Anti-China Crusade

President Trump and Europe must work together to confront China
By Josh Rogin

World leaders take part in a working session on the second day of the Group of 7 summit in Biarritz, France, on Sunday. 

BIARRITZ, France — The clear imperative for the Western world to come together and confront China’s rising internal repression and external economic aggression should have been enough to overshadow any differences between strained allies at this weekend’s Group of 7 meetings. 

But no such luck.
The members of the G-7 — which includes the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — created this multilateral mechanism to bring to bear their joint economic power on the solution of great challenges. 

China’s economic expansion, fueled by various unfair trade practices and directly linked to the Chinese Communist Party’s political and strategic objectives, is unquestionably the free world’s greatest test.
But with blame assignable to both the Trump administration and European members of this once-vaunted group, the best anyone hopes for this weekend in this scenic French retreat is that the G-7 summit won’t devolve into another diplomatic disaster akin to what took place in Canada last year.
President Trump hammered home his criticisms of China’s economic aggression before he even got on the plane, ordering U.S. companies to start looking for ways to leave China, raising tariffs on Chinese goods and calling out Beijing on its rampant intellectual property theft.
On Friday, President Trump referred to his confrontation with China over its economic aggression as “more important than anything else right now — just about — that we’re working on.”
Here in France, most media reports focused on President Trump’s offhand remark that he has had “second thoughts” on everything, including his trade war with China. 

But President Trump was not expressing regret or signaling a change in policy. 

In the same series of questions, he said about the trade war: “It has to happen.”
The president is escalating pressure on China even though that puts his economic accomplishments at risk. 

Make no mistake, he’s committed to seeing this through.
President Trump’s confused messaging is counterproductive. 

But his basic thrust is on point. 

China must change its predatory economic and industrial policies, by persuasion or pressure. 

If the Chinese government won’t play by basic international rules, Western free-market democracies will have no choice but to defend themselves through disengagement and decoupling that will undoubtedly have negative collateral economic consequences.
Any honest analysis must acknowledge that the Chinese government has not yet changed its behavior and that therefore President Trump’s strategy has not yet worked. 

But it’s obvious the chances of success would rise dramatically if European allies were on board.
Yet despite the fact that Europe faces the exact same threat from China’s economic aggression, European leaders here in Biarritz are saying that the onus for ending the trade war is on Washington, not Beijing.
French Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to persuade G-7 leaders (meaning President Trump) to “avoid this trade war” and reduce tensions. 

British Boris Johnson said he didn’t like tariffs and wanted “trade peace.” 

European Council Donald Tusk warned that President Trump’s use of tariffs “as a political instrument” could cause a global recession. 

None of them mentioned China’s role in the dispute or its resolution.
President Trump could blunt criticism of his China tariffs by backing off his concurrent tariff threats on our allies. 

The administration should focus on persuading European countries to join the pressure campaign against China, which is the real trade priority.
Privately, many European officials hope their countries’ stagnant economies might benefit from the U.S.-China fight, as companies from third countries pick up the business American companies leave behind. 

Also, European countries that want money from China’s One Belt, One Road initiative don’t want to anger the Chinese Communist Party before their checks clear.
A more diplomatically savvy Trump administration might point out to Europeans that China’s economic aggression comes at the expense of Europe’s own goals and interests, including confronting climate change, promoting sustainable development and protecting free markets.
The Trump administration also needs to offer European countries more real alternatives to Chinese development funds, which almost always come with political strings, corruption and ecological consequences.
According to White House read-outs, Trump discussed Hong Kong and the technology giant Huawei with his G-7 counterparts. 

What’s missing is a Trump administration explanation of how China’s crackdown on dissent and its predatory economic expansion are two parts of the same Chinese Communist Party strategy, namely to undermine and eventually supplant the free and open international order the United States and European economies depend on.
The bottom line is that President Trump and Europe must make up and find a way to get along, at least for the next year and maybe for four more years after that. 

There will be no joint statement at this year’s G-7 because there’s no consensus on what the G-7 stands for. 

But China’s economic aggression is exactly the kind of generational challenge the G-7 was designed to confront.

China is treating Islam like a mental illness

Uighurs Can’t Escape Chinese Repression, Even in Europe
By ELLEN HALLIDAY
Uighur demonstrators in Turkey wave East Turkestan flags in a protest against China.

BRUSSELS—In the comfortable living room of a family home near Antwerp, photographs from not so long ago recall the faces of the missing.

A business man sits proudly behind the desk of the company he owns. 

A party of women smile and laugh as they share a cup of tea. 

Four brothers in sharp suits, with their arms spread across one another’s shoulders, grin at the camera.
One of them is Ibrahim Ismael. 

He and his family fled their home in Hotan, East Turkestan, in 2011. 

They are ethnic Uighurs, a minority in China but the biggest group in East Turkestan, China’s largest and westernmost colony, which borders eight countries. 

They cannot go home, where at least 1 million Uighurs are detained in camps that Beijing says are for “reeducation” (human-rights groups label them “concentration camps”). 

Nor can they freely campaign for Uighur rights in Europe. 

Conversations with Uighurs in Belgium, Finland, and the Netherlands reveal a systematic effort by China to silence Uighurs overseas with brazen tactics of surveillance, blackmail, and intimidation. 

Many of the Uighurs I spoke with did so on condition of anonymity out of concern for their families in China.
Beijing claims that East Turkestan has always been part of China. 

Some of the province’s main cities—Ürümqi, Hotan, and Kashgar—have been strategically important posts on the Silk Road, the legendary trade route that connected China, the Middle East, and Europe for centuries. 

But the region’s history is more complicated. 

In 1949, Uighurs declared independence for East Turkestan. 

Although it didn’t last long—China took control shortly after the establishment of the communist state in Beijing that same year—the memory of self-governance and invasion lives on.
Most Uighurs, though not all, are Muslim, and speak a Turkic language rather than Chinese. 

In the 1990s, a major separatist insurrection in the province and the recent collapse of the Soviet Union encouraged China to increase its control in the region. 

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Beijing stopped talking about the Uighurs as separatists and started referring to its opponents in the region as "terrorists"; this discourse, linked to the Islamic faith of most Uighurs, helped China gain international support for its actions. 

When violence broke out in Ürümqi shortly after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the government cracked down harder than ever before. 

The state now monitors the individual trustworthiness of each person. 

Points are lost for owning a Koran, so-called extremist behavior such as fasting during Ramadan, simply being Uighur, or having a family member living in a foreign country. 

Those who lose too many points are sent to a camp, often for an indeterminate length of time.
The Uighur diaspora in Europe is relatively small—just a few thousand refugees, in addition to several thousand more in Turkey. 

Some came on student visas, to France, Hungary, and the Nordic countries, and then stayed. 

