BBC4 Analysis: Magic Weapons

 There used to be a romantic notion of globalisation that all countries would simply have to get along as we were all so interconnected. Why fight when your interests are aligned? It’s an idea that has made direct military engagement less likely. But something very different has emerged in its place.

We live in a new era of conflict, where states try to achieve their aims through aggressive measures that stay below the threshold of war. This is a strategy of statecraft with a long history, but which has a new inflection in our technologically charged, globalised world.

Now a mix of cyber, corruption and disinformation is employed to mess with adversaries. China’s president, Xi Jinping, has referred to political influence activities as being one of the Chinese Communist Party's 'magic weapons'.

In this edition of Analysis, Peter Pomerantsev looks at how political warfare works in a world where we’re all economically entangled - and what Britain could and should do to adapt.

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The Red Line: Could China Conquer Taiwan?

 Xi has thrown down the gauntlet and stated that Taiwan will return to the Peoples Republic of China by 2049, whether Taiwan wants it or not. So now a countdown timer has started, and Taiwan scrambles to prepare for what Beijing may throw at it. Should they build a large navy? Should they try and push the Chinese back into sea fighting on the beaches? Should the Taiwanese retreat to the jungles and fight a bloody insurgency from there? We ask our expert panel what strategy Taiwan is likely to take, and whether or not it is likely to be effective against the entire PLA. This weeks panel Eric Gomez (CATO Institute) Sheena Chestnut Greitens (University of Texas) Robert D Kaplan (Geopolitics Author) More info at - www.theredlinepodcast.com Follow the show on @TheRedLinePod Follow Michael on @MikeHilliardAus

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The Pragati Podcast: What’s Happening in China?

 Indians and Indian news outlets are rightfully concerned with the ongoing Chinese aggressions in Ladakh and the India-China border conflict that could escalate any day. On Episode 150 of The Pragati Podcast, Hamsini Hariharan helps listeners take a peek at what is happening within China since the Coronavirus pandemic started, how the Chinese economy and politics are faring, and explores what else is occupying China’s foreign policy today.

Hamsini Hariharan started The Pragati Podcast along with Pavan Srinath in April 2017, and was a co-host for close to 70 episodes. Currently, Hamsini is the host of States of Anarchy – a weekly podcast on global affairs and foreign policy. She also writes a weekly column for CNBC News-18 on Chinese politics and policy. She is a visiting faculty at the Symbiosis Centre for Media and Communication. She is on @HamsiniH on twitter and @lady_baritone on Instagram.

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Social Europe: China takes the climate stage

The online exchanges were, by all accounts, meatier than expected. But that was no preparation for what happened next. On September 22nd, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, made a surprise announcement: China would aim for carbon neutrality ahead of 2060. 

Xi has done big climate policy before. In November 2014 he appeared alongside the then US president, Barack Obama, to declare that China—despite its status as a developing country and although the climate problem was the historical responsibility of the west—would make commitments to curb its emissions from 2030. That declaration opened the door to the Paris Agreement. [...]

For the mass of the Chinese population, the threat of catastrophic flooding this summer was a far greater concern than fear of Islamism in Xinjiang or troublesome student protests in Hong Kong. Authoritarian environmentalism under the banner of ‘ecological civilisation’ is one of the watchwords of Xi’s regime.

Increasingly, climate is being inserted into a vision of great-power rivalry, rather than co-operation. In the US there are already voices calling for the establishment of green energy policies on the basis of a bipartisan national-security front against China.

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BBC4 Analysis: Who Runs that Place?

Increasingly, Western governments see China as a problem to deal with because, as it has grown more powerful, it has re-committed to being a Leninist state.

But under President Xi Jinping, how far does it still conform to the Leninist model and how far does it reflect much more traditional forms of Chinese statecraft? Is a country with a massive bureaucracy run by its nominal leaders or by other actors? And why do senior government figures - who in Russia and Western countries carry clout and influence - seem in China to have little to say about the policies Beijing is following?

As the rest of the world continues to grapple with the consequences of Covid-19, these questions have never been more pertinent or more urgent. In this timely edition of "Analysis", Isabel Hilton, the eminent student of Chinese politics, considers who makes the decisions in Beijing and how they are reached.

Speaking to China-watchers both internationally and in the UK, she explodes some myths about Chinese politics - including that it is a seamless polity with a single unchanging party line - and explores how power struggles take place and what happens to the losers of them. With the 14th Five Year Programme finally due to be unveiled next year, she assesses how far state planning still drives decision-making. And she considers how and when Xi Jinping's successor is likely to emerge - and what lessons that figure may draw from Xi's leadership since 2012.

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Deutsche Welle: Opinion: China's ethnic socialism

 Just a few weeks ago, Beijing introduced a new language policy for schools in Inner Mongolia, whereby instruction in Mongolian will be replaced with lessons in Mandarin in a number of subjects. Many fear that this will massively impact on Mongolian culture. [...]

Most of the inhabitants of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are not Han Chinese, who constitute the majority in China. Until 2012, when Xi Jinping took office, all 56 recognized ethnic groups in China enjoyed equal rights. But Xi, who, if things go very wrong, will be able to let himself be chosen as president for life in 2023, put an end to that equality. [...]

The West did not understand why Beijing could not wait until 2047, when the "one country, two systems" policy would have expired anyway and China would have won. However, for China, this is not a question of rational politics but of ideology, one according to which the Han are considered superior to China's other ethnic groups. The people of Hong Kong, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang are not seen as equal partners, and this explains the Communist Party's inhumane treatment of certain groups, who are nonetheless all citizens of China.

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The Diplomat: China Doesn’t Understand Europe, and It Shows

 While his tour was designed to improve China’s post-pandemic image in Europe, some of Wang’s statements only made things worse for China. In Norway, while answering a question about the Nobel Peace Prize and Hong Kong, Wang said that China won’t allow the politicization of the Nobel Prize by interfering in China’s internal affairs — a response that many in the West read as a Chinese threat against awarding the Nobel Prize to Hong Kong protesters. Later, while in Germany, Wang criticized the Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s visit to Taiwan and warned that it would incur a “heavy price” — another threat against a European country for doing something considered normal in a democratic state.[...]

China’s run of European mistakes started in 2012, when it decided to set up the 16+1 mechanism with the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, among them both EU members and non-members. Back then, China’s decision was watched with suspicion in Brussels and with every step China has taken in the CEE region the European Union’s fear of division has increased. While the EU seems to have gotten over the 2018 Visegrad (V4) moment, when China inaugurated a V4+China format for meetings with Hungary, Poland, Czechia, and Slovakia, and Wang even praised the V4 as the EU’s “most dynamic force,” things changed a lot in 2019. Two crucial moments were Italy’s decision to join the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Greece’s addition to the 16+1. [...]

Moments like these have shown that China doesn’t understand the EU at all. While world powers no longer create agreements like the Treaty of Tordesillas, the idea of spheres of influence still exists in their minds. Sixteen formerly communist CEE countries teaming up with a communist great power set off alarm bells in Brussels. The EU doesn’t want any new “Berlin Walls” and it definitely doesn’t want to swap out Russian influence with Chinese in the CEE region, creating a new Iron Curtain. The European Union’s fear of division was mainly generated by China, which failed to understand how sensitive and important this subject is for Brussels. [...]

Sometimes, China doesn’t even seem to understand the basics of the European Union. The EU is a supranational entity, which receives its mandate from all 27 EU member-states, yet remains separate from the national institutions of each member state. The members of the European Parliament, although they come from each EU country, represent not their countries, but the EU. China’s failure to grasp the bloc’s basic structure became clear when it scolded the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs after an Estonian member of the European Parliament went to Taiwan.

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TLDR News: The Vatican's Secret Deal with China - Is The Catholic Church Being Paid to Stay Quiet?

 In 2018 the Vatican and the Communist Party of China signed a deal ostensibly to try and make life easier for Chinese Catholics. Since then though it's been alleged that the Catholic Church has allowed the CCP to take over Catholocism in China for payment, a payment which has also led the Church becoming increasingly subservient to China.

PolyMatter: How Singapore Stays Neutral

The Guardian: Is the UK's ‘golden era’ of relations with China now over?

 China and the UK have clashed in recent months over a draconian new security law in Hong Kong and the Chinese tech company Huawei. The Guardian’s Tania Branigan examines whether a much-promoted ‘golden era’ between the two countries is at an end.

In 2015 George Osborne, the then chancellor, promised a ‘golden decade’ for Chinese-British relations as he drummed up support for new trade opportunities and inward investment. That has all changed after China imposed a harsh new security law in Hong Kong and now the UK government is preparing to backtrack on an agreement to use the Chinese firm Huawei in its 5G infrastructure.

The Guardian’s leader writer Tania Branigan tells Rachel Humphreys that this new phase in relations is going to be difficult for the UK. Last week, Beijing’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, warned: “China wants to be UK’s friend and partner. But if you treat China as a hostile country, you would have to bear the consequences.”

It comes as pressure mounts on China internationally to be open about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic first seen in Wuhan at the end of last year, and increasing outrage at the treatment of Uighur Muslims. But there is an acceptance too in government that even if the ‘golden era’ is over, China remains a vital trade relationship as well as a crucial player in global affairs, not least the battle to reduce carbon emissions.

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UnHerd: The irresistible rise of the civilisation-state

America’s decline is impossible to disentangle from China’s rise, so it is natural that the rapid climb of the Middle Kingdom back to its historic global primacy dominates discussion of the civilisation-state. Though the phrase was popularised by the British writer Martin Jacques, the political theorist Christopher Coker observed in his excellent recent book on civilisation-states that “the turn to Confucianism began in 2005, when President Hu Jintao applauded the Confucian concept of social harmony and instructed party cadres to build a ‘harmonious society.’” In any case, it is only under his successor Xi’s rule that China as a rival civilisation-state has really penetrated the Western consciousness. “The advent of Xi Jinping as the Chinese president in 2012 propelled the idea of ‘civilization-state’ to the forefront of the political discourse,” the Indian international relations scholar Ravi Dutt Bajpai remarks, “as Xi believes that ‘a civilization carries on its back the soul of a country or nation.’” [...]

Yet the appeal of the civilisation-state model is not limited to China. Under Putin, the other great Eurasian empire, Russia, has publicly abandoned the Europe-focused liberalising projects of the 1990s — a period of dramatic economic and societal collapse driven by adherence to the policies of Western liberal theorists — for its own cultural sonderweg or special path of a uniquely Russian civilisation centred on an all-powerful state. In a 2013 address to the Valdai Club, Putin remarked that Russia “has always evolved as a state‑civilisation, reinforced by the Russian people, Russian language, Russian culture, Russian Orthodox Church and the country’s other traditional religions. It is precisely the state‑civilisation model that has shaped our state polity.” In a 2012 speech to the Russian Federal Assembly, Putin likewise asserted that “we must value the unique experience passed on to us by our forefathers. For centuries, Russia developed as a multi‑ethnic nation (from the very beginning), a state‑civilisation bonded by the Russian people, Russian language and Russian culture native for all of us, uniting us and preventing us from dissolving in this diverse world.” [...]

In a revealing 2018 essay, Putin’s adviser Vladislav Surkov — who was fired from his role this February — foregrounded this hybridity, part-European and part-Asian, as the central characteristic of the Russian soul. “Our cultural and geopolitical identity is reminiscent of a volatile identity of the one born into a mixed-race family,” Surkov wrote. “A half-blood, a cross-breed, a weird-looking guy. Russia is a Western-Eastern half-breed nation. With its double-headed statehood, hybrid mentality, intercontinental territory and bipolar history, it is charismatic, talented, beautiful and lonely. Just as a half-breed should be.” For Surkov, Russia’s destiny as a civilisation-state, like that of the Byzantium it succeeded, is one as “a civilisation that has absorbed the East and the West. European and Asian at the same time, and for this reason neither quite Asian and nor quite European.” [...]

Warning his audience that “we know that civilisations are disappearing; countries as well. Europe will disappear,” Macron lauded the civilisational projects of Russia and Hungary, which “have a cultural, civilisational vitality that is inspiring,” and declared that France’s mission, its historic destiny, was to guide Europe into a civilisational renewal, forging a “collective narrative and a collective imagination. That is why I believe very deeply that this is our project and must be undertaken as a project of European civilisation.”

