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By Sourabh Gupta
Michael Pillsbury, new chairman of Pentagon’s policy board, aims to bridge gap in understanding about China
Owen Churchill
South China Morning Post, December 10 [Paywall]
The long-time China hawk Michael Pillsbury, newly appointed as chairman of the US Department of Defence policy advisory board, will use his tenure to address what he considers to be the Pentagon’s lack of understanding about Chinese military intentions. Pillsbury’s selection follows the Trump administration’s recent purging of another Pentagon advisory panel, replacing the jettisoned members of the Defence Business Board with close allies of the president, marking a stark departure from the traditionally non-partisan nature of such boards.
Biden considering possible China ambassadorship for former Mayor Buttigieg: Axios
Reuters Staff
Reuters, December 8
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is considering appointing former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg to a high-level ambassadorship, possibly to China, Axios reported here on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Many in the Democratic Party believe Buttigieg could return as a presidential candidate, the Axios report said, adding that a stint as ambassador in Beijing would give the Chinese an opportunity to get to know a potential future president.
China condemns new US Hong Kong sanctions, Taiwan arms sale
AP, December 8
China lashed out at the U.S. on Tuesday over new American sanctions against Chinese officials for their actions in Hong Kong, along with the sale of more U.S. military equipment to Taiwan, moves touching on two of the most sensitive issues in the increasingly contentious relationship between the nations.
The U.S. actions “seriously violated the basic norms of international relations, seriously interfered in China’s domestic politics, seriously damaged China-U.S. relations, are arrogant, unreasonable and vile,” Vice Foreign Minister Zheng Zeguang was quoted as telling Deputy Chief of Mission Robert Forden.
Exclusive: Suspected Chinese spy targeted California politicians
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian and Zach Dorfman
Axios, December 7
A suspected Chinese intelligence operative developed extensive ties with local and national politicians, including a U.S. congressman, in what U.S. officials believe was a political intelligence operation run by China’s main civilian spy agency between 2011 and 2015, Axios found in a yearlong investigation.
Goldman Sachs Racing to Be First With 100% of China Venture
Cathy Chan
Bloomberg, December 7
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is inching closer to becoming the first Wall Street bank with 100% ownership of its securities joint venture in China, paving the way for an aggressive expansion as the Asian nation opens its $50 trillion financial market wider to foreign firms. Taking full control in China would bring the firm closer to its vision of being “one Goldman” in all markets. As part of the progression to full ownership, the firm will migrate all onshore businesses currently under Gao Hua across to the venture, which will be renamed Goldman Sachs (China) Securities Co. Ltd.
China Exports Generate Record Trade Surplus
Eric Mendell
The Wall Street Journal, December 7 [Paywall]
China’s trade surplus widened to a record in November, as global demand for the country’s goods grew even more robust. China’s exports have topped market expectations since the second quarter, when Beijing moved to restart the world’s second-largest economy after lockdowns and Covid-19 outbreaks at the start of the year. During the pandemic, protective gear and work-from-home tech products have served as pillars for China’s overseas trade, helping it gain global market share.
U.S. slaps sanctions on 14 Chinese officials over Hong Kong crackdown
Humeyra Pamuk
Reuters, December 6
The United States on Monday imposed financial sanctions and a travel ban on 14 Chinese officials over their alleged role in Beijing’s disqualification last month of elected opposition legislators in Hong Kong. The action was widely seen as part of an effort by outgoing President Donald Trump to cement his tough-on-China legacy and also box president-elect Joe Biden, before he takes office on Jan. 20, into hardline positions on Beijing at a time of bipartisan anti-China sentiment in Congress.The Trump administration earlier slapped sanctions on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, the Asian financial hub’s current and former police chiefs and other top officials in August for what it said was their role in curtailing freedoms in a crackdown on the territory’s pro-democracy movement.
Chinese Arms Industry Ranks Second Behind U.S., Report Says
Brett Forrest
The Wall Street Journal, December 6 [Paywall]
China has boasted the world’s second-largest arms-manufacturing industry for the past five years, ranking behind the U.S. in sales but outstripping Russia and the top European nations, according to a report released Sunday by a Swedish think tank.
The study found that sales of arms and military services by the global sector’s 25 largest companies for which data are available totaled $361 billion last year, an 8.5% increase over 2018. SIPRI is an independent arms-trade analyst.Among those companies, four are Chinese and 12 are American. Those Chinese companies had combined sales of $56.7 billion in 2019, compared with $221.2 billion from the U.S. companies. Two of the top 25 firms are Russian, with combined sales of $13.9 billion.
US axes Chinese cultural programmes on propaganda grounds
Shi Jiangtao
South China Morning Post, December 5 [Paywall]
The US State Department has scrapped five China-funded exchange programmes, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo dismissing them as “propaganda tools” disguised as cultural exchanges. The announcement on Friday is the latest in a series of moves towards cultural and educational decoupling and came just two days after the outgoing administration of President Donald Trump moved to restrict travel visas to the United States for the estimated 92 million members of the Chinese Communist Party and their immediate families.
China-US relations: Beijing could ‘reopen consulate, let journalists back in’
Holly Chik
South China Morning Post, December 3 [Paywall]
China could consider reopening a consulate and allowing American journalists back to the country if the United States is ready, according to China’s ambassador to Washington, Cui Tiankai. But Cui said everything rested on whether US president-elect Joe Biden’s intention was to contain China. “We did not initiate the closing of the consulate. We were not the first one to ask foreign journalists to leave the country. We did all these things in response to actions taken by the United States,” Cui said at an annual conference held by the Washington-based Institute for China-America Studies. Cui, who has been in his post since 2013, said Beijing and Washington “stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation” and “cooperation is the only right choice for both countries.”
U.S. Tightens Visa Rules for Chinese Communist Party Members
Paul Mozur and Raymond Zhong
The New York Times, December 3 [Paywall]
The Trump administration on Wednesday issued new rules to curtail travel to the United States by members of the Chinese Communist Party and their immediate families, a move certain to further exacerbate tensions between the two countries. The new policy, which took immediate effect, limits the maximum duration of travel visas for party members and their families to one month, according to a State Department spokesman.
That means the Chinese recipient must use the visa to enter the United States within one month of it being issued. Based on standard procedure, U.S. border officials would determine at the point of entry how long the visitor can stay. The officials could still permit a multi-month visit.
China sanctions four with U.S. democracy promotion ties over Hong Kong
Reuters Staff
Reuters, November 30
China will impose sanctions on four people with links to U.S. democracy promotion efforts, it said on Monday, over what it called interference in the Asian financial hub of Hong Kong, following U.S. strictures on four Chinese individuals. Relations between the two nations have deteriorated to their worst in decades during outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s four-year term, with disputes simmering over issues from trade and technology to Hong Kong and the coronavirus.
2020 Annual Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission
116th Congress, 2nd Session, December 2020
Topics this year include China’s view of strategic competition with the United States; China’s promotion of alternative global norms and standards; China’s strategic aims in Africa; vulnerabilities in China’s financial system and risks for the United States; U.S.-China links in healthcare and biotechnology; China’s growing power projection and expeditionary capabilities; Taiwan; Hong Kong; and a review of economics, trade, security, political, and foreign affairs developments in 2020.
These 10 Things Could Help Subdue Power-Hungry China
Robert A. Manning
The National Interest, December 6
It stirred a hornet’s nest of controversy last month when China, in its latest example of weaponizing trade, issued a set of fourteen demands required for Australia to mend its relationship with its largest trading partner. There is both an intended ironic historical statement behind it and a troubling canary-in-the-coalmine signal that it conveys….
As the global backlash to China’s imperious behavior grows, this Australia incident should be a tipping point. Like-minded nations need to collectively stand up and say: this shall not stand, we cannot do business this way with China. To move in that direction, we offer Ten Demands that the world community should make of China.
Biden’s Chance to Challenge China | Opinion
Dan Blumenthal
Newsweek, December 4
When it comes to managing relations with China, a nation drawing on centuries of statecraft to inform its strategic designs, president-elect Joe Biden has no better asset than his own political maturity. After a bitter presidential campaign, the new Biden team will be tempted to jettison all of President Donald Trump’s foreign policies. That would be a mistake that Biden is unlikely to make as a longtime veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former vice president who saw his role partly as serving as a foreign affairs tutor to a young commander in chief in Barack Obama.
If they don’t know it already, Biden’s top policymakers will quickly learn that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will not change its strategy simply because the U.S. has a new president. Beijing will continue its attempts to push America out of Asia by weakening U.S. alliances and neutralizing the American military’s power projection capabilities. The regime’s efforts to reshape the international order to better serve the CCP’s authoritarian system of governance will continue unabated. China will not cease its efforts to erode U.S. economic and military advantages by stealing U.S. intellectual property and cutting-edge technology and by subsidizing its state-owned tech companies to squeeze American companies out of China. And it will accelerate its political subversion campaigns to co-opt foreign elites to serve CCP global interests.
… Team Biden was right to accept the fundamental premise of Trump-era China policy: China is a formidable strategic competitor. It was also right to focus on better alliance building as a corrective, though it will not be easy.
