Vice President Pence Unloaded on China; Here’s Why That’s Important

Vice president’s blunt speech could be inflection point in Washington-Beijing relations
By Gerald F. Seib

In a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington last week, Vice President Mike Pence accused China of attempting to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections. 

Last Thursday, while the Capitol was consumed with the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination debate, a few blocks away an event with at least as much long-term significance was unfolding, to relatively little notice.
Vice President Mike Pence walked to a podium at the Hudson Institute and delivered a remarkable, 40-minute broadside against China.
The speech is worth a deeper look, because there was nothing casual about it.
Rather, it was the product of extensive behind-the-scenes work, and may come to be seen as an inflection point in the complex trajectory of relations between Washington and Beijing.
In surprisingly blunt terms, Mr. Pence accused China of abusing its economic power, stealing American technology, bullying the very American companies that have helped in its economic rise, intimidating its neighbors, militarizing the South China Sea and persecuting religious believers at home.
“America had hoped that economic liberalization would bring China into a greater partnership with us and with the world,” Mr. Pence said.
“Instead, China has chosen economic aggression, which has in turn emboldened its growing military.”
In his most headline-grabbing assertion, he also charged that China is attempting to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections and laying the groundwork to try to defeat President Trump’s quest for re-election.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis canceled a trip to China, and President Trump accused China of election interference. 

The Chinese have embarked on a governmentwide effort to “interfere in the domestic policies of this country.”
In this concerted program, China expands its influence by “rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists, and local, state, and federal officials.”
This isn’t a casual accusation.
For months, a team of national-security officials has been compiling a study on the many ways China uses money, power and rewards to affect the way it is viewed in the U.S.
The study was intended in part, say those familiar with it, to shame American institutions that are being used by China.
In a key passage, Mr. Pence declared: “Beijing provides generous funding to universities, think tanks, and scholars, with the understanding that they will avoid ideas that the Communist Party finds dangerous or offensive. China experts in particular know that their visas will be delayed or denied if their research contradicts Beijing’s talking points.”
This portrayal of China’s tactics is important for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it puts the mushrooming trade disputes between Washington and Beijing in much broader context.
The President Trump administration sees Chinese practices not merely as an attempt to gain an economic upper hand, but as a part of a broad struggle over global dominance, in which the Chinese are pulling every lever at their disposal in a quest to prevail.
This portrayal glosses over some of China’s own, considerable internal problems.
Its debt load is soaring, and its economic growth may be faltering.
Chinese stocks and bonds have declined, as has the Chinese currency.
Meanwhile, the cult of personality that has been built up about Xi Jinping is a sign of his power, but also may reflect deeper insecurity about his regime’s relations with its people.
Still, the tension reflected in Mr. Pence’s speech is very real and playing out on multiple fronts.
Just last week, China canceled a long-planned U.S.-China security dialogue, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis canceled a visit to Beijing.
Those moves came as a Chinese warship harassed a U.S. Navy vessel as it sailed in international waters near disputed islands claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea.