Magic Prague

Prague mayor Zdenek Hrib shrugs off Chinese hysteria as he signs twinning agreement with Taipei

By Matthew Day
Mayor of Prague Zdenek Hrib, left, and Taipei city mayor Ko Wen-je singed a partnership agreement between the two cities.

The Czech capital Prague branded China "unreliable" and a “bully” as it scorned the economic might of Beijing to sign a partnership agreement with Taipei in a move seen as evidence of a cooling of attitudes in Europe towards the lure of Chinese investment.
Zdenek Hrib, the city’s mayor, signed the agreement increasing co-operation with the Taiwanese capital on Monday knowing that it could deepen Chinese anger with Prague.
The rift began when the Czech capital challenged a clause in an existing partnership agreement with Beijing requiring it to accept the “one-China” policy, which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory.
The challenge prompted Beijing to tear up the partnership agreement and to cancel planned tours of China by Czech orchestras.
“I think that all people should be aware that China is not a reliable business partner because it cancelled already arranged tours and cancelled contracts already signed just to bully the Prague orchestras,” Mr Hrib told The Telegraph.
“The Chinese reaction has been hysterical.
“Partners should treat each other with respect but we had a partner that did not do that,” he added. “For example, they stopped responding to us. Why should you have a partner that won’t even speak to you?”
In 2018, some 620,000 Chinese flocked to the city but Mr Hrib said any drop in the number of tourists from China “would not be much of a loss” to the city.
The dispute reflects growing question marks in Europe over the merits of Chinese involvement in local economies.
In Montenegro the economy is struggling to service the debt of a massive Chinese loan to build a motorway that forms part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Even Milos Zeman, the Czech president, who unsettled many of fellow citizens with his ardour for China, appears to be losing his enthusiasm for the country.
Last week he said he would not attend a summit in China of the heads of Asian and Eastern European states, saying that China “did not fulfil its promise” when it came to investment.
“There is a change in the way people perceive China,” said Mr Hrib.
“There were a lot of promises made about investment and the economic benefits from the ties between the Czech Republic and China, but after a few years it was quite obvious that these promises have not been fulfilled and that only a fraction of the investments took place.
"And those investments that did took place were not real investments, just acquisitions. Nothing that created job opportunities or knowledge transfer.”

U.S. Navy Will Drill With Southeast Asian Navies

By Mike Ives

A United States Navy reconnaissance plane on Okinawa, Japan, after a mission last year over the South China Sea. Some analysts say America’s military posture in the disputed sea has hardened under President Trump.

HONG KONG — Southeast Asian countries tend to be deeply reluctant to collectively challenge China’s growing military and economic prowess in their region.

But this week, they appear to be doing just that — by holding their first joint naval drills with the United States Navy.
The drills, which will take place partly in the South China Sea, a site of geopolitical tension, began on Monday. 

They were not expected to focus on lethal maneuvers, or to take place in contested waters where China operates military bases.
But the maneuvers follow similar exercises held last year by China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations in an undisputed area of the sea, making them a riposte of sorts to Beijing.
During a summer of heightened tensions over territorial claims, plus an escalating trade war between China and the United States, the drills are being closely watched as the latest move in a high-stakes geopolitical chess match between the superpowers and their shared regional allies.
Some analysts see the drills as part of an incremental hardening of America’s military posture in the South China Sea under President Trump, a strategy that has not been accompanied by additional American diplomacy or incentives for its partners.
“The United States is taking a risk both that its partners will be less inclined to work with it because they are nervous about signaling security cooperation when there’s nothing else there, and that China will continue to advance in the places in which we are absent” on diplomatic and economic fronts, said Mira Rapp-Hooper, an expert on Asian security affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

United States Navy sailors monitoring radar and other instruments aboard the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

“So from a basic balance-of-power perspective, we are not holding the line nearly as well as we should be,” she added.
The United States Navy declined to comment on the record ahead of the drills, citing operational sensitivities.
But in a statement late Sunday, the Navy said the drills would include “a sea phase in international waters in Southeast Asia, including the Gulf of Thailand and South China Sea.” 

It said they would focus partly on “search and seizure,” “maritime asset tracking” and “countering maritime threats,” among other subjects.
The statement said the drills would include eight warships, four aircraft and more than 1,000 personnel. 

It said the American military hardware included a littoral combat ship, a guided-missile destroyer, three MH-60 helicopters and a P-8 Poseidon plane.
The Poseidon is a type of reconnaissance aircraft that the United States has used to conduct surveillance flights over the South China Sea, including around disputed reefs that China has filled out and turned into military bases.
The drills were scheduled to begin on Monday at Sattahip, a Thai naval base, after “pre-sail activities in Thailand, Singapore and Brunei,” and to end in Singapore. 

The Navy’s statement did not say when the drills would end.
Many of the drills will take place this week off Ca Mau Province, on the southern tip of Vietnam, said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a Thai political analyst. 

He added that the drills would “reinforce the view that geopolitical tensions are shifting from land to sea.”

An MH-60 helicopter preparing for to take off from the U.S.S. Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016.

The timing is ideal for Vietnam, which is deeply worried about a state-owned Chinese survey ship that has been spotted this summer in what the Vietnamese regard as their own territorial waters. 

Last month, the State Department called the survey ship’s movements an effort by Beijing to “intimidate other claimants out of developing resources in the South China Sea,” including what it said was $2.5 trillion worth of unexploited oil and natural gas.
“Vietnam should be happy” that the drills are taking place given China’s recent “aggression in its waters,” said Luc Anh Tuan, a researcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia.
“Hanoi nevertheless will manage to downplay the significance of the drill because like other ASEAN fellows, it does not want to create an impression of a coalition against China,” added Tuan, who is on educational leave from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security.

The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry confirmed in an email last week that the drills were happening, but declined to answer other questions.
Beijing’s actions in the sea are hugely sensitive for Hanoi because it is under heavy domestic pressure to be tough on China, its largest trading partner and former colonial occupier. 

But Vietnam is also racing to find new energy sources to power its fast-growing economy.
In a sign of those tensions, there were rare anti-Chinese riots in Vietnam in 2014, after a state-owned Chinese company defiantly towed an oil rig into disputed waters near the Vietnamese coast, prompting a tense maritime standoff. 

Three years later, Vietnam suspended a gas-drilling project in the sea by a subsidiary of a Spanish company because the project was said to have irritated Beijing.

The Chancellorsville in the South China Sea in 2016, with a Chinese Navy frigate in the background.

ASEAN countries will be more concerned about China’s reaction to the drills than they were about the American reaction to last year’s drills with China, said Gregory B. Poling, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 

He said that was especially true for countries, such as Thailand, that had no territorial disputes in the sea with China.
“They don’t want to do it in a way that upsets the apple cart” of trade with China, he said of the Thai authorities. 

The Thai Navy declined to comment.
The United States Navy said in its statement that its joint naval drills with ASEAN were first proposed in 2017 and confirmed last October. 

That is the same month that China held its first joint naval drills with ASEAN, off its southern coast.
In a telephone interview, Kasit Piromya, a former Thai foreign minister, downplayed the risks for ASEAN of holding naval drills with the United States. 

“From Thailand’s point of view, it’s still an open sea,” he said, adding that any such exercises with any outside partner should be neither aggressive nor defensive.
But Beijing’s territorial claims in the sea have no legal basis, he added, echoing the conclusion of an international tribunal that ruled against China three years ago. 