China Is National Security Threat No. 1
John Ratcliffe
The Wall Street Journal, December 3 [Paywall]
As Director of National Intelligence, I am entrusted with access to more intelligence than any member of the U.S. government other than the president. I oversee the intelligence agencies, and my office produces the President’s Daily Brief detailing the threats facing the country. If I could communicate one thing to the American people from this unique vantage point, it is that the People’s Republic of China poses the greatest threat to America today, and the greatest threat to democracy and freedom world-wide since World War II.
The intelligence is clear: Beijing intends to dominate the U.S. and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically. Many of China’s major public initiatives and prominent companies offer only a layer of camouflage to the activities of the Chinese Communist Party. I call its approach of economic espionage “rob, replicate and replace.” China robs U.S. companies of their intellectual property, replicates the technology, and then replaces the U.S. firms in the global marketplace….
China’s military expansion will test the Biden administration
Josh Rogin
The Washington Post, December 3
…Adm. Philip Davidson, who is nearing the end of his tour as the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, has been warning about the changing military balance in Asia throughout his tenure. But his warnings have often fallen on deaf ears in a Washington mired in partisanship and dysfunction. The Trump administration talked a big game about meeting the challenge of China’s military encroachment, but Davidson’s calls for substantially more investment to restore the regional balance that has deterred Beijing for decades have gone largely unanswered.
China’s military has moved well past a strategy of simply defending its territory and is now modernizing with the objective of being able to operate and even fight far from its shores, Davidson told me in an interview conducted last month for the 2020 Halifax International Security Forum. Under President Xi Jinping, Davidson said, China has built advanced weapons systems, platforms and rocket forces that have altered the strategic environment in ways the United States has not sufficiently responded to…
The Trump team’s response to China’s military expansion has at times been inconsistent, unilateral and undiplomatic. These are things the incoming Biden administration can improve upon. But Biden officials would be wise to admit that the Trump team got the basic theory of the case correct, namely that the PLA’s expansion must be countered everywhere it shows itself, including in U.S. colleges and capital markets.
Six Principles to Guide China’s Policy Toward the United States
Jie Dalei
Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, December 3
China believes that strategic competition with the United States has been forced upon it by U.S. President Donald Trump and his administration. The Chinese government has never officially adopted such a diplomatic posture and still calls for a relationship of “coordination, cooperation, and stability.” In fact, during its seven decades in power, the current Chinese political regime has not engaged in a comprehensive, strategic competition with any great power. China strived for survival during much of the Cold War and subsequently focused on its own rapid development within a U.S.-dominated international order.
Now it is imperative for China to move beyond troubleshooting and to think in broad terms of several general principles to guide Beijing through the uncharted waters of an increasingly competitive relationship with the United States.
Based on this foundation, this article distills six potential principles for competing with the United States, including two each in the following three areas: Marxism, traditional Chinese culture, and China’s historical experiences since 1949. These principles include respecting the balance between impersonal historical forces and the agency of political leaders, acknowledging the structural importance of economics, following the strategic imperative to know one’s competitor, undertaking the quest to win friends and diplomatic partners, avoiding ideological conflict, and keeping domestic policy in sync with China’s external environment.
The China Challenge Can Help America Avert Decline
Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi
Foreign Affairs, December 3 [Paywall]
When U.S. President-elect Joe Biden takes the oath of office—likely masked and surrounded by socially distanced officials and family—he will look out on a country that many believe is in decline. The problems that propelled President Donald Trump to office, including a collapsing middle class and toxic internal divisions, remain. And Trump will bequeath new ills to his successor: a runaway pandemic, a struggling economy, burgeoning debt, a wounded democracy, and a diminished global reputation.
“Declinism,” or the belief that the United States is sliding irreversibly from its preeminent status, is tempting. But such fatalism would be misguided. The United States still retains enviable advantages: a young population, financial dominance, abundant resources, peaceful borders, strong alliances, and an innovative economy…
As China’s power waxes, the West’s study of it is waning
The Economist, November 28 [Paywall]
America’s president-elect, Joe Biden, says China is his country’s “biggest competitor”. Yet China’s centrality in the calculations of foreign-policy experts in Washington and throughout the West is hardly matched by the interest shown in academia. Despite China’s efforts to promote interest in the language—and a surge of attention to it in Western schools a few years ago—enthusiasm for China studies at university level remains lacklustre. Fear of China, and restrictions imposed by it, are in part to blame…
“A Legal Critique of the Award of the Arbitral Tribunal in the Matter of the South China Sea Arbitration”
National Institute for South China Sea Studies
Asian Yearbook of International Law, Volume 24 (2018)
This critique assesses each of the dispositive findings on jurisdiction and merits in the Award of the South China Sea Arbitration from the perspective of the applicable substantive and procedural rules of public international law. This critique does not address in detail the Arbitral Tribunal’s Award on Jurisdiction and admissibility, dated 29 October 2015. However, it refers to the Award on Jurisdiction where relevant for the purposes of our legal critique of the Award. The ten core conclusions in respect of the Award are summarised below. In short, our analysis indicates that there are substantial grounds to question the validity of most of the Tribunal’s central findings of jurisdiction and merits in the Award.
Online Event: A New Era for U.S. Alliances
Event by Center for Strategic & International Studies, December 14
Arctic Security Dialogues: Toward a U.S. Army Arctic Strategy
Event by the Wilson Center Polar Institute, December 11
Asia’s Expectations for the Biden Administration
Event by the Wilson Center Asia Program, December 9
Joe Biden’s Trade Policy Challenge
Event by the American Enterprise Institute, December 8
Instruments of Influence? Chinese Financing in South Asia
Event by the Stimson Center, December 7
Video Event | Diplomacy, Deterrence, and Disruption: Navigating North Korea Policy in 2021
Event by Hudson Institute, December 4
Online Event: China’s Power: Up for Debate 2020 – Debate 3
Event by Center for Strategic & International Studies, December 3
Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia
Event by the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, December 1
Online Event: Taiwan and the Next U.S. Administration: New Potentials and Opportunities for U.S.-Taiwan Relations
Event by Center for Strategic & International Studies, December 16
The International Nuclear Security Forum Launch
Event by the Stimson Center, December 17
By Sourabh Gupta
On December 3rd, the Institute for China-America Studies (ICAS) organized its 2020 Annual Conference. Given the raging COVID-19 virus, the conference was conducted virtually, with almost 350 participants tuning in from both sides of the Pacific. The conference was inaugurated with brief introductory remarks by the chairman of ICAS’ advisory board, Dr. Wu Shicun. In his remarks, Dr. Wu was candid that U.S.-China ties were currently scraping the bottom; however, he expressed hope that President-elect Joe Biden would once again return the bilateral relationship to a more normalized track of dialogue and engagement. Mr. Biden’s multilateral over unilateral approach was positively evaluated and appreciated.
Keynote Dialogue Summary
Dr. Wu’s remarks were followed by the highlight of the conference – a keynote dialogue featuring China’s long-standing and well-respected Ambassador to the U.S., Amb. Cui Tiankai, and Dr. Graham Allison, the Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University. The dialogue was moderated by Mr. Stephen Orlins, President of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. In his initial submission, Ambassador Cui observed that 2020 will go down in history as the year that hastened the already-existing negative geopolitical and global governance trends of the early 21st century. The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged these fast and complex changes in the international system – many of them for the worse. What is required at this point of time therefore is a consensual, shared vision of proposed common actions aimed at addressing these present and future challenges, particularly in the areas of climate change, global public health, inequality and deprivation, and international science and technology development. The burning question in this regard is whether we, as a global community of nations, are up to this task?
Dr. Allison alluded to the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and admitted that a classic version of this trap seems to be playing out in the current relationship between the incumbent Great Power (the U.S.) and the rising Great Power (China). It is an undeniable structural reality. This having been said, there is no iron law of nature that the two sides must be destined to clash. There is a role for human agency to transcend this trap, and both the U.S. and China must display candor and wisdom if this is to be the case. Washington and Beijing can be rivals and yet work cooperatively for their larger common good as well as the good of the international system and planet. Dr. Allison concluded his initial submission by teasing the question whether the two sides could display the wisdom to hold two competing ideas at the same time: that they are, both, bilateral rivals and global collaborators.
There was a spirited exchange of views in the discussion segment of the Keynote Dialogue. When it was pointed out that a ‘values-based’ conflict was an inevitable feature of the ‘Thucydides Trap’, the Ambassador countered that ‘universal values’ should be those that were genuinely universal – as in, have wide multicultural embrace and are ideally centered in the attributes of peace, justice, development and freedom that are enshrined in the United Nations Charter. On the other hand, when the Ambassador sought understanding on the imperative for China’s reciprocal counteractions in the face of the Trump Administration’s numerous unilateral measures, an argument was tendered that there are a number of unhelpful Chinese measures that long predate the Trump years. A more forward-looking approach towards broadening the space for two-way civic society engagement, including China allowing wider space for exchange of information flows within its borders, would hold both parties in good stead, it was emphasized. Overall, there was a consensus nevertheless that top-level communication and a good working relationship at the leader’s level was essential to stabilize the ship of U.S.-China ties under the incoming Biden Administration.
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