of China ties on a "full and transparent investigation – without censorship – into Peng Shuai's sexual assault accusation."
That never happened and Simon announced an end to the boycott of China-based competition in April 2023. That's despite the fact that Peng's status remains a mystery and the Chinese embassy in Washington won't divulge details of her whereabouts. WTA didn't respond to a request for comment about Peng Shuai.
The online campaign in support of Peng led by professional tennis stars including Japan's Naomi Osaka and former world top tennis player Chris Evert —who pushed the hashtag "Where is Peng Shuai" to trending status on X — has also fizzled. Neither Osaka nor Evert responded to requests for comment.
That silence reflects Beijing's "unaccountable power" and "the strong pull of the China market for international businesses," argued Yaqiu Wang, China research director at the nonprofit pro-democracy advocacy organization Freedom House.
HEADLINES
Per Concordiam: Smokeless war and mirrors
Associated Press: State alien land laws drive some China-born US citizens to rethink their politics
New York Times: New vehicles, face paint and a 1,200-foot fall: The U.S. army prepares for war with China
Reuters: China’s Xi pressed Biden to alter language on Taiwan
HEADS UP
— 'WONKY CHINA' POST-ELECTION HOT TAKES: Attention readers in the DMV — join China Watcher co-author Phelim Kine next Thursday for an informal discussion with local China hands and policy peeps at a special post-election convening of the fun and knowledge-loving folks at Wonky China. Event details here.
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
McCourt Engagement | Photo Credit: Oxford University Press |
The Book: The End of Engagement: America's China and Russia Experts and U.S. Strategy Since 1989
The Author: David McCourt is a sociology professor at the University of California, Davis.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What is the most important takeaway from your book?
The common sense in Washington that America's policy of "engagement" with China failed is misleading. It justifies rather than explains the turn to "strategic competition" under Trump and Biden. Trump's team replaced engagement because they were different types of China specialists than those who staffed administrations back to Nixon – the "engagers." Biden continued strategic competition because its China experts – like [Deputy Secretary of State] Kurt Campbell – had distanced themselves from the previous strategy.
What was the most surprising thing you learned while writing this book?
How resistant America's China experts are to taking their share of the responsibility for America’s rejection of engagement. For most of them, the story is simple: China changed — it became more bellicose, and repressive — so U.S. policymakers rejected engagement. Not so.
In fact China experts fueled the narrative of China as a threat over the past decade, helping to pave the way for successive U.S. governments to move toward what is now referred to as "decoupling" from China
What are the implications of the "no limits" Beijing-Moscow partnership for U.S. national security?
As a sociologist, that's above my paygrade. The real question is whether "engagers" in Washington can make a case, separately or together, that Putin and Xi can be pried apart diplomatically. Given that the pro-engagement elements in Washington are for the moment frozen out, that seems unlikely, meaning a securitized response to China and Russia remains the only viable option.
Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Ari Hawkins, Paul McCleary, Kyle Duggan, Giorgio Liali, and digital producers Emma Cordover and Natália Delgado. 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.com
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