Others, knowing it was a one-way trip, put their safety in the hands of smugglers. 

Ibrahim and his family paid $40,000 for a journey through Guangzhou, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey, before they could start a new life in Belgium. 

‘I arrived with only $100 left in my pocket,’ he told me.
At first, many Uighurs in Europe were reluctant to speak out. 

Although Ibrahim and his friends live in European democracies where freedom of speech is promised, they feared that their advocacy would lead to retribution for their families.
One activist told me that when in the past he risked a snatched conversation on WeChat, the widely used Chinese social-media app, the state was listening. 

“You can hear that there is someone else there,” he said . 

“If we greet our families with Salaam Alaikum, they flinch and tell us to be quiet.” 

The Uighurs I met told me that as surveillance and arrests in East Turkestan increased since 2017, the calls from relatives stopped altogether. 

“I didn’t want to be an activist,” says Halmurat Harri, a Uighur campaigner and Finnish citizen, whose parents were detained in East Turkestan in April 2017. 

“I’m just a son, who wants to speak to his mother.” 

As the silence settled in, many in Europe began to feel they had no other choice but to go public.
Halmurat was one of the first to challenge the Chinese demand for silence. 

In August 2018, he set off on a “Freedom Tour” of Europe to raise awareness of the detention of Uighurs, including his parents.
Halmurat argued extensively and publicly that his parents’ case did not fit with any official Chinese-government excuses for detaining Uighurs. 

They are retirees, so they don’t need vocational training. 

They are secular, so can’t be called religious extremists. 

His father even speaks fluent Chinese. 

Halmurat used social media effectively—and in December 2018, his parents were removed from the camp and put under house arrest. 

He thinks it is “highly possible” that his activism pressured the government to let them go—though they were released just weeks before the Finnish president visited China.
His story has inspired others to follow suit. 

Activists are now more numerous, more organised, and more energized than ever before. 

They run workshops, public meetings, and social-media campaigns to hone their strategies and win the attention of politicians. 

They are eager to share their stories and their grief. 

But their efforts have not gone unnoticed by Beijing.
China wants to silence its critics, and so it confronts Uighur activists who live beyond its borders.
The EU’s border provides little extra protection: Uighurs in Germany, Finland, and Belgium also report being contacted by Chinese authorities. 

They say they are asked to spy or to reveal sensitive personal details including their home address, workplace, and national ID numbers. 

The offers, even if refused, breed distrust. 

Their friends, they are told, have accepted.
Other forms of intimidation are more public. 

One Uighur man I spoke with reported that he took part in a protest march in Belgium that was followed by a Chinese consular car with blacked-out windows. 

Halmurat reports that demonstrators in Helsinki have been photographed. 

According to the World Uyghur Congress, an advocacy group that represents Uighur interests from Munich, Beijing uses such photographs to punish the families of the protesters who remain in China.
Beijing has also sought to silence a network of scholars in Europe, who are working with Uighur activists to help tell their story. 

Vanessa Frangville, a French scholar at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, has found her work targeted by Chinese authorities. 

In November 2018, two Chinese officials delivered a letter from the Chinese ambassador in Belgium to the university two weeks after it published an online statement in support of Uighur academics. “The Embassy hopes that the University will be able to avoid being misled by false information, and withdraw from its website the motion and other unfounded articles on East Turkestan, in the general interest of the Belgian-Chinese friendly cooperation,” the ambassador wrote.
In February 2019, two individuals dressed as students but identified, Frangville says, by police as Chinese consular staff,, disrupted an academic conference in Strasbourg, France, that she organized on the situation in East Turkestan. 

The individuals distributed propaganda and discredited the panel. 

“That was kind of a traumatic incident, because they spread doubt about what we were saying,” she told me. 

There have also been reports of similar disruptive incidents in Ireland and in Canada.
The Uighur activists want Western leaders to pressure China over its human-rights record in East Turkestan, in the hope that Beijing may loosen control. 

The EU has urged Beijing to respect freedom of religious belief, freedom of expression, and the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. 

On May 3, as the U.S.-China trade war escalated, the Trump administration accused China of running “concentration camps” and subsequently called its actions in East Turkestan the “stain of the century.”
But European governments could also do more to safeguard activists living inside their borders. Authorities at times appear ill-prepared to protect Uighur activists. 

Shortly before he set off on his awareness-raising European tour, Halmurat’s car was vandalized. Upon his return, it began to emit white smoke from the engine. 

When he reported the incidents to the local police, he found that they did not take his concerns seriously.
In July, Halmurat traveled to Turkey to meet diplomats and discuss reported deportations of Uighurs to Tajikistan. 

Arriving at the Ankara airport after a flight from Istanbul, he noticed that two, then three, then four men were following him, always on their phones, in and out of the airport. 

They were Uighur, and spoke the Uighur language. 

When he came closer, he says, they switched to Turkish. 

Fearing for his safety, he called the Finnish Foreign Ministry and U.S. Embassy in Turkey. 

While U.S. officials gave information and reassurance, “I do not feel protected by my own country,” Halmurat told me.
While European Foreign Ministries are aware of the ways in which Chinese officials intimidate Uighur activists, they can do little to prevent it. 

In Europe’s open, democratic societies, China can legally pressure critics through academia, political lobbying, and the media. 

The European External Action Service, the EU’s foreign-policy arm, has a well-oiled operation tracking Russian influence in Europe, but has only more recently begun to pay more attention to the ways in which China makes use of these spaces to silence critics.
To some extent, Uighur activists are vulnerable because Western societies are not aware of their situation. 

Many Europeans have never heard the word Uighur, and refugees like Ismael and activists like Halmurat find it hard to generate public support for their cause. 

“We need people to see us as they see Tibet,” Halmurat said.
Only two European countries—Germany and Sweden—guarantee that they will not deport Uighurs claiming asylum. 

Germany only changed its rules after deporting 22-year-old Dilshat Adil in what authorities called an “administrative error.” 

He has not been heard from since. 

Rune Steenberg, a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, says that Adil’s deportation is evidence of systemic apathy. 

“Don’t believe that Western governments are good, fair, or want your best,” he warns Uighur activists. 

“They’re not as bad as others, but they are not as good as you hope.”
For Ibrahim and his family, life in Europe is much better than it was in East Turkestan. 

He is employed as a long-distance truck driver, his three children are in school, and the family can practice their faith at home without retribution. 

But they are torn in two: between the opportunities of their European future and the pain of knowing that their new life may have contributed to the suffering of their family in East Turkestan.
Whether they are active campaigners or not, Uighurs living far from East Turkestan and farther yet from Beijing cannot escape Xi Jinping’s long arm of influence. 

Small gestures reveal the spirit of independence that will not be cowed. 