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The Conversation: How China lost central and eastern Europe

Bulgaria is not the only country in the region to have qualms about China. In the Czech Republic, Prague city council ended its sister-city relationship with Beijing in October 2019 in favour of a partnership with Taipei. The president of the senate then announced plans to visit Taiwan in August in defiance of China.

In May, the Lithuanian foreign minister called for Taiwan to be reinstated to the World Health Organization. The same month, CEE officials were among signatories of a protest letter against China’s introduction of national security legislation in Hong Kong. [...]

First, China has not fulfilled the lavish promises it made to the region for large-scale investments. Chinese foreign direct investment in the EU peaked in 2016 at US$43 billion, then plummeted back to 2012 levels in 2019, with the expectation that 2020 would be even lower. [....]

Second, growing frustration with their marginalisation has led CEE countries to reflect on their political identity. In particular, the wave of recent protests in Hong Kong brought back memories of their own fight against Soviet control. Hongkongers’ use of tactics developed by eastern-European dissidents – such as the Lennon Wall and the Baltic Way – resonated in the region. [...]

Third, CEE countries have grown wary of the political risks associated with their bonhomie with China, amid growing criticism from the EU and US over the past few years. For some, this reassessment has been associated with the tech cold war between the US and China. Following pressure from Washington, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Estonia have indicated they will ban Chinese firm Huawei from the construction of their 5G networks.

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The New York Times: When China Met Iran

Leaked news this month that China and Iran had come to the verge of signing a 25-year trade and military partnership agreement struck like a geopolitical storm in Washington — a rising rival of America and a longtime foe joining forces to threaten the United States’s predominant position in the Middle East. [...]

Yet in Iran and China themselves, the reaction was hardly ebullient. Critics of Iran’s beleaguered president, Hassan Rouhani, called the deal a new Treaty of Turkmenchay, after the notorious 1828 accord under which a weakened Persia ceded much of the South Caucasus to the Russian Empire. In Beijing, a government spokesman who was asked about the deal dodged rather than criticize Washington, insisting blandly that Iran is merely one of many countries with which China is “developing normal friendly relations,” and claiming not to have further information about the reported deal. [...]

In recent years, as the United States has been bogged down in unrewarding conflicts in the Middle East, China has been quietly expanding its economic, diplomatic and even military activities in the region. Beijing’s motives are straightforward but varied: It seeks to advance its interests, such as a pressing need for energy imports and for destinations for surplus capital and labor. In practice, it tries to advance President Xi Jinping’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, which is aimed at reshaping regional economic topographies in China’s favor and counters what Beijing sees as an American effort to contain it. In short, China seeks to establish itself in the eyes of the world — and its own people — as a great power capable of contending with the United States.

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The Bridge: Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfight with China

There are several durable reasons why China is the principal U.S. competitor least likely to employ insurgency—“the organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify or challenge political control of a region”—either directly or by proxy, in the future.[6] First, despite its global ambition and revisionist aims, China turned its back on supporting revolutionary insurgents decades ago. Second, China's approach to great-power competition focuses on economic competition, nonviolent subversion, and, if that fails, high-intensity warfare. Third, the international situation has rendered classic Maoist people's war anachronistic, as Chinese military thinkers recognize. Finally, China's leaders are acutely afraid of internal rebellion, and thus have strong normative reasons to not support insurgents. [...]

America's relationship with China is now transforming again. China is more powerful and aggressive than it has been at any time since Mao died in 1976. Xi Jinping, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012, is pursuing an ambitious plan to achieve China's “National Rejuvenation” which ultimately seeks to make China the world's preeminent political, military and economic power by 2049.[11] But despite his pretensions, he is no Mao.[12] As Xi himself said in 2009, “China is not exporting revolution.”[13] Whatever the failings of U.S. engagement, since Nixon, China has transitioned from a rogue state that actively armed Maoist groups around the world into a reluctant stakeholder in the international order that shows no inclination to support insurgencies abroad.[14] [...]