He said a key question now was whether Southeast Asian leaders could summon the “guts” to confront China’s construction of artificial islands and military bases in the sea, even though some of them have been “kowtowing to Chinese pressures and financial generosity.”
“I would urge the ASEAN leaders, the 10 of them, to get together and speak in a black-and-white manner to the Chinese leadership without being blackmailed or bought out by China’s financial offers,” he said.

China's Moral Inferiority

Beijing wants greater sway over global public opinion. Instead, its propaganda outlets make Chinese leaders look like bullies.
By Li Yuan

Demonstrators gathered at Victoria Park in Hong Kong over the weekend.


Images of masked thugs massing in Hong Kong’s streets.
Unproven allegations that protesters are being led by the C.I.A.
Comparisons between activists and Nazis.
As protests continue to roil Hong Kong’s streets, China’s state-led propaganda machine has gone into overdrive to persuade the world that radical Hong Kong protesters have put the city in peril.
Through social media and other digital arenas, English-language messages from China have painted a picture of a tiny minority of foreign-influenced ruffians intimidating a silent majority of law-and-order residents.
But instead of making China’s case, Beijing’s ham-handed international efforts have largely failed to sway world public opinion.
They took a further blow on Monday, when Facebook and Twitter removed hundreds of accounts that they said appeared to be state-backed efforts to sow misinformation and discord in Hong Kong.
Perhaps more significantly, Twitter took the further step of forbidding state-run media outlets from paying to get their tweets promoted so that they appear prominently in users’ timelines. 
Chinese state-run outlets like the English-language China Daily newspaper and Xinhua, the officials news agency, have used promoted tweets to put their own spin on Hong Kong’s turmoil.


Pinboard@Pinboard

Every day I go out and see stuff with my own eyes, and then I go to report it on Twitter and see promoted tweets saying the opposite of what I saw. Twitter is taking money from Chinese propaganda outfits and running these promoted tweets against the top Hong Kong protest hashtags


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Call it a failure of Chinese “soft power” — what the political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr., who coined the term, defined as getting others to want what you want.
China wants soft power but, judging by Beijing’s propaganda, doesn’t know how to get it.
The contrast has been stark.
On Sunday, millions of peaceful demonstrators clogged the city streets to call once again for the city’s leaders to give in to their demands and give the people greater say in a political system controlled by Beijing. 
The protesters — organizers put their number at 1.7 million — offered a more sympathetic narrative than the world saw the week before, when violent clashes broke out in protests at Hong Kong’s airport.
Chinese state media, on the other hand, in recent days has shown images of Chinese paramilitary police across the border in the mainland engaged in crowd-clearing exercises.
The Twitter account of Global Times, a nationalist tabloid controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, posted a video on Monday calling four pro-democracy Hong Kong figures “The Gang of Four,” a term that refers to the former Chinese leaders who were blamed for plunging the country into the disastrous Cultural Revolution. (The tweet has since disappeared.)
Pro-China activists also appeared in Australia, Canada and Europe, putting on less-than-wholesome displays.
In Toronto on Sunday, pro-mainland protesters shouted words like “traitor” and “loser” as well as crude epithets at a crowd of Hong Kong supporters.
One widely circulated video showed four flashy sports cars revving their engines with Chinese flags hoisted out their windows.
“Worst ‘Fast & Furious’ movie ever,” said one person on Twitter.
China’s tactics may ultimately work in Hong Kong, though so far protesters appear unbowed by threats of a crackdown.
And at home, where independent news sources like The New York Times are blocked, China’s propaganda push appears to be astonishingly effective.
Many internet users there reacted with outrage at the images last week of a Global Times "reporter" who was beaten by protesters at the airport.
Chinese social media is awash with the bloodied faces of police and shaky images of foreigners who state media have claimed — wrongly — are secret protest leaders.
China is using the same tactics abroad, but they don’t play well. 
These include comparing protesters to cockroaches and some cringe-inducing anti-democracy rapping.
“Who are you?/Who’s hiding behind the scenes?,” go the lyrics to a rap disseminated by the foreign arm of China Central Television, the state broadcaster.
“All I see is a beautiful dream turning to nightmare.”
China, since 2010 the world’s second largest economy after the United States, has been determined to build the nation’s soft power.
It envies the sort of unconscious sway that the United States enjoys simply through the pervasiveness of its economic and cultural heft.
President Trump isn’t going to win any trade wars because people in China love the “Transformers” movies or watch “Game of Thrones,” but American mass media and other cultural exports increase people’s familiarity and warmth with the country’s ideals.
China could use some of that sway about now.
Its credibility and legitimacy are under assault in Washington and elsewhere as China hawks rise in prominence.
Under Xi Jinping, China has come up with a wide range of initiatives to woo the world with its ideals and its wallet.
The “China Dream” envisions a peaceful world in which China plays a leading role.
Projects like the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are intended to show the benefits of China’s growing wealth.
“It is easy to dismiss such talk as ‘slogan diplomacy,’” wrote David Shambaugh of the George Washington University in 2015.
“But Beijing nonetheless attaches great importance to it.”
“We should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative and better communicate China’s messages to the world,” Xi said not long after he became the president in 2013.
In his most important media policy speech in 2016, Xi instructed the top official media organizations to learn to tell compelling Chinese stories and build flagship foreign-language media outlets with global influences.
Xinhua, CCTV, Global Times and the rest have bolstered their presence in the United States and elsewhere and taken to the very same social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter that Beijing blocks at home.
Some accounts have amassed followers of over 10 million.
However, the Hong Kong protests have suggested that Beijing still knows hard power much better than soft. 
Instead of offering a competing narrative of a Hong Kong that could prosper under Chinese rule, it has instead made itself look like a bully.
Though troops haven’t crossed into Hong Kong, images distributed around the world by Chinese media outlets show heavily armed personnel preparing for urban conflict.
Beijing is forcing businesses, both global and local, to keep their Hong Kong employees in line or risk getting cut off from the vast Chinese market.
On Sunday, Beijing announced a new policy that will buff up the socialist city of Shenzhen just across the border so it can compete head-to-head with capitalist Hong Kong.
Some young mainlanders are so worked up with nationalistic fervor that they are using software to bypass Chinese censors to log into Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to blast and shame those who support Hong Kong.
While that may have some effect on Chinese students living abroad, it has otherwise had little impact.
Contrast China’s approach with Russia’s: Moscow-tied groups have used social media to tremendously disruptive effect in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
But China needs to build a positive image for itself, not tear down the reputation of others.
That is why a recent CCTV tweet, comparing the Hong Kong protests to the Nazi rise in Germany in the 1930s, undermines Beijing more than it helps. 
The People’s Daily version compares the persecution of Jews, socialists and trade unionists with protesters storming Hong Kong’s main legislative building, blocking roads and attacking reporters, including an accusation that demonstrators “trampled the freedom of the press.”
Should it continue down the same rhetorical path, China risks eroding what little soft power it has.
As Mr. Nye once explained to Chinese university students, “the best propaganda is not propaganda,” because during the Information Age, “credibility is the scarcest resource.”

Stop Chinese Bullying

Germany may join US in opposing China by sending warship through Taiwan Strait, breaking decades of military non-confrontation

politico.com 

German navy supply vessel A1411 Berlin is moored during the opening parade of the 830th port anniversary in Hamburg in May. 

Germany is considering a break from decades of military non-confrontation.
High ranking officials are contemplating sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait – joining the United States and France in challenging Beijing’s claims to what the West regards as an international waterway.
If Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government actually goes ahead, it will be a remarkable revision of its we-keep-out-of-conflict reflexes. 

Germany will be openly backing its allies in a strategy certain to be found provocative by the country’s enforcers of non-combatant passivity.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel takes part in a disussion at an event in Frankfurt am Main on Wednesday.