“The strong bully the weak,” Ibrahim tells me, as he puts on his shoes and heads out for work. 

“What China is doing is a test.” 

On the living-room floor, in the doorway of his home, Ibrahim treads on a barely visible photograph that bears the face of Xi. 

In Belgium, he has merely taken a step. 

In China, he would have committed a crime. 

Xi’s faded features stare blankly upward, his image worn away by the passing feet of those he tries to silence.

If Trump Wants to Take On China, He Needs Allies

And he should start with Europe.
By Julianne Smith

BERLIN — With the prospect of a trade deal between China and the United States all but dead, the Trump administration is no doubt weighing its next steps in its quest to rein in Beijing’s rise. President Trump should try something he hasn’t yet: call Europe.
Just five years ago, such a suggestion would have raised eyebrows. 

Europe’s relationship with China has traditionally been one of close economic cooperation, especially for an export-led country like Germany. 

To the extent that Europeans saw political and security challenges in working with China, they kept faith that growing economic ties with the West would temper the country’s worst instincts.
Over the last few years, though, Germany, along with several other European countries, have experienced a strategic awakening. 

German policymakers, along with industry leaders, have become much more vocal about China’s predatory trade practices, in particular forced technology transfers. 

They have begun to refer to China as a “systemic competitor.” 

So has the European Union.
This should make the countries of Europe, historically among America’s closest allies, well placed to work with Washington to confront China over trade, its destabilizing policies in Asia, and the authoritarian political model it is promoting around the world. 

Instead, Europe and the United States are consumed by cyclical arguments over — to name just a few issues — military spending, trans-Atlantic trade imbalances and the Iran nuclear deal. 

That’s exactly where the Chinese want the two sides of the Atlantic to be: distracted and divided.

On the subject of China, Europeans feel like they have been relegated to observer status. 

Trump administration officials have made few efforts either to brief allies on their China policy or to propose anything like a unified trans-Atlantic strategy. 

When the Trump administration has engaged Europe on China, such discussions tend to focus on tightening investment screening and preventing the Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei from constructing 5G networks. 

Those two important issues merit trans-Atlantic consultations. 

But the Trump administration’s approach — which includes threatening to limit intelligence sharing with any ally that proceeds to build its next generation of mobile infrastructure with Huawei — is a losing strategy. 

Europeans are tired of taking orders from Mr. Trump’s America, which makes them more inclined to ignore American directives on issues like Huawei.
The president should start over. 

The United States and Europe need to come to the table as actual partners and begin a much broader dialogue about China’s political, economic and technological ambitions. 

At the very minimum, the two sides of the Atlantic should be sharing insights on everything from Chinese influence operations to human rights abuses to investments in artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies. 

More ambitiously, the United States and Europe should aim to fortify their trade relationship; coordinate American and European policies on China’s human rights abuses; and create alternatives to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
The best way for the United States and Europe to compete with China would be to resolve their own bilateral trade disputes. 

The more the two sides bicker and threaten each other with more tariffs, the more space they allow for China to continue ignoring international trading rules. 

When — or if — the two trans-Atlantic partners turn down the heat on their simmering trade war and focus on strengthening trade ties, they should reach out to Japan and other allies that could bolster the West’s economic strength and influence.
Better coordination should be the next item on the trans-Atlantic to do list. 

In March, when Xi Jinping visited Paris, President Emmanuel Macron invited the chancellor of Germany and the president of the European Commission to join him. 

Mr. Macron’s intended message was clear: Instead of picking off individual European Union members, China would have to deal with a united Europe. 

The United States and Europe could send a similar message. 

The two partners could begin coordinating their messaging on issues like China’s continuing persecution of the Uighurs, or the two Canadian citizens that China is detaining.
One specific area of focus should be China’s Belt and Road Initiative — a vast network of infrastructure and connectivity projects, underwritten by China, across Asia, Africa and Europe. Some of those projects provide much needed investment. 

Many, however, lack transparency, leave the host country riddled with debt, and require political favors in return. 

Given the scale of China’s investment, it is tough for Europe and the United States to offer viable alternatives. 

They should still try.
They could also do more to help countries avoid the Belt and Road Initiative’s many pitfalls. 

Last year the United States Treasury sent a team of evaluators to Myanmar to help it navigate the challenges of a Belt and Road project. 

Europe should be doing the same thing. 

They could start that work not halfway around the world but in Portugal, Greece, Italy and Serbia, which have already signed on to Chinese projects and are looking at more.
It may be hard to imagine the Trump administration doing any of these things. 

This is an administration, after all, that has undermined, not strengthened, America’s network of alliances from the start. 

It prefers to see the world, as two administration officials put it in a 2017 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, as “not a ‘global community’ but an arena where nations, nongovernmental actors, and businesses engage and compete for advantage.”
Mr. Trump is right to claim that America finds itself in an era of great power competition with China. Where his administration has repeatedly missed the mark, though, is in its determination to deride the very “global community” that could help America in its challenge. 

If Trump were serious about competing with China, he would be doing more to get as many allies on his side as possible.
Working with Europe will not be easy. 

The two will never be in perfect lock step on China, especially when it comes to security issues. Europe doesn’t have anything resembling America’s forces in Asia nor does it share America’s security commitments. 

Even inside Europe, there will continue to be different approaches to China. 

Nonetheless, the smartest thing for Europe and the United States to do would be to find areas where they can come together. 

Right now, they are not positioning themselves for even modest levels of success. 

They aren’t competing, and China wants to keep it that way.

Chinese promises never delivered

Europe Holds Summit With China, Less Naively This Time

By Steven Erlanger

Li Keqiang, center, with Donald Tusk, the European Council president, left, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, on Tuesday in Brussels.

BRUSSELS — The European Union, which does more than 1.5 billion euros a day in two-way trade with China, came late to the industrial, political and security threats China poses. 

For a long time, Europe saw China as another Japan, only with some human-rights issues.
But with the outspoken ambitions of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, and continuing battles over technology transfer, closed markets and industrial espionage, that is changing.
On Tuesday, the European Union and China met in Brussels for their 21st annual summit. 

The challenge for Europe is to forge a united front in the face of a China that only last month it labeled an “economic competitor” in critical industrial fields and a “systemic rival” politically.
The mood is certainly tougher now, especially after Italy last month became the first Group of 7 country to join China’s vast Belt and Road project, which the French analyst François Heisbourg described as “China’s own concept on how to organize the global space.”
In difficult negotiations, the Europeans had a hard time finding agreement on a joint statement with the Chinese that is serious about substance. 

They succeeded up to a point, but the commitments made by China are more about further talks than specific actions.
Donald Tusk, the European Council president, pointed to China’s agreement to discuss reform of the World Trade Organization’s rules on industrial subsidies, which he termed a “breakthrough.”
But Jean-Claude Juncker, who leads the bloc’s bureaucracy as president of the European Commission, said tartly that “progress is slower than we like.’’
The Europeans did succeed, by threatening not to sign a joint statement, in getting a promise to conclude a long-discussed bilateral investment deal by the end of 2020, which would improve market access, and a "promise" to limit forced technology transfers.

The port of Trieste, Italy, could benefit from a new economic accord between Italy and China.

But a senior European official also pointed to a statement finally reached after the last summit, in Beijing in July, which was full of promises not delivered, especially on issues like investment ground rules and market reciprocity, which are sources of tension now.
If anything, there has been backsliding and more vivid violations of human rights, like the detention of foreigners and the settlement camps for Uighurs.
If China is now a “systemic rival,” the joint statement did not reflect that new view, but tried to preserve a sense of partnership, said Theresa Fallon, director of the Centre for Russia Europe Asia Studies in Brussels.
Last month, President Emmanuel Macron of France said that the European Union had finally woken up to China. 

“China plays on our divisions,” he said. 

“The period of European naïveté is over.”
But the bloc was slow to respond to Belt and Road, just as it was slow to react to China’s effort in 2012 to sow divisions on the Continent with its “16 plus 1” initiative — itself and 16 Central and Eastern European nations.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy and Xi Jinping in Rome last month. Italy has become the first Group of 7 country to sign on to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project.

They are to hold their own meeting starting Thursday in Croatia, and Li will go there as well. 

At the end of the month, many European Union member states will also go to Beijing for a Belt and Road forum.
The 16 plus 1 group contains 11 European Union member states, five of which use the euro, and four of which are formal candidates for membership in the bloc. 

And Greece is reported to be looking to join.
All have been eager for Chinese investment, which carries fewer demands, if higher risks, than Western banks or development funds. 

And already countries with significant financial ties to China, like Greece and Italy, have blocked European consensus on resolutions condemning Chinese behavior.
“China will attempt to use every opportunity, including the E.U.-China Summit, and the 16 plus 1 meeting in Croatia, to pit Europeans against each other and against the United States,’’ said Jamie Fly, the director of the Asia and Future of Geopolitics Programs for the German Marshall Fund in Washington.
‘‘It would be foolish and shortsighted to take the bait,” he added.
Avoiding that may not be easy. 

Trump sees the European Union as an economic “foe.” 

On Tuesday, Trump threatened an additional $11 billion in tariffs in response to European subsidies to Airbus. 

“The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!’’ Trump tweeted.

Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!

China, on the other hand, works hard, despite recent conflicts, to be attractive to European businesses, both for investment and trade. 

“China uses honey while the U.S. is using vinegar,” said Mr. Heisbourg, the French analyst. 

“The U.S. is pushing Europe in China’s direction.”
China also emphasizes its agreement with Europe on issues Trump has opposed. 

Those include climate change, as well as commitment to the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has abandoned.
The relationship is crucial for both Brussels and Beijing, and the honey is difficult to resist. 

The European Union is China’s biggest trading partner, and China is the bloc’s second-biggest after the United States.

Trucks at Trieste’s port this month. The northeast Italian city could become a terminus for Chinese goods shipped through the Suez Canal.

Ivan Hodac, the former head of the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, which has major interests in China, says the new European wariness is coming late.
“The E.U. is divided,” Mr. Hodac said. 

“Each country has its own financial interest. So long as there is no free trade agreement or investment deal with China,” he said, Europe is vulnerable. 

“And the Americans need to understand we are really in it together.”
Washington and Brussels share similar goals with China. 

But Trump has favored trying to reach his own deals with China while also, the Europeans argue, undermining the W.T.O., whose rules China has at least "promised" to obey.
There are also new security concerns, with the United States warning allies away from Huawei, the large Chinese telecommunications company, as the world moves to 5G wireless networks.
With defense and industry increasingly dependent on 5G and artificial intelligence, areas where China is innovating and investing heavily, Washington and other allies, like Germany and France, see dangers.
Yet Huawei is cheaper than its competitors, attractive to smaller countries and central European ones, and there is no large American alternative.
Nor is there a European Union version of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or Cfius, an interagency group that carefully screens Chinese and other foreign investments to protect national security. 

There is a new investment screening mechanism by Brussels, but it has no enforcement framework.

Chinese Peril

China's blueprint for global dominance

By Dave Lawler

By the time China's ambitions of displacing the U.S. as the dominant global power were widely understood, Beijing's success had already begun to feel inevitable.
Why it matters: The Chinese Communist Party has exploited America's desire to "sleep through difficulties," writes Jonathan Ward in the new book, "China's Vision of Victory."
He contends that the outcome of the battle for global supremacy remains to be determined, but that the U.S. must quickly and dramatically change course in order to prevail.
The longstanding U.S. strategy of engaging economically while hedging against China's rise militarily was a mistake of historic proportions, essentially "putting wind at the back" of a burgeoning rival, Ward told me in an interview.
In his book, Ward traces China's vision of global preeminence back decades.
He says Xi Jinping merely "took the mask off" in recent years.
Ward, whose research included poring over since-closed Communist Party archives, adds that "the greatest thing China’s given us is a very clear image of what they’re going to do.”
The big picture: The objective is dominance in global affairs on a longer-term time frame.
"So, ideologically the idea is to restore their position — restore because they say they used to be the world’s supreme power and now they’re going to return to that — by the year 2049, which is the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China."
To that end, China is endeavoring to "produce national champions in every sector" and dominate emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and 5G networks.
The Belt and Road network of ports, roads and railways, meanwhile, is intended to impose the "coercive force of the Chinese economy... to build strategic beachheads" around the world.
"In the 19th century we'd understand that as empire building," Ward says.
China's government is mobilizing its economy, its military and its citizens toward the mission of "national rejuvenation."
Ward describes it as "the most comprehensive effort assembled in human history towards a very singular goal.”
The bottom line: “Essentially it's full steam ahead on pretty much every human activity, from space to seabed, with the objective of becoming the world’s leader in all of these things. And with that, you build a foundation of power that is absolutely beyond what can be achieved by any other nation."
“I think it’s easy to understand their strategy. What’s hard is that it’s a good strategy.”
But, but, but: the U.S. "retains enormous advantages in terms of economic and military power, a global alliance system, and leadership in the innumerable institutions built under the Pax Americana."
The consensus that China will replace the U.S. as the world's largest economy is premised on the continuation of the status quo.
Ward argues that "we have to start thinking the unthinkable" now, in terms of unwinding economic ties to China and shifting supply chains to politically friendly countries.
“These are tough things but this is where great minds should be applied," Ward told me.
"How do we retain these economic advantages, the technological advantages, the military advantages. Let’s face it, we’re the ones who’ve already won. We’re just giving it away."
The contests that will define China's success or failure are underway now, and will be decided over the next ten years.
Zoom out: “A contest between the United States and China will be a close-run thing," Ward writes. "However, a contest between China and the democratic world will be impossible for China.”
“In many ways Chinese global strategy is actually focused on Europe.".
China knew the U.S. would eventually wake up to its "problem in the Pacific," but "Europe is a world away from the security questions in Asia.”
“If you’re going to have problems with the U.S., where do you go next? To Europe. That’s where they can harvest technology, it’s where they can harvest education, it’s where they can build their technological advantages. You have to do that by engaging with somebody who’s higher up the value chain, so if they’re going to see that erode in the United States they have to double down on it in Europe."
"That’s the Chinese approach. And they have to convince the Europeans they’re benign. ... What you have to think about in Europe is, what would it mean for your superpower partner to be defeated by authoritarian China?"
The solution is the democratic world consolidating, integrating, pushing back, cutting China off from the things that will enable the continued rise toward their vision of power.
What to watch: "What will it mean for the prevailing norms in international relations to be decided by an authoritarian state where freedoms of speech, press, and assembly are extinguished for its citizens and those under its power?” 
Ward writes that if we lose the next decade, we'll soon find out.
I asked him where the U.S. will find the political will needed to truly embrace this challenge.
He said to watch out for "Sputnik moments."