If “Hong Kongization” fails in Taiwan, China does not expect to deploy guerrillas to undermine Taipei as a last resort. Instead, the People's Liberation Army is planning to employ armed force in a conventional “local war” to compel Taiwanese submission.[25] The People's Liberation Army's role is to take advantage of a “Revolution in Military Affairs with Chinese characteristics” and prepare for these “local wars.”[26] This focus on “local war” explains why China is spending a lot of money to buy tanks, planes, ships, and even militarized islands, and why rather than training to support insurgencies, People's Liberation Army ground forces train to fight U.S. Army-style brigade combat teams in their major exercises.[27] Chinese leaders simply do not think that “high-intensity conventional maneuver war is out,” as Vrolyk argues. They are developing capabilities that will let them avoid and, if necessary, win a modern war, but they have not prioritized support to insurgent proxies. [...]

Given China’s existing strategy, military thought, and fears of rebellion, renewed state support for insurgents is far from certain. Instead, China is more likely to employ economic and informational tools to achieve its aims, while focusing on partnerships with state actors and striving to remain below the threshold of armed conflict. While this does not mean we can afford to disregard counterinsurgency entirely, as China is not our only competitor and could always adopt new stratagems, it does suggest a different set of defense priorities for countering China. To compete with China, what the United States armed forces need most are ways and means for integrated campaigning to further U.S. interests, which would allow them to counter Chinese actions below the threshold of armed conflict. We also certainly need capabilities for high-intensity combat, in case all else fails.

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UnHerd: Covid has exposed America as a failed state

In this coming struggle, America is starting with a great and self-inflicted handicap. Obama’s attempts to reposition US foreign policy away from its destructive and self-defeating entanglement in the Islamic world and towards the coming confrontation with China failed, distracted by the bloody chaos brought about by the Arab Spring and by the Washington foreign policy “blob’s” unwillingness to wean itself off wars it cannot win. [...]

When Trump urged the same thing for the United States, China’s autocrat Xi was treated to a standing ovation at Davos, and hailed as the new champion of the global liberal order. But now Larry Summers, the high priest of globalisation and of America’s offshoring to China, is warning us against fragile supply chains and the urgency of decoupling with no reference at all his long and glittering career midwifing this catastrophe. Here is the global system, finally stripped of all illusions. [...]

Yet when the rival superpower collapsed, exhausted, the United States took the wrong lessons from the fall of communism. American policymakers convinced themselves their global dominance was due to the success of their liberal ideology rather than of their industrial might, and that the sudden, unexpected disintegration of the Soviet Union was due to the vindication of liberalism rather than of the awakened nationalism of Russia’s subject peoples. [...]

If we observe the American war on Covid, we see it is America’s Chernobyl moment as much as China’s. The United States is by far the world’s worst-affected country in terms of total numbers, and its outbreak is still far from over. The symbolism of American states forming regional blocs to counteract the incompetence and total incapacity of its central government to save lives or arrest the virus’s progress lends weight to The Atlantic’s charge that the US now resembles a failed state.

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WorldAffairs: Hong Kong on the Brink (18 February 2020)

Are we witnessing the end of Hong Kong as we know it - or is this the biggest challenge yet to China’s authoritarian rule? This week on the podcast, we’re looking at what’s driving the protests in Hong Kong and why the demonstrations have persisted for so long. We walk through the history of Hong Kong, right up to today with: Jeffrey Wasserstrom, professor of history at UC Irvine and author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, and former East Asia Correspondent for NPR and PRI’s The World, Mary Kay Magistad.

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Vox: How China is ruthlessly exploiting the coronavirus pandemic it helped cause

The Chinese government spent weeks denying and downplaying the severity of its growing coronavirus outbreak that eventually spread to the rest of the world. That obfuscation cost nations crucial time in preparing for and potentially curbing the damage of Covid-19. Some experts Vox spoke with believe President Xi Jinping’s regime should be held accountable for the more than 3 million infections and 200,000 deaths that have taken place worldwide. [...]

China has capitalized on the world’s distraction to claim sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea, intimidate Taiwan, and assert more authority over Hong Kong in an attempt to quash the pro-democracy movement there. [...]