Recent examples of Germany’s reluctance to engage include the withdrawal of its navy from the combat zone during the West’s Libyan intervention in 2011, caveats on its troop deployments in Afghanistan and its decision not to participate directly in attacks on Islamic State forces in Syria – unlike its Nato neighbours Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and France.
A German official informed me of the Taiwan Strait plan last month. 

Last week, a second German official, at my request, confirmed its discussion by the defence ministry. No firm decision was expected before the end of the summer.
The strait in question is the body of water between China and Taiwan, which Beijing considers to be its territorial zone. 

When a French frigate transited in April, it was shadowed by Chinese military and warned to leave. Beijing said it made “stern representations” to Paris about the vessel’s “illegal” passage.
Later that month, the United States sent two destroyers into the strait “demonstrating the US’s commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific”, according to an American spokesman.
The US has prioritised countering China’s military rise since the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency. 

Why would Germany get involved? 

Members in Merkel’s government see a double opportunity, given Berlin’s lousy relations with US President Donald Trump and wide disrespect elsewhere for its hide-under-the-bed routine.
It certainly would not hurt to back up the US at a time when Washington has suspended threats of tariffs for six months on imported German cars.
The naval mission would also be an opportunity to show up France, which likes to portray itself as the European Union’s sole functional military power and which has responded to Merkel’s opposition to most of President Emmanuel Macron’s reform proposals for the EU by becoming one of Germany’s sharpest critics.

The guided-missile destroyer USS William P Lawrence practices ship maneuvers as it transits the Pacific Ocean in June 2018. 

France has just spent two years and €1.3 billion (US$1.46 billion) to refurbish its atomic-powered carrier, the Charles de Gaulle. 

French generals have accused Berlin of running a “non-combat” army. 

Macron himself has said that Germany’s growth model, based on profiting from imbalances in the euro zone, is at an end.
His openness has emboldened French commentators to pick up the now authorised lash. 

Zaki Laidi, a professor at Sciences Po, the French political science university, wrote last month that Merkel “has done absolutely nothing’’ to change Germany’s role as a rich global bystander protected by America.
The question now is whether the government, faced with deepening political weakness at home, will challenge that portrayal and actually follow through with the plan for projecting power.
The signs are not overwhelmingly promising. 

Merkel’s apparent valedictory speech at the Harvard University commencement last week was a time warp moment – a pretend flashback to a time when Germany was the uncontested European leader, bathing in cash, moderation and the overdrawn favour of Obama.
In reality, Germany is politically riven to the edge of instability. 

Its economic prospects are dim. 

Merkel’s paralytic coalition with the Social Democrats has “cave-in” scrawled all over it two years before she is expected to leave office in 2021.
Polls over the weekend measured the depth of Germany’s cracks.

A tugboat escorts French Navy frigate Vendemiaire on arrival for a goodwill visit at a port in Metro Manila, Philippines in March 2018. 

For the first time since the Green Party became a player in the early 1980s, the environmentalist movement surpassed Merkel’s Christian Democrats in a projection of national election results. 

The Social Democrats sank to a historical low, just a point ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany.
Economically, what Merkel once called Germany’s “Beacon to the World” keeps flashing dimmer shades of yellow. 

The German Chamber of Commerce and Industry reports that gross domestic product growth will fall to 0.6 per cent this year, with little prospect for improvement in 2020.
Worse still: the chancellor’s chosen successor, CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is failing in her job preparation. 

A poll last week showed that 70 per cent of the Germans think she is not up to the task.
Among her ideas: a “symbolic project” for Germany and France to jointly build an aircraft carrier to demonstrate the EU’s role as a “security and peace power” – without detailing its mission. 

Forced to deal with her protege’s fantasy, while refusing herself to meet Nato’s spending targets, Merkel has been cornered into saying “it’s right and good”.
In this context, launching a naval in-your-face operation off the coast of Taiwan would constitute a groundbreaking but unfamiliar act of valour.

Admirably, there are German officials who want to combat the notion that the country is an irresponsible and non-committal ally. 

More power to them. 

The place to do that is the international waters of the Taiwan Strait. 

Now, the German navy needs to get that far.

US Senate bill proposes sanctions for involvement in illegal activities in South and East China seas

• The legislation reiterates America’s commitment to holding the Chinese government accountable for bullying and coercing other nations in the region
• The act would allow the seizure of US-based assets of those developing projects in areas contested by Asean members

Owen Churchill

Ships from four nations – the Philippines, US, Japan and India – sail together in the South China Sea during a training exercise on May 9. 

US senators from both political parties will reintroduce legislation on Thursday committing the government to punish Chinese individuals and entities involved in Beijing’s illegal and dangerous activities in the South and East China seas.
If it becomes law, the “South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act” would require the government to seize US-based financial assets and revoke or deny US visas of anyone engaged in “actions or policies that threaten the peace, security or stability” of areas in the South China Sea that are contested by one or more members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean).
“This bipartisan bill strengthens efforts by the US and our allies to counter Beijing’s illegal and dangerous militarisation of disputed territory that it has seized in the South China Sea,” Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican who is leading the legislation with Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin, told the South China Morning Post.
“This legislation reiterates America’s commitment to keeping the region free and open for all countries, and to holding the Chinese government accountable for bullying and coercing other nations in the region.”
The bill would require the US secretary of state to provide Congress with a report every six months identifying any Chinese person or company involved in construction or development projects in areas in the South China Sea contested by Asean members. 

Activities targeted by the bill include land reclamation, the making of islands, lighthouse construction and the building of mobile communication infrastructure.
Those who are complicit or engaged in activities that threaten the “peace, security, or stability” of those regions or areas of the East China Sea administered by Japan or the Republic of Korea would also be subject to sanctions, the bill says.

The legislation was previously introduced in 2017 but never moved from the Foreign Relations Committee to the full Senate, which, along with the House of Representatives, must approve a bill before it goes to the president to be signed into law.
Those supporting the new bill are hoping for a different outcome this time, with some drawing confidence from a new Foreign Relations Committee chairman – Senator James Risch – who has made scrutiny of Beijing’s policies and practices a staple of his tenure since taking over from fellow Republican Bob Corker in January.
“We’re very optimistic, given chairman Risch’s interest in China issues,” a spokeswoman for Rubio said on Wednesday, adding that there would be no difference in language between Thursday’s version of the bill and the one introduced in 2017.
Also bolstering hopes that the legislation will progress is rising hawkishness towards Beijing among lawmakers in both houses of Congress and on both sides of the political aisle.
Across a broad range of matters, including national security, trade and intellectual property, the administration’s position on China has won support from even the most ardent critics of US President Donald Trump. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for instance, has applauded Trump’s waging of a costly trade war with Beijing, including his escalating use of tariffs.
In a possible indicator of increased support for congressional resistance to Beijing, the current bill is co-sponsored by 13 Democratic and Republican senators, a significant increase from the two who signed on to the 2017 legislation.

Bonnie Glaser of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank in Washington, said it was “right that we now have a very harsh atmosphere in the Congress when it comes to China,” but predicted that the “obligatory, binding language” of the legislation would have to be toned down for it to make its way to the president’s desk.
“I think most administrations tend to baulk at Congress having that much say over foreign policy,” said Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia and specialist in China’s foreign and security policy at CSIS. 

“If it ever gets support within the Senate, there’ll probably have to be a compromise with the House. My guess is that it would not ultimately be passed in this form.”

Marco Rubio says the new bill will strengthen efforts to counter Beijing’s illegal and dangerous militarisation of disputed territory in the South China Sea. 