Chinese Moles Dig Deep Into Europe’s Political Landscape

China has an array of agents of all political persuasions across Europe

By Peter Martin and Alan Crawford

Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping during a news conference in Paris, on March 25. 

In November, a British Conservative Member of the European Parliament called Nirj Deva traveled to Beijing for an event on innovation. 

It was a routine trip for Deva, a regular visitor as chairman of the EU-China Friendship Group. 

And as usual, his economy class air fare was upgraded to business by his Chinese government hosts, who also picked up his hotel bills and expenses.
Once there, Deva and his group, who have no formal role representing the European Union, were given better access than the EU’s official delegation for relations with China. 

Among those he met: Li Zhanshu, the head of the National People’s Congress and the No. 3 ranked official in China; Song Tao, head of the Communist Party’s international department; and Cai Qi, the party boss in Beijing who is on the 25-member Politburo.

Chinese mole Nirj Deva in the European Parliament.

“I am quite intimately involved with China,” Deva said in an interview at his parliamentary office in Strasbourg, France. 

He confirmed the arrangements for his visits, which are recorded in the European Parliament’s register of interests and are legitimate under the code of conduct for lawmakers. 

Deva said that growing wariness of China’s motives is misplaced and in his experience is partly due to “ignorance.” 

Over 15 years of closely watching China, “I can’t think of one big mistake they have made,” he said.
At a time when the world is growing more skeptical of China’s economic attentions, Deva is one of an increasing number of European officials courted by Beijing as it seeks to push its political agenda. Bloomberg spoke with more than two dozen diplomats, government officials, lawmakers and business leaders in China and in Europe to shine a light on Beijing’s links with sympathetic politicians and political parties across the European Union.
What emerges is an extensive network of contacts of all political persuasions, all of whom are either predisposed to China or are open to Chinese arguments. 

The result is a band of Chinese agents throughout Europe whose positions range from urging closer economic and governmental cooperation with Beijing to air-brushing over China’s human rights record.
Discussions with officials also showed:

• China’s penetration of Europe’s political landscape knows no geographical boundaries. It includes European heavyweights Germany and France, eastern states Romania and Hungary, as well as smaller strategic countries Belgium, Portugal, Greece and Austria.
• China isn’t fussy about political orientation. Beijing has traditionally had links with mainstream parties and former communists in Europe; now it’s building ties to right-wing populists such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD), anti-immigrant nationalists like Austria’s Freedom Party and Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement.
• China has stepped up its outreach in recent months, coinciding with the campaign for EU-wide elections to the European Parliament in May.

Beijing’s efforts to reach out beyond the European mainstream are paying off as populism gains traction on the continent. 

Italy is the first Group of Seven country to join Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, and Hungary under Viktor Orban blocked the EU from signing a letter two years ago condemning the torture of Chinese human rights lawyers.
Yet more broadly, Europe is adopting an increasingly critical stance toward China more in line with the U.S., Australia and Canada. 

Beijing wants to avoid Europe joining with the U.S. and others in an anti-China front, several officials said.

Xi Jinping, left, and Giuseppe Conte, pose for photographs ahead of the signing of the memorandum of understanding on China's Belt and Road Initiative in Rome, on March 23.

Countries including Russia have long tried to influence European politics; so-called friendship groups exist between other countries and members of the European Parliament, and are recognized as lobbying vehicles by the Association of Accredited Public Policy Advocates to the European Union. Indeed, Parliament has recently moved to tighten up their regulation. 

However, China’s efforts are on the radar after Xi’s visit to Italy and France last month failed to alleviate European concerns over undue Chinese influence.
“One country isn’t able to condemn Chinese human rights policy because Chinese investors are involved in one of their ports,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Monday, adding: “It can’t work like this.”
Europe faces a dilemma, with unease spreading as it becomes increasingly reliant on China economically. 

Europe’s relative openness makes it a more attractive target than the U.S. for Chinese investment, with some 45 percent more deals over the decade to end-2017. 

China is already the most important trading partner for Germany, the region’s biggest economy, with a 6.1 percent growth in total trade volume in 2018, the BGA exporters group said in its annual outlook last week.
For China, its European push is also something of an insurance policy. 

China was blindsided by President Donald Trump’s election victory in 2016, and his administration’s assault on strategies such as the Made in China 2025 plan to become the foremost world power in 10 key industries. 

It wants to make sure the same doesn’t happen in Europe.
China has taken an unusual degree of interest in the EU elections, and especially what populist candidates might mean for the bloc’s China policies. 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing didn’t respond to a fax requesting comment.
“We cannot let mutual suspicion get the better of us,” Xi said in Paris after visiting Rome, where Italy’s government signed the Belt and Road memorandum.
That could be read as a dig at Europe’s emerging China strategy, which will feature at an EU-China summit in Brussels on April 9. 

Europe’s toolkit includes anti-dumping instruments, tighter investment screening, and efforts to bolster cybersecurity defenses and protect 5G networks from security risks such as those attached to Huawei Technologies Co.
Deva dismissed security concerns over Huawei as “such nonsense” and praised Italy’s embrace of Belt and Road, expressing hope the EU will do likewise. 

For him, China isn’t trying to influence European politicians, but rather to learn why it is the subject of criticism.
“I think they are first trying to understand why they get attacked,” he said. 

“So they need a group of interlocutors who they can trust to give them an answer and say why is this happening.”