And after the US suspended funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) for allegedly being too cozy with Beijing, the Chinese government pledged millions of dollars in additional support for the organization, giving China even more influence in the global health agency and allowing the country to portray itself as the new champion of multilateralism. [...]

Xi himself has said as much. During a major speech in October 2017, he named specific timelines for his grandiose goals: China would have a “moderately prosperous society in all respects” by 2021; it would be a world leader in technology and military modernization by 2035; and by 2049, Beijing’s decades-long dispute with Taiwan would be resolved.

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WorldAffairs: Xi Jinping Won the Coronavirus Crisis

Two months ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping looked like he would emerge from the novel coronavirus pandemic with his legitimacy and his ambitions for Chinese global leadership in tatters. Today, as the Chinese government lifts its lockdown on the city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, Xi can present himself instead as a forceful and triumphant leader on the world stage. Leaders in Europe and the United States are increasingly looking to China for help as they struggle to contain the virus in their own countries. [...]

Many liberal-minded Chinese intellectuals and officials had hoped that the crisis would lead to more openness and transparency. After the 2002–3 SARS epidemic, the government revised the Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases to improve information flow and at least give the impression of greater transparency. But the coronavirus crisis has had the opposite effect. The public demands for reform after Dr. Li’s death appear to have alarmed Chinese leaders, prompting a crackdown on critical social media users and even more intense state censorship at government media outlets, some of which have been instructed not to cover the economic ramifications of the pandemic.[...]

The Chinese government has turned the crisis to its advantage internationally, as well. A triumphant Xi, having evidently halted the COVID-19 epidemic at home, is now projecting his nation’s soft power abroad with “mask diplomacy.” He has sent test kits and personal protection equipment to 82 different countries, although there have been reports that some of the equipment has been faulty. And as of March 10, 25 Chinese provinces had proposed economic recovery packages worth $7 trillion, which will be used both to stimulate China’s domestic economy and to support the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s ultra-ambitious global development strategy that spans nearly 70 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

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PolyMatter: China’s Plan to Reincarnate the Dalai Lama

Foreign Policy: Russia’s New Prime Minister Augurs Techno-Authoritarianism

Between this public service and his private sector background, many commentators say, Mishustin’s nomination underscores President Vladimir Putin’s concerns about the resuscitation of Russia’s stagnant economy. They are not wrong. But to view the significance of Mishustin’s nomination only in terms of its first-order implications for Russia’s economic growth is to indulge a myopia that would itself advance the farther-sighted strategic vision for Russia that his appointment likely reflects: a pivot toward a new brand of techno-authoritarianism. [...]

If the direction in which Mishustin’s appointment signals Putin’s Russia is about to head has any contemporary analogue, it lies in a country that is increasingly its ally and also the world’s epicenter of techno-authoritarianism: Xi Jinping’s China. Like Xi, for Putin, economic growth is likely only part of an overall strategic vision. By his own admission, in spite of his Ph.D. in economics, Mishustin’s role as tax czar was more technologist than economist. And so he is poised to fill the prime minister slot within Putin’s authoritarian regime, in effect, having thrived in a government post as a self-identified technologist who developed new and impressive ways of extending the state’s surveillance of the economy.

As taxman, Mishustin developed a set of futuristic technologies that allowed Russia’s government to raise revenues. But these technologies also enhanced surveillance capabilities of Putin’s authoritarian state. For it’s not as if Russia’s tax authorities simply set an algorithm on heaps of data to do the impersonal bidding of state administration. Putin’s political appointees, like Mishustin, also maintain the ability to identify subjects and dredge up transaction-level data at their own discretion. [...]

The new Russian prime minister arrives with a track record of success at this task from his days as tax czar. Putin draws no shortage of Western criticism for security and human rights issues. But economic technocrats even in bastions of Western liberalism praised the economic panopticon Mishustin constructed for him. One official with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conceded that addressing “Big Brother”-type concerns would require additional work but praised the system as a “game changer” that could allow the world’s governments to raise “hundreds of billions” of dollars in new tax revenue. The OECD was founded in 1961, amid the heights of the Cold War, at least in part to serve as a mechanism to promulgate Western liberalism.

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