But it was “important to have this discussion and debate,” said Glaser, who noted that the South China Sea had not been on the “front burner” of the Trump administration’s policy agenda. 

“And so introducing it in Congress might not be a bad idea.”
Reintroducing the legislation had been on Rubio’s radar for about a month, said the senator’s spokeswoman, though it had become “very timely” given the US Navy’s recent “freedom of navigation operations” (FONOPs) in the region, each of which has elicited firm resistance from Beijing and, in some cases, close encounters with Chinese naval vessels.
After a US destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of the disputed Scarborough Shoal on Sunday, the second of such FONOPs in a month, Beijing said the ship’s actions had “violated China’s sovereignty and undermined the peace, security and good order in the relevant sea areas”.
The Trump administration has done a much better job at conducting regular and frequent FONOPs than previous administrations, said Glaser, adding that the US government had been successful in encouraging other stakeholders in the region to engage in joint cruises and exercises.
Earlier this month, for instance, the US conducted naval drills with India, Japan and the Philippines, a joint show of force that Glaser characterised as “unusual”, adding she was “glad to see [it]”.

The Chinese warship Linyi took part in six days of joint naval exercises with Russian vessels in the East China Sea. 

Beijing bully

U.S. ambassador accuses China of bullying with propaganda ads

By Tony Munroe

U.S. Ambassador to China Terry Branstad speaks to the media in front of his residence in Beijing, China June 28, 2017. 

BEIJING -- A week after an official Chinese newspaper ran a four-page ad in a U.S. daily touting the mutual benefits of U.S.-China trade, the U.S. ambassador to China accused Beijing of using the American press to spread propaganda.
U.S. President Donald Trump last Wednesday referred to the China Daily’s paid supplement in the Des Moines Register -- the state of Iowa’s biggest selling newspaper -- after accusing China of seeking to meddle in the Nov. 6 U.S. congressional elections.
President Trump’s accusation that Beijing was trying to meddle in U.S. elections marked what U.S. officials told Reuters was a new phase in an escalating campaign by Washington to put pressure on China.
Beijing and Washington are currently locked in an escalating trade war that has seen them level rounds of tariffs on each other’s imports.
China’s retaliatory tariffs early in the trade war were designed to hit exporters in states such as Iowa that supported President Trump’s Republican Party, Chinese and U.S. experts have said.

Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador to China and the former longtime governor of Iowa, a major exporter of agricultural goods to China, said Beijing had hurt American workers, farmers and businesses.
China, Branstad wrote in an opinion piece in Sunday’s Des Moines Register, “is now doubling down on that bullying by running propaganda ads in our own free press.”
“In disseminating its propaganda, China’s government is availing itself of America’s cherished tradition of free speech and a free press by placing a paid advertisement in the Des Moines Register,” Branstad wrote.
“In contrast, at the newsstand down the street here in Beijing, you will find limited dissenting voices and will not see any true reflection of the disparate opinions that the Chinese people may have on China’s troubling economic trajectory, given that media is under the firm thumb of the Chinese Communist Party,” he wrote.
He added that “one of China’s most prominent newspapers dodged the offer to publish” his article, although he did not say which newspaper.

China must apologise for 'arrogance', Nauru president demands

Tensions rise further at Pacific Islands Forum as leader accuses Beijing of buying their way through the region
By Ben Doherty

Nauru’s president, Baron Waqa, said China needs his country ‘for their own purposes’. 

Nauru's president has demanded China apologise for a senior envoy’s "crazy" behaviour at the Pacific Islands Forum, and lashed out at Beijing's "arrogant" presence in the region.
"They're not our friends. They just need us for their own purposes," President Baron Waqa said. "Sorry, but I have to be strong on this because no one is to come and dictate things to us."
"We're seeing a lot of big countries coming in and sometimes buying their way through the Pacific, some are extremely aggressive, even to the point that they tread all over us," Waqa said. 

"From this forum, all leaders [now] know how arrogant some of these people are."
Waqa said such behaviour merited an apology from Beijing. 

“We won't just seek an apology, we'll even take it up to the UN,” he said. 

“Not only that, I will mention it at the UN and every international meeting.”

Chinese envoy walks out of meeting after row with Nauru president amid bullying claims

This year's annual Pacific summit, which wraps up in Nauru this week, has been one of the most contentious in the event's 49-year history.
The animosity – fuelled by Nauru’s continued recognisance of Taiwan over China – erupted spectacularly on Tuesday when the head of China's delegation Du Qiwen attempted to address a meeting but Waqa refused to let him speak until island leaders had finished. 

Leaked video shows Waqa telling Du: “Show some respect.”
The diplomatic spat pits Nauru – with a population of 11,000 and a landmass of just 21 square kilometres – against an Asian superpower that is the most populous country on Earth, with 1.4 billion citizens.
Nauru has remained close to Taiwan largely through Taipei’s financial largesse, including direct monthly payments to members of parliament (described as “project funding that requires minimal accounting”) and grants and aid funding.
Most of the buildings and infrastructure used to host the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) were built or upgraded with Taiwanese money.
Tensions between Nauru and China were first exposed before the forum even started, when Nauru immigration officials refused to stamp the diplomatic passports of the Chinese delegation.
Tuesday’s treatment of the Chinese delegate was seen as a deliberate and public humiliation, the source inside the closed-door meeting said, and a reflection of Pacific suspicions about Chinese intent in the region.
Waqa told a media conference late on Wednesday Du was a “nobody” and “crazy”.
"Would he behave like that in front of his own president? I doubt it.
"He disrespected the Pacific, the forum island leaders and other ministers who have come to join us in our territory. Are you kidding? Look at him, he's a nobody.
"He's not even a minister and he's demanding to be recognised and to speak before the prime minister of Tuvalu. Is he crazy?"
Waqa’s exchange with Du highlighted sensitivities over Beijing's rising influence in the Pacific. China is set to overtake Australia as the largest donor to the region, after pledging US$4bn in aid to the region last year.
There are concerns loans from China, if not serviced by small Pacific economies, could be called in by Beijing in debt for equity swaps on disadvantageous terms, giving China increased military access and strategic influence in the region.
China has shown no sign of backing down, with a foreign ministry spokeswoman saying on Wednesday that Nauru violated forum regulations "and staged a bad farce".

China's State Hooliganism

Sweden summons Chinese ambassador over kidnapping of Gui Minhai

The situation has worsened since the bookseller was taken by police while travelling on a train to Beijing
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Sweden has summoned China’s ambassador to Stockholm to explain the dramatic snatching of a Swedish bookseller as he travelled to Beijing with two European diplomats.
Gui Minhai, 53, was taken on Saturday by about 10 plainclothes officers as his train stopped at a station outside the Chinese capital.

His current whereabouts is unknown.
It is the second time in just over two years that Gui, a Hong Kong publisher who had specialised in melodramatic tomes about China’s political elite, has been seized by Chinese agents. 

In October 2015 Gui vanished from his Thai holiday home, later resurfacing in detention in China where he made what supporters denounced as a forced televised confession. 

Gui had seemed on the verge of release last autumn but this week’s dramatic development has shattered those hopes.

Swedish bookseller Gui Minhai snatched by Chinese agents from train.

Margot Wallström, Sweden’s foreign minister, told reporters her government had “detailed knowledge” of Saturday’s events and was “working round the clock” on the issue. 

“The situation has now worsened since Saturday morning,” she admitted.
Criticism of China’s actions -- and Stockholm’s so far timid public response to Gui’s ordeal -- intensified after reports of his latest detention. 

“This was precisely what wasn’t supposed to happen,” the bookseller’s daughter, Angela Gui, told the Guardian.
“I think it is quite clear that he has been abducted again and that he’s being held somewhere at a secret location,” she added in an interview with Radio Sweden.
In an editorial entitled ‘Is there anything China won’t get away with?’ Sweden’s Borås Tidning newspaper said it was time to stand up to a bullying Beijing: “The scariest part of the news about the Swedish publisher isn’t so much that Chinese authorities have caught him again but the arrogance the manner of his arrest demonstrates to the rest of the world.”
It warned: “This is a new China that we see; a China which, with its ever-growing tentacles, wants to build a huge port in Lysekil … which builds nuclear power plants in the UK, which wants to build an Arctic highway from Norway to Moscow … a China that is not afraid of the diplomatic repercussions that may arise from grabbing a Swedish book publisher in front of the employees of Margot Wallström.”
Diplomats and observers say that under Xi Jinping, who was recently crowned China’s most dominant ruler since Mao Zedong, Beijing has become increasingly deaf to foreign criticism and inclined to throw its weight around, wagering cash-hungry governments will not challenge its actions.
“There is really a new, harsher tone in their approach. It wasn’t like this a few years ago,” said one western diplomat who declined to be named because of the political sensitivities involved.
“I think they’ve become over confident and are overplaying their hand,” the diplomat added. 

“And there is an increasing push-back from all over the world.”
Jojje Olsson, a Swedish writer who has written a book about Gui’s saga, said Saturday’s “kidnapping” underlined how Beijing cared more about silencing dissent than its international image: “It shows the Chinese government cares less and less about criticism from the outside -- they would rather set an example that you cannot get away when you criticise the government, than listen to foreign governments or foreign media.”
Olsson contrasted Stockholm’s handling of Gui’s case with its efforts to free two Swedish journalists who were imprisoned in Ethiopia in 2011. 

“Back then, the Swedish government was very quick to get involved ... the foreign minister travelled to Ethiopia twice ... [But] in the case of Gui Minhai obviously it has been very muted.” 

Sweden’s foreign minister had not once spoken to Angela Gui, Olsson claimed.
“They say they are working ... "behind the scenes" but they are being very careful in putting official pressure on China. That is, of course, how China would like it.”

Palau holds out as China squeezes Taiwan’s allies

Tiny tourism-reliant Pacific nation defies pressure from its biggest source of visitors
By Edward White in Taipei and Nicolle Liu in Hong Kong

Tommy Remengesau, Palau's president, and Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Democratic Progressive party, which has replaced the more China-friendly Nationalist party in power in Taiwan.

Palau, a tiny Pacific nation of just 21,500 people, has vowed to resist renewed pressure from Beijing to cut its diplomatic links with Taiwan.
 One of just 20 nations keeping formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, Palau was named in a notice issued by Chinese officials last month warning travel agencies that it was illegal to advertise group tours to destinations not on China’s approved list.
 But while a clampdown on Chinese visitors would hurt the Palau economy, the nation said it had no plans to switch its allegiance away from Taipei.
 “Palau is a country of laws, it is a democracy and we make our own decisions,” said Olkeriil Kazuo, spokesperson for Palau’s president, Tommy Remengesau.
 China is the biggest source of visitors to tourist-dependent Palau, comprising roughly half the 113,000 visitors to the archipelago so far this year, according to the Asian Development Bank. Tensions between China and Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing regards as a renegade province, were heightened last year when the Democratic Progressive party led by Tsai Ing-wen won power, replacing the China-friendly Nationalist party, or Kuomintang.
 The republication of China’s list of approved travel destinations reflects Beijing’s toughening approach towards Taiwan’s allies, experts said.
 Mr Kazuo said Beijing’s exclusion of Palau from its list of approved destinations — a measure in place for several years but to date not strictly enforced — has “never affected” the country.

Tourism growth “largely determines economic performance” — the sector accounted for more than half of Palau’s gross domestic product in 2015 — and a “significant” decline in visitors from China, Japan and Taiwan this year has already caused “uncertainty over near-term economic prospects”, according to the ADB.
 Dilmei Louisa Olkeriil, Palau’s ambassador to Taiwan, said that, if the number of Chinese visitors suddenly fell, “of course the [tourism] industry will hurt”.
 “If China says, ‘no tourists go to Palau’, then no tourists will come to Palau, we need to be aware of that,” she said, adding that Palau must further diversify its source markets to “protect us from something like this”.
 In the decades since China was admitted to the UN in 1971, most countries withdrew recognition of the Republic of China, as Taiwan is formally known, to establish relations with Beijing.
In a dogged battle for recognition, both sides have long used promises of financial aid and infrastructure spending to attract allies.

But policymakers in Beijing have now decided that China’s political objectives are not “something they can obtain purely by soft power alone”, said Lauren Dickey, a researcher in cross-Strait relations and a visiting fellow at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
 “Even when China has relied on the carrot, the threat of the stick has always been there. The difference is the stick is actually being used this time,” Ms Dickey said.
 William Stanton, former head of the American Institute in Taiwan, the unofficial US embassy in Taipei, said it was clear China was “stepping up pressure” against Taiwan.
 “It seems to be an important shift,” he said, noting that Chinese dictator Xi Jinping had signalled a toughening foreign policy at the Communist party congress in October.
“They are a bully and they are going to get worse unless people stand up to them,” said Mr Stanton, who now lectures at National Taiwan University.

Iron Lady: Hillary Clinton hits China on human rights and South China Sea

“The path to legitimacy and leadership runs through responsible cooperation, not through secret military build-ups on contested islands or bullying smaller neighbors”
By Jessica Meyers


Hillary Clinton, shown in April at the Women in the World Summit in New York, spoke Tuesday by teleconference to a economics and policy conference in Beijing.

Hillary Clinton spoke to the Chinese audience as if she were giving a presidential address.
The former White House contender delivered a pointed, forceful attack Tuesday aimed at Trump and Xi Jinping, with whom the U.S. leader claims a unique chemistry. 

Her remarks — which ranged from human rights to climate change — were striking in their divergence from Trump’s, who visited China only weeks earlier.
This administration “came in and retreated from diplomacy,” she said via teleconference to a packed economics and policy conference in Beijing. 

While under Xi, “we are seeing an unprecedented consolidation of power. That does trigger anxiety about a more assertive Beijing and worries from your neighbors as well as the United States.”
The former secretary of State’s hour-long appearance included a keynote speech and questions. 

It comes less than a month after Xi feted Trump at the Forbidden City in a “state-visit plus” heavy on pageantry and short on evident breakthroughs.
Trump, who pulled off an upset over Clinton in 2016, has berated the Communist nation for unbalanced trade deals and treating North Korea too gently. 

He promised “tremendous things” for the two nations after the trip, but provided few concrete details. Trump did not call out China for its human rights abuses or extensive claims in the South China Sea.
Clinton, seated in a white armchair with a backdrop of bookshelves, ticked them off like a list.
“The path to legitimacy and leadership runs through responsible cooperation, not through secret military build-ups on contested islands or bullying smaller neighbors,” Clinton said, in reference to China’s efforts to build artificial islands in waters its neighbors also claim.
Clinton has traversed the U.S. in recent months picking apart the presidential race and autographing copies of her third memoir, “What Happened.” 

In it, she faults herself — and a great many other people — for her loss.
In her speech Tuesday, she made multiple mentions of her book and Russia’s attempt to sway the election, although her comments focused most on the precarious nature of Sino-U.S. ties. 

The relationship, she said, “is at a crossroads.”
Clinton echoed several similar themes to Trump’s, including ensuring fair trade practices and doing more to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. 

She urged the U.S. and China to pursue negotiations with the isolated state, instead of resorting to “bluster” and “taunts.” (Trump’s nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “Rocket Man.” Kim has labeled Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”)
“Beijing should remember that inaction is a choice,” Clinton said.
Trump’s 13-day visit to Asia in early November sought to deepen assistance in dealing with North Korea, while convincing skeptical allies of America’s commitment to the region and reworking trade deals.
“You’re a very special man,” he told Xi at a briefing with reporters, where they did not take questions.
Clinton last visited Beijing officially in 2012 as the Obama administration’s top diplomat. 

But the former New York senator, two-time White House hopeful, and previous first lady has a history with China.
It began in 1995 when, as first lady, she gave a forceful speech at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. 

She declared “women’s rights are human rights,” and, without mentioning China, criticized forced abortions, mistreatment towards girls, and females sterilized against their will.
Chinese officials considered it an inappropriate swipe at the country’s treatment of women and its one-child policy. 

Human rights advocates embraced her bluntness. 

A New York Times editorial said it may have been “her finest moment in public life.”
Clinton reminded the audience of those remarks on Tuesday, and called it “one of the most memorable experiences of my life.”
She also referenced her decision to assist Chen Guangcheng, a blind civil rights lawyer who escaped house arrest and fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing seeking asylum. 

The move coincided with Clinton’s visit in 2012, sparking a diplomatic crisis. 

Chen was eventually allowed to leave the country.
Clinton helped launch strategic talks between the two countries, but Chinese blamed her for pushing policies in the Asia-Pacific they viewed as an attempt to contain China.
A year after Clinton became secretary of State in 2009, she told a security conference in Hanoi that the U.S. had a vital interest in ensuring ships could sail freely on the South China Sea. 

China’s Foreign Ministry decried her comments as “an attack on China.”
In 2015, Clinton called Xi “shameless” for allowing the imprisonment of five feminists while he hosted a United Nations meeting on women’s rights. 

The Global Times, a state-run newspaper, labeled her a “rabble rouser” and accused her of “ignominious shenanigans.”
The paper compared Clinton to “demagogue Donald Trump.” 

At least some Chinese, it appeared, preferred the bureaucrat they didn’t like to the businessman they couldn’t predict.
But Chinese officials and businesses are now listening to the person who made it into White House, said Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank.
“What she said may not have a big impact in China,” he said. 

“Chinese companies really care what the [current] administration thinks. … The business interest in China and the U.S. is still huge and that, fundamentally, is the biggest common denominator.”
Tuesday’s event was hosted by Caijing, a well-known business magazine that tends to draw big names to its annual conference. 

Former President Bill Clinton gave the keynote three years ago, when his wife was still weighing a second presidential run.
“I was the candidate of reality,” she said, in response to a final question on Tuesday. 

“It just wasn’t as entertaining as the reality TV candidate.”

Chinese Peril

To Stop Kim Jong-un, China Needs A Big Prize: The South China Sea
Panos Mourdoukoutas

Without any doubt, China can stop Kim Jong-un’s missile tests. 

Once and for all, and save a lot of trouble for America and its allies—and for Asian market investors.
But to do that, China needs a big prize, the South China Sea. 

All of it, so Beijing can write its own navigation rules, exploit all the riches that are hidden beneath, and satisfy the nationalistic sentiment it has nurtured.
The Korean Peninsula is far away from the South China Sea. 

But the on-going crisis in the Korean Peninsula isn’t independent from what’s going on in the South China Sea, as there is a key player behind each conflict: China.

In fact, Kim Jong-un has emerged as China’s decoy in South China Sea disputes. 

As the world is fixated on Kim’s nuclear tests and missiles launches, China continues the building of artificial islands in the South China Sea, bullying every neighboring country that dares to challenge its ambitions to dominate the vast waterway. 

Like threatening the Philippines with all-out war should it enforce an international arbitration ruling, which confirmed that China has no historic title over the waters of the South China Sea.
China also told Vietnam and India to stop searching for oil in the region, or else risk an attack on the oil and gas bases. 

And it has demanded that Indonesia rescind its decision to rename its maritime region in the southwest part of the South China Sea as the “North Natuna Sea,” asserting its own sovereignty in the area.
But it hasn’t stopped there. 

It further demanded that America’s close Asian ally, Japan, stay away from its “own” South China Sea.
Meanwhile, bilateral trade between China and North Korea has increased by nearly 20% last year, as Apostolos Pittas, adjunct professor of economics at Long Island University Post notes.
So far, Asian markets have been responding more to the Korean Peninsula crisis, losing a couple of percentage points any time Kim fires a missile and less on China’s South China Sea bullying.
That’s why China has no real intention of taming Kim’s ambitions -- unless America and its allies are prepared to let Beijing take control over the entire South China Sea, and step up its bullying tactics.
Are they prepared to pay this big a price?

The United States Has Not Yet Lost the South China Sea

Despite many setbacks, the United States has not totally lost influence in the vital waterway.
By Tuan N. Pham

The last two months saw an uptick in tensions in the South China Sea (SCS) following a period of relative calm since the arbitral tribunal at the Hague handed down its historic and sweeping award on maritime entitlements in the SCS, overwhelmingly favoring Manila over Beijing. 

After a year of successfully diminishing the legal and diplomatic impact of the unfavorable ruling, China has resumed a pattern of brazen intimidation against its fellow SCS claimants.
In July, Beijing bullied Hanoi into suspending oil drilling in a disputed oil block 250 nautical miles off the southeast coast of Vietnam. 

China threatened that it would attack Vietnamese bases in the Spratly Islands if the oil drilling did not cease immediately. 

A month later, Beijing sent a flotilla of Chinese fishing boats, escorted by People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) ships and Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessels to Thitu Island, the largest land feature claimed and occupied by the Philippines in the Spratly Islands.
The purpose of the deployment remains unclear, but some have speculated that it may have been a coercive demonstration to dissuade Manila from carrying out announced infrastructure repairs and upgrades on Thitu; or a more provocative move of posturing (or threatening) to blockade or even land on one or more of the adjoining unoccupied sand bars. 

If the latter, however unlikely, it would suggest a similar modus operandi to the illegal seizure of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 and a destabilizing escalation with strategic ramifications if one of those sand bars includes Sand Cay – an unoccupied high-water feature that could affect the sovereignty and maritime jurisdiction of nearby Chinese-claimed Subi Reef (one of China’s seven artificial islands in the SCS). 

As per United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Subi Reef cannot generate its own territorial sea, but it has the potential to supersede a territorial sea claim from Sandy Cay because the distance between them (unlike Thitu) is less than 12nm.

Also of consequence was the disappointing outcome of the 24th Meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF) in Manila 2-8 August. 

The joint communique of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting mostly favored China’s positions over those of the United States, Australia, and Japan. 

Beijing wanted no discussion or reference to its claims or activities in the SCS, last year’s arbitration ruling, and need for an ASEAN Code of Conduct (COC). 

Washington, meanwhile, advocated for the implementation of the 2016 arbitration decision and a substantive and legally binding COC. 

In the end, Chinese positions largely won out. 

The communique wording was far less forceful and China-specific than Vietnam and the United States and its allies preferred. 

Indeed, it was sufficiently ambiguous that Beijing and its supporters within ASEAN could tolerate and accept – another successful diplomatic obstruction on China’s part.
So, what does all of this means for the region and the United States? 

Part one of this two-part series provides perspectives and context to the strategic question. 