The EU Parliament’s official delegation for relations with China is more skeptical of Beijing’s motives. 

China under Xi shows a “total control phobia” that’s forcing the EU to “wake up” and protect itself, said Jo Leinen, a German Social Democrat lawmaker who chairs the delegation.
“From a friendly partner, in a few years it changed to an unfriendly competitor,” Leinen said of China. 

He cited industrial policy as well as human rights violations including the detention of Muslim minority Uighurs for the “rougher tone” from the EU. 

“China has lost the battle in the U.S. and is on the way to losing the battle in Europe,” he said.
Against that backdrop, China is stepping up its political engagement with a different set of tools. Invitations to politicians to visit China are issued by government-run “friendship organizations” like the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, as well as Communist Party bodies such as the International Liaison Department and the United Front Work Department. 

The invites form part of a “united front” strategy to win support for China’s agenda through alternatives to official diplomatic channels. 

Xi described united front work as a “magic weapon” in a 2014 speech.
China doesn’t care about the ideological hue of its interlocutors. 

Robby Schlund, an AfD lawmaker who is deputy chair of the German-Chinese group in the Bundestag, met with Chinese People’s Association Vice President Xie Yuan in July. 

According to the Chinese group’s website, Schlund -- a former East German army officer who praised Vladimir Putin in an interview with Kremlin-backed Sputnik news last year -- pledged to deepen “exchanges and cooperation in the fields of parliaments, local governments and friendship cities.”
Austrian Transport Minister Norbert Hofer, who unsuccessfully contested the presidency for the Freedom Party, is leading his coalition government’s push for closer ties with China, saying “it’s not a question of whether China becomes the world’s biggest economic power, but when.” 

Brecht Vermeulen, a lawmaker with the Flemish nationalist NVA party who chairs Belgium’s home affairs committee, was pictured at a Chinese embassy reception in July 2017 marking the anniversary of the Chinese People’s Army. 

Vermeulen told Belga news agency he was invited “as a member of the Belgium-China inter-parliamentary friendship group.”
For China, “it’s about gaining influence,” with the Communist Party doing what it can to get close to politicians “from the far left to the far right,” said Reinhard Buetikofer, a senior Green party member of the European Parliament who also sits on the delegation for relations with China. 

The aim is to get international access “and not just rely exclusively on their foreign ministry,” he said. “That’s why they’re trying to strike up these relationships.”
Beijing’s influence tool kit also includes propaganda and flexing its cultural muscles, from an array of Confucius Institutes whose teaching materials are supplied by Beijing to paid-for inserts in European newspapers.
The risk of cyber attacks and espionage is becoming more apparent too. 

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has warned of Chinese attempts to infiltrate political and business circles through LinkedIn. 

One of the European diplomats interviewed for this piece insisted on meeting in a park for fear that coffee shops near their place of work were bugged.
The paradox is that China’s approach is contributing to the distrust. 

The idea that the EU and China might get closer as a result of Trump was always exaggerated, yet there was a real window of opportunity which China has failed to grasp, one official said. 

Several said Europe’s traditional focus has been on Russian infiltration; now it’s shifting to include China.
A line has been crossed that is unlikely to lead to the EU softening its stance on China, according to Leinen. 

“If they don’t change in Beijing, it could even get tougher,” he said.

Europe’s Future Is as China’s Enemy

The continent can save NATO—but only if it takes Washington’s side in its growing struggle with Beijing.
BY STEPHEN M. WALT

Xi Jinping speaks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G-20 summit in Hangzhou, China, on Sept. 4, 2016. 

If NATO were a listed stock, would now be a good time to short it? 

According to the New York Times, U.S. President Donald Trump has told his aides repeatedly that he would like to withdraw the United States from the alliance. 

The U.S. foreign-policy establishment promptly got the vapors at this news, with former Undersecretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy declaring that such a step “would destroy 70-plus years of painstaking work across multiple administrations, Republican and Democratic, to create perhaps the most powerful and advantageous alliance in history.” 

Even though NATO’s original rationale evaporated when the Soviet Union imploded, it continues to be the most sacred of cows inside America’s policy elite.
But Trump isn’t the real problem, even though his vulgar, vain, erratic, and needlessly offensive behavior has made a difficult situation worse and to no apparent benefit. 

Rather, the real problem began as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed because it removed the principle rationale for a deep U.S. commitment to European security.
Remember, an alliance such as NATO isn’t a country club whose members just like to hang out together, eat nice meals at annual summits, and talk about world affairs. 

At its core, NATO is a formal commitment to send one’s citizens to fight and possibly die to defend other members of the alliance. 

Such a pledge should be offered and maintained only when doing so is vital to one’s own security.
So forget all the pious rhetoric about “shared values,” a “rules-based order,” and a “trans-Atlantic community”—because that is mostly just window dressing. 

The real reason the United States got deeply involved in European security in the past is because it thought it was in the country’s interest to prevent any single state from dominating Europe and controlling its abundant industrial might. 

The United States entered World War I and II in good part to prevent Germany from achieving that goal because U.S. leaders feared that such a state might be more powerful than America and might try to interfere in the Western Hemisphere in ways they would find inconvenient or dangerous.
The same logic explains why the United States helped form NATO in 1949 and kept several hundred thousand U.S. troops in Europe for much of the Cold War. 

The aim was to prevent the Soviet Union from conquering Europe, absorbing its economic and military potential, and using this enhanced capacity against the United States. 

Doing most of the heavy lifting to protect Europe was not an act of philanthropy on America’s part because containing Soviet expansion was very much in its self-interest.
The core strategic challenge facing NATO today is structural: There is no potential hegemon in Europe today, and none is likely to emerge anytime soon. 

In other words, there is no country that has the combination of population, economic might, and military power that would allow it to take over and govern the continent and mobilize all that potential power. 

Germany’s population is too small (and is declining and aging), and its armed forces are much too weak. 

Russia is not the wreck it was in the 1990s, but it is still a pale shadow of the former Soviet Union, and its long-term economic prospects are not bright.
Moreover, Russia’s population is currently about 140 million (and is projected to decline as well), while NATO’s European members have a combined population in excess of 500 million. 

NATO Europe has a combined GDP exceeding $15 trillion; Russia’s is less than $2 trillion. 

To put it differently, Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s. 

And don’t forget that NATO’s European members spend three to four times more than Russia does on defense every year. 

They don’t spend it very effectively, of course, but the idea that Europe lacks the wherewithal to defend itself against Russia simply does not stand up to close scrutiny. 

Need I also mention that France and the United Kingdom also have nuclear weapons?
Given all that, it is far from obvious why the United States cannot gradually turn the defense of Europe back over to the Europeans. 