Part two examines ways and means the United States could turn the tide and regain the strategic initiative, recover the high ground of regional influence, and stave off losing the SCS.

Prevailing Perspectives
Pundits within U.S. and foreign think tanks were quick to analyze the recent developments and assess the strategic implications thereof. 

The assessments vary from diminished U.S. regional influence to loss of the SCS by the United States. 

The following are two exemplars of such judgments:
A scholar with the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, a Chinese think tank, wrote in the International Public Policy Review and later republished by The Diplomat that the recent ASEAN meetings capped an trend of eroding U.S. regional influence (soft diplomatic power) and that this decrease is both absolute and relative to that of China. 

The United States, the piece argued, is realizing that “its soft power relationships in Southeast Asia are shallower and more ephemeral than it thought.” 

Washington, therefore, needs to enhance its soft power commitments in the region if it hopes to keep pace with Beijing, or stem China’s growing influence.
A former journalist and noted author, now an associate fellow with the Chatham House, wrote in Foreign Policy that Vietnam’s capitulation shows China’s neighbors fear that the United States no longer has their backs. 

If Hanoi thought Washington had its back, Beijing could have been deterred and the credibility of the United States in the region strengthened. 

Instead, Washington has left the region drifting in the direction of Beijing.

One More Perspective
Although one can quibble on the scope, nature, and extent, America has indeed lost some influence over the years – especially with some allies, partners, and organizations in the region. 

The whys and wherefores vary, but largely revolve around the geostrategic contest between the United States and China for regional dominance with the SCS as a prominent manifestation of that strategic rivalry.
Washington has generally responded to Chinese assertiveness in the SCS with an ambiguous restraint policy, concurrently accommodating and balancing Beijing. 

The former reassures China and encourages a cooperative relationship to maintain the regional status quo and acceptance of the greater international system from which Beijing itself has greatly benefited. 

The latter seeks to dissuade China to not alter the regional order through an amalgamation of soft and hard deterrent powers.
In the beginning, the policy favored accommodation (cooperative), but has since migrated to a more balancing (competitive) posture because of Beijing’s increasingly strident behavior despite repeated U.S. overtures and deference to Chinese national interests. 

Moreover, the U.S. response to China’s call for a “new type of great-power relationship” has been mostly disjointed, uneven, and at times, confusing. 

There is still a distinct disconnect in how Beijing and Washington perceive and understand the model. What the United States views as a way to manage competition (weaken instability) and promote cooperation (strengthen stability), China sees it as a framework to acknowledge its new global status and respect its core strategic interests – one of which is territorial integrity and, by extension, maritime sovereignty claims in the SCS.
Most Southeast Asian countries (Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore) have responded to China’s aggression by pursuing a security strategy that seeks to hedge against the prevailing uncertainty, insecurity, and instability from the Sino-American strategic rivalry. 

They address their security concerns and supplement their security shortfalls by pursuing stronger relations with the United States; maintaining good ties with China; building up their own military capabilities and capacities; forging security partnerships among themselves; and looking to regional institutions (ASEAN) and international law (UNCLOS) to manage disputes and temper U.S.-Chinese competition. 

Much is driven by the uncertainty of U.S. commitment and policy constancy; geographic reality of China (proximity); and the economic benefits derived from good ties with both Beijing and Washington. 

All told, this creates a geo-political situation in which many regional countries are unwilling to choose between the United States and China, and resist any initiatives that may be perceived as a counterbalancing coalition against Beijing. 

That may change though, if China overreaches and pushes them too far.
The loss of regional influence did not happen overnight, but was the result of a cumulative aggregation of events through the years. 

Hindsight suggests China’s seizure of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 was the beginning of the steady slide in regional trust and confidence in America’s traditional role as the guarantor of the global economy and provider of regional security, stability, and leadership. 

Beijing interpreted the weak international and U.S. responses to its bold provocation as an opportunity to press ahead with its strategic agenda in the SCS.
For the next three years, China built land out of extant geographic features for permanent presence and occupation; militarized the new land outcrops for maritime security and power projection; and employed an aggressive legal and diplomatic crusade to characterize the developed geographic features as islands deserving of maritime zones. 

In 2014, Beijing unilaterally placed an oil-drilling rig in waters 120nm from Vietnam’s coast – near islands claimed by both countries and well within Hanoi’s 200nm exclusive economic zone (EEZ) set by international law – and surrounded it with a protective cordon of Chinese fishing boats, PLAN ships, and CCG vessels. 

In 2015, Beijing tried to intimidate Manila to not submit its arbitration case to the PCA and spent the following year undermining the authority and legitimacy of the court and diminishing the legal and diplomatic impact of the unfavorable ruling.
Hence, the recent events are just the latest in a series of Chinese bullying acts against its regional neighbors and incremental erosion of U.S. standing as the preeminent naval power that ensures the seas are free and open to commerce for all nations. 

In sum, Southeast Asian leaders took notice of perceived American passivity and acquiescence through the years, and adjusted their foreign policies accordingly and will continue to do so as Washington and Beijing posture (compete) for relative regional dominance.
All things considered, America has had several setbacks, but has not lost the SCS yet. 

The SCS is a fluid environment that makes any recalibrations transitory. 

The strategic shift in China’s favor – change in Philippine foreign policy, Manila and Washington’s failure to capitalize on the arbitral tribunal ruling, ASEAN under Manila’s chairmanship, warming relations between Beijing and Bangkok, closer Chinese ties with Laos and Cambodia, Trans-Pacific Partnership withdrawal, inclusion of the RMB in the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights basket, and rise of the Chinese economy to second largest in the world – is not permanent.
Regional sentiments constantly change with the geopolitical and economic tides as evidenced by the tenuous ties between Manila and Beijing; rising friction between Hanoi and Beijing; Hanoi joining the U.S.-led coalitionat the last ARF; Hanoi agreeing to host a U.S. aircraft carrier port visit next year; Jakarta renaming the resource-rich northern portion around its Natuna Islands, which lie in the southern end of the SCS (and part of Beijing’s disputed nine-dash line claim), as the North Natuna Sea; developing United States-Japan-Australia trilateral alliance; Tokyo’s continuing outreach to SEA capitals; New Delhi’s making greater inroads into SEA (Act East policy); and slowing Chinese economic growth and persistent worries over rising debt, credit, banking, and social demographic challenges. 

Opportunities exist for America to regain the strategic initiative in the vital waterway and recover the high ground in diminished regional influence.
This concludes a short discourse on the recent developments in the SCS and the strategic implications thereof; and sets the conditions for further discussion in part two on the ways and means the United States could turn the tide and regain the strategic initiative, recover the high ground of regional influence, and stave off losing the SCS.

Western Academic Prostitution

China Bullies Western Universities Because They Let It
BY CHRISTOPHER BALDING 

Cambridge University Press’s announcement that it had removed 300 articles of the China Quarterly from its Chinese website at the request of regulators reignited the debate on academic freedom in China. 

Following massive pushback, the publisher announced that it would not censor the requested articles and even went so far as to make them available for free. 

But the incident should be a warning to Western universities, academics, and publishing houses that they must reconsider how to engage with a China intent on censoring ideas both at home and abroad.
It’s not the China Quarterly articles themselves — a ragtag bunch going back to the 1960s, which seem to have been arbitrarily chosen using keywords like “Tiananmen” and “Xinjiang” — that mattered for the hundreds of scholars who immediately protested the decision. 

It was the fact that a respected publication was bending the knee to censorship and what this represented about the broader complicity of Western organizations, universities, and academics in helping China export its academic censorship around the world.
Over the past decade, the number of Chinese students studying abroad has increased rapidly. 