Faced with such awkward realities, NATO’s die-hard defenders point out that America’s NATO allies have demonstrated their value by fighting with the United States in places like Afghanistan. 

There is no question that they have sacrificed money and lives in this joint effort, and Americans should be grateful for their contributions. 

But allied support was never essential: The United States did most of the heavy lifting and could have fought the entire war on its own had it wished. (It is worth remembering that the George W. Bush administration declined European offers to help during the initial toppling of the Taliban because it understood that working with its NATO partners would have impeded the U.S. operation.)
By contrast, none of America’s NATO allies can presently undertake any serious military action without significant support from Uncle Sam. 

For this reason, NATO today is more protectorate than partnership, which is why Trump keeps asking whether being in the alliance is still in America’s interest. 

And he’s hardly the first U.S. leader to issue forceful complaints about Europe’s unwillingness to take greater responsibility for its own defense. 

In 2011, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates predicted that NATO would face a “dim if not dismal future” if its European members didn’t do more, warning that “there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling … to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.” 

Barack Obama voiced similar concerns in June 2014, even as he sought to rebalance U.S. forces to Asia.
No wonder Europeans are genuinely worried that the United States might leave. 

U.S. leaders have flirted with this idea in the past (as in the Mansfield Amendment of 1971), but threats to withdraw were never very credible so long as the Cold War continued. 

They are today, however, and the Europeans know it.
Meanwhile, China’s rise continues to draw U.S. attention away from Europe and toward Asia, and there is no reason to think that this trend will stop. 

China is likely to be a more formidable rival than the Soviet Union ever was, so one suspects that America’s willingness to commit substantial resources to Europe’s defense will continue to decline.
There is one final rationale for a continued U.S. commitment to Europe, however, although both Americans and Europeans are often reluctant to acknowledge it openly. 

As Josef Joffe noted in Foreign Policy some years ago, the U.S. presence in NATO has long served as Europe’s “pacifier.” 

As long as the United States was fully engaged in Europe and central to NATO, rivalries inside the alliance were muted, and there was little danger that they might turn into full-fledged security competition. 

If the United States were to withdraw, however, European foreign policies might gradually renationalize, opening the door to renewed suspicion, arms races, and possibly even war at some point in a more distant future.
Such views run counter to claims that a half-century of peace and the creation of the European Union have transcended old-style national rivalries, created a new European identity, and rendered war in Europe unthinkable. 

But given political trends in Europe today—and in particular, the re-emergence of powerful nationalist sentiments in several countries—such optimism seems much less reassuring. 

From a European perspective, therefore, keeping the United States in would provide a residual guarantee against the re-emergence of major-power competition among EU member states and a bit more reassurance against a resurgent Russia, at least in the short to medium term.
Put all these factors together, and one can see the vague outline of a new trans-Atlantic bargain. Looking ahead, the United States is going to focus primarily on China. 

Washington will want Europe to take charge of its own defense so that the United States can devote more resources to Asia, but it will also want to make sure that Europe’s economic dealings with China do not help Beijing compete more effectively with the United States. 

In particular, the United States will want Europe to deny China access to sophisticated technologies with military applications and equipment (such as the diesel-electric engines that currently propel some Chinese submarines) that could be used by the Chinese armed forces. 

For their part, NATO’s European members will want the United States to remain part of the alliance (and in an ideal world, to stop doing dumb things such as abandoning the Iran nuclear deal or the Paris climate accord).
Presto—there’s your new trans-Atlantic bargain. 

The United States agrees to remain a formal member of NATO, though its overall military contribution will gradually decline and a European commander will eventually assume the role of supreme allied commander in Europe. 

In exchange, NATO’s European members agree to restrict Chinese access to advanced technology and to refrain from selling them goods that might have direct military applications. 

In short, it means recreating something akin to the old CoCom system that limited technology transfers to the Soviet Union.
I’m by no means convinced this idea would work and not even sure it would be desirable. 

The Cold War CoCom system was a source of considerable trans-Atlantic friction, and the new bargain would require convincing NATO’s European members to forgo some lucrative economic opportunities. 

For these and other reasons, I’ve previously maintained that NATO’s European members would be reluctant to help the United States balance against China and that this issue would eventually become a further source of rancor between the United States and its European partners. 

After all, China is a long way from Europe, and Sino-American competition will mostly play out in Asia, where Europe has little reason to get involved.
But I’m not so sure about that anymore. 

European concerns about Chinese ambitions have grown in recent years, as have their fears about a total U.S. withdrawal. 

And if the United States is really serious about limiting China’s power, having Europe on board—at least in the economic realm—would obviously be desirable. 

So this arrangement might provide NATO with a strategic rationale it has lacked since 1992 and keep the trans-Atlantic partnership going for a bit longer. 

Heck, it might even be enough to convince Trump to stop bad-mouthing NATO every chance he gets. But I wouldn’t bet the farm on that either.

China's predatory trade practices

President Trump, a global loner, finds his hard line toward Beijing draw a crowd

By David J. Lynch

After almost a year of going it alone, President Trump finds himself with a surprising weapon in his trade confrontation with China: allies.
Pressure from Europe and Japan is amplifying the president’s vocal complaints about Chinese trade practices that he says discriminate against foreign companies and threaten U.S. economic growth — as fresh economic data Friday in Beijing showed the economy slowing more than expected.
To eliminate one major irritant, Chinese leaders already have begun scaling back an industrial policy aimed at dominating 10 technology industries, after concluding the president’s objections were widely shared and could not be resolved merely by waiting out the mercurial U.S. leader.
“One thing the Chinese have had to acknowledge is that it wasn’t a President Trump issue; it was a world issue,” said Jorge Guajardo, senior director at McLarty Associates and a former Mexican ambassador to China. 

“Everybody’s tired of the way China games the trading system and makes promises that never amount to anything.”
Administration officials say President Trump deserves credit for driving a hard line toward Beijing at home and abroad. 

Attacking Chinese protectionism now has bipartisan support in Washington; Germany and the United Kingdom joined the United States this year in tightening limits on Chinese investment.
But critics say the president has not done enough to capi­tal­ize on those shared grievances, instead alienating European and Japanese officials this year by imposing tariffs on their shipments to the United States of steel and aluminum.
President Trump’s resolve to pursue his confrontation with China is doubted amid administration infighting and suggestions that the United States might settle for increased Chinese purchases of American products rather than demand wholesale changes to China’s economic system in ongoing trade talks.
“It makes sense to get the other countries more involved... But they don’t know how serious Trump is on the systemic reform bits,” said Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
China has tried to defuse the global irritation over its mercantilist stance by signaling a willingness to revise a program of state subsidies and market share targets called “Made in China 2025.”
The new flexibility comes as Chinese industrial production figures Friday fell short of economists’ expectations and retail sales grew at their slowest rate in 15 years.
Analysts in China and the United States say China is modifying the Made in China program because of pressure from all its major trading partners.
In September, trade ministers from the United States, European Union and Japan issued a joint statement that blasted the use of subsidies in turning “state owned enterprises into national champions and setting them loose in global markets.”
The statement, which did not name any country, also rejected forced technology transfer and cyberattacks — underscoring key elements of the president’s attacks on Beijing.
U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer has described the subsidy program, which sets market share goals for Chinese industry, as imperiling U.S. technology leadership. 