In 2000, there were fewer than 50,000 students, but by 2015 more than 500,000 were heading overseas every year. 

Many Chinese students welcome the escape from an education system that values rote memorization over critical thinking and requires multiple classes, usually slept through, on communist ideology.
Western universities rushed to meet demand. 

They sent recruiters and negotiated agreements with third parties to sell Chinese students on the idea of studying abroad. 

Elite universities hurried to open campuses or sign partnership agreements with Chinese universities. Twelve universities — including Carnegie Mellon, Duke, and Johns Hopkins — have established degree-granting partnerships with Chinese universities to meet demand for their educational services.
Some critics within academia raised concerns about cooperating with China’s notoriously illiberal universities, where censorship and self-censorship is the norm. 

This has deepened since Xi Jinping took office in 2012; Chinese professors avoid giving interviews to any media even on uncontroversial topics, with one well-known Chinese professor noting, “In the last 40 years, freedom of speech for intellectuals has never been constricted as severely as it is now.” 

The crackdown on academic speech has strengthened sharply in the last few years, with Western textbooks being removed from classrooms and academics silenced. 

The central government recently has also begun to restrain online media and entertainment in order to demonstrate ideological loyalty in the lead-up to the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, planned for October.
Little effort is made to hide the restrictions at Chinese universities, which openly publish censorship guidelines for faculty that forbid criticizing the Chinese constitution, party leaders, and discussing religion. 

Other informal prohibitions include discussion of specific topics such as Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen Square. 

According to a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on U.S. universities in China, Chinese students respond with self-censorship, avoiding any taboo topics for fear classmates may “report on whatever the students say.”
Meanwhile, professors in Chinese universities expect to have party monitors report on how closely their lectures conform to approved ideology, and ambitious faculty who want to move into leadership roles at any university must be party members. 

Recent audits carried out by the all-powerful Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, which leads the ongoing anti-corruption campaign that has also functioned as an ideological purge, critiqued elite Chinese universities like Peking and Tsinghua, known for their relative openness to Western ideas, for weak “ideological and political work.”
Western universities’ traditional response to criticisms on China’s restrictions on free inquiry was to claim that they could help liberalize their Chinese counterparts by establishing contact with them. 

What has happened instead is that they’ve ended up importing Chinese academic censorship into their own institutions. 

Cambridge University Press censoring on behalf of Beijing is not the first time elite British universities have opted for the bottom line over principle in accepting Chinese censorship contributions.
A recent study by the U.S. National Association of Scholars found widespread evidence that the Confucius Institutes, Beijing-funded centers for “Chinese culture and language” in foreign campuses, limit what can be taught and discussed not just in their courses but throughout universities. Confucius teachers are paid by the Chinese Ministry of Education and are required to adhere to Chinese laws on speech even when teaching overseas. 

As the report noted, “Some reported an outright ban on discussing subjects that are censored in China.… [U]niversities have made improper concessions that jeopardize academic freedom and institutional autonomy.” 

Western universities are not just accepting censorship; they are signing up for it.
Western universities that have established partnerships with Chinese universities for degree-granting programs have faced similar problems. 

While publicly stating their support for academic freedom, Western universities have accepted the reality that they must impose a censorship regime to exist in China. 

The GAO report noted that one Western institution’s faculty handbook includes “language that protects academic freedom but also encourages self-censorship to prevent externally imposed discipline.”
Even foreign students now have to take propaganda classes mandated by the government.
China even has its embassies and consulates direct Chinese student groups, coordinate protests, and gather information abroad on reluctant participants. 

The University of California San Diego considered canceling a speaking engagement with the Dalai Lama after pressure by Chinese student groups that work with the Chinese government, and some universities, like North Carolina State, have even rescinded their invitations to the Tibetan leader. Many students and scholars have encountered Beijing-directed pressure and censorship at events around the world.
The latest fiasco from Cambridge University Press is a business decision. 

Cambridge University Press claimed that it risked being blocked in all of China unless it complied with the censors’ demands. 

Given China’s decision to block the articles after they were restored, the publisher’s fears were well-founded. 

But either way Cambridge University Press should have made a stand, instead of folding at the first chance. 

Worryingly, Cambridge University Press is not alone in its dereliction of duty. 

Many other well-known institutions and professors regularly acquiesce to Chinese authorities or their counterparts on a range of issues bearing on academic freedom. 

Cambridge University Press’s sudden discovery of its spine is admirable, but the publisher’s initial unwillingness to refuse the request underscores how reluctant institutions are to risk their Chinese cash cows.
Aiming for a diverse student body or announcing opposition to Donald Trump’s immigration ban is a low-cost form of opposition that helps a university establish liberal credentials at home. 

No foreign university, however, has demonstrated willingness to show the same level of opposition to demands made by the Chinese government that it would deem unacceptable at home. 

The opportunities are too big, and their principles turn out to be surprisingly pliable.
Western universities, academics, and publishing houses face a stark choice. 

If they continue to obey Beijing, they make themselves complicit in promoting censorship and human rights violations. 

If they walk away, they turn their backs on large revenue streams and potential donors.
Yet good intermediate steps can be taken in dealing with Communist Party demands to impose censorship on Chinese research abroad. 

First, university libraries should consider unsubscribing from publishing houses or journals that promote censorship by their complicity. 

Markets that do not promote censorship are ultimately much more important to Cambridge University Press than China. 

Second, professors should refuse to submit, review, or cite journals that promote censorship by complicity.
Universities need to change the entire way they think about China.
Universities selling their brand to China are much too willing to sell their principles as part of the package. 

The idea that U.S. universities in China operate with any real academic freedom is delusional; if they are to engage, they must accept that they are part of the party machinery.
Domestically, Western universities with strong privacy and freedom of speech protections should not be afraid to stand up for those values. 

Whether it is inviting a scholar to speak on Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution or the Dalai Lama, universities should not cave to insecure demands by Beijing on what is and is not acceptable discussion about China. 

Chinese students who harass teachers or fellow students over nationalistic issues, as just happened at the University of Sydney in Australia, should be censured by university authorities, not pandered to.
Additionally, Western democracies should take action against Beijing-directed intelligence efforts on university campuses and the direct running of student groups from Chinese embassies. 

If universities value freedom of thought and assembly, they will need to promote these ideals by making students feel secure that they are not being monitored and reported on in China. 

Western governments and universities, which often protest U.S. military recruitment efforts, seem much more sanguine about Beijing intelligence efforts and direction.
Finally, punitive measures by Western universities and academics need to be considered. 

Children of Chinese senior party officials who, on paper, make less than $20,000 a year are attending elite U.S. universities and enjoying the benefits while their parents rail against the dangers. 

(The usual course is to claim that a “foundation” or “sponsor” has sent them, as happened with Bo Guagua, the son of the now-fallen leader Bo Xilai. Bo Guagua was also suspended from Oxford University for his poor performance, only to find himself unusually and fortunately restored the next year, at a time when his father still seemed like a useful contact for the university.) 

These schools would be justified to at least consider a moratorium on the acceptance of the children of senior Chinese officials. 

Furthermore, academics who go to China on consulting contracts or as honored persons need to consider limiting the public kudos they give to a system that goes against the values they claim to hold dear.
The naive hope that simple interaction would yield a liberal turn in China has done nothing to stop one of the biggest crackdowns on independent voices in Chinese academia since the Cultural Revolution. 

Western universities face an actual test of their commitment to free speech, rather than the cheap rhetoric they’re keen to offer at home.