China wants its semiconductor manufacturers to provide 70 percent of domestic needs, up from less than 20 percent today, threatening the $6 billion in annual U.S. exports.
But roughly a dozen other countries are even more dependent on high-tech manufacturing and exports of advanced factory gear, and are more exposed to China’s desire to replace purchases of foreign products with domestic alternatives, according to the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin.
“The pushback from other trading partners is a really important piece of the dynamic here,” said Michael Hirson, a former Treasury Department attache in Beijing who is now with the Eurasia Group. 

“That’s because the Made in China 2025 program is more of a threat to Germany, South Korea and Japan than it is to the United States.”
External pressure drove China this year to open markets for financial services and automobiles, according to economist Andrew Polk, a partner in Trivium China, a Beijing-based consultancy.
On Friday, the Chinese government also temporarily rolled back a tariff increase on U.S. autos, implementing part of a trade-war truce Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and President Trump agreed to during their meeting in Buenos Aires this month.
Over the past year, Chinese authorities have eliminated the foreign ownership cap for life insurers, approved foreign financial institutions underwriting domestic bond offerings and agreed to lift limits on foreign stakes in automotive joint ventures by 2022.
“This isn’t just President Trump bellyaching. It’s the only bipartisan issue in Washington. It’s a concern for Brussels and Canberra and that recognition is what has helped drive accelerated market openings,” Polk said. 

“They’re desperate to change the narrative. They realize how the ground has shifted under them.”
From the outset, the president has pursued his plans for an “America First” remake of U.S. trade policy with little regard for sentiment abroad. 

He withdrew the United States from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership as one of his first official acts, and he has imposed unilateral tariffs to a degree unseen since the 1930s.
His attacks on the World Trade Organization also undermined any chance that China’s trading partners would unite in a comprehensive complaint in Geneva.
The United States did win E.U. and Japanese support for a complaint to the WTO alleging China has violated U.S. intellectual property rights. 

But rather than use the global trade body for a broader attack on China, the administration has demanded changes in the way the organization operates.
To critics, the administration missed an opportunity to marshal China’s trading partners behind an across-the-board indictment of its state-led economy.
Jennifer Hillman, a professor of practice at Georgetown University Law School, told the Senate Finance Committee last month that the United States “ought to be bringing a big and bold case, based on a coalition of countries working together to take on China.”
On their own, U.S. allies have responded to China’s ambitions to acquire foreign technology via acquisitions, cybertheft or coercive licensing requirements with heightened scrutiny of its investments.
The E.U. agreed last month to establish a new screening mechanism for foreign investments, motivated largely by a sharp increase in Chinese activity on the continent. 

But the E.U. measure leaves final decisions to national governments and falls short of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
The German government in July blocked two potential acquisitions by Chinese investors, following similar action by Canada two months earlier, and lowered to 15 percent from 25 percent the foreign ownership stakes that require review. 

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government also announced plans for closer scrutiny of investments by foreign entities.
Despite his reputation as a global loner, President Trump’s views on China are becoming the conventional wisdom. 

Last month, as the president prepared to travel to Buenos Aires for an international summit and dinner with Xi, a top administration official claimed broad support for U.S. goals.
“The rest of the world knows that China has been violating common trade practices, WTO trading practices and laws. The rest of the world knows full well about the issues of IP theft and forced transfers of technology. They know that and they’ve said so. This idea that other countries are not with us — it’s just not true,” said National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow. 

“The rest of the world knows this, and China knows the rest of the world knows this.”
U.S. and Chinese officials are racing toward a self-imposed March 1 deadline to negotiate a trade deal that would involve changes to China’s state-directed economy. 

Many Trump allies are skeptical China will agree to turn away from its state-directed system and embrace additional market changes.
With the United States and China locked in a geopolitical competition, it is easier for revision-minded officials to advocate changes in programs like Made in China 2025 by citing shared concerns among all the country’s major trading partners, Hirson said.
Chinese authorities have changed course under pressure before. 

In 2015, regulators scrapped plans to require foreign financial institutions to install Chinese software amid complaints from U.S., European and Japanese diplomats and business groups, said Erin Ennis, senior vice president at the U.S.-China Business Council.
“We have seen progress like this in the past when the U.S. and other trading partners had a nearly universal view,” she said.
Administration officials scoff at the proposed changes as cosmetic and designed to sap U.S. negotiating willpower.
Michael Wessel, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, called disclosure of plans to allow foreign companies a greater role in the Chinese technology program “an influence operation at its best.”
He questioned whether changes in relevant Chinese laws would mean much so long as the courts remained under the control of the Communist Party.
“What the Chinese are talking about are really just baby steps,” he said.

Chinese aggressions in Europe have a name: broken porcelain

Beijing’s message to Sweden and beyond – criticise us, and we’ll topple your agenda – won’t win it any hearts and minds

By David Bandurski

Screengrab from the ‘video that purported to show the ‘brutal treatment’ of three Chinese tourists at a hotel in Stockholm’. 

Two days after Sweden’s election in September, a bizarre statement appeared in English on the website of the Chinese embassy in Stockholm. 

A “small handful of Swedish forces, media and individuals”, it said, had made “unwarranted claims” of Chinese interference in the Swedish vote. 

These were “groundless accusations”, and a “malicious attack and smear against China”. 

The strangest thing of all: no one in Sweden  had the slightest inkling what the statement referred to.

Beijing protests Swedish TV satire about barbaric Chinese tourists
As an expert on China’s official discourse who also studies its influence in Europe, I too struggled to make sense of this storm in a teapot – until a few days later, when a new tempest whirled into view. This time, Sweden noticed. 

The source of the fresh controversy was an online video that purported to show the “brutal treatment” of three Chinese tourists at a hotel in Stockholm. 

As I read the "angry" comments from China’s foreign ministry, it suddenly all made perfect sense. 

The expressions of "outrage" were part of a concerted diplomatic strategy of hyperbole and distraction.
In the video, the tourists – identified as Zeng and his two parents – are carried from the hotel by police officers, and deposited on the pavement outside as the son screams in English: “This is killing! This is killing!” 

The mother sits on the pavement and wails: “Save me!” 

According to a local newspaper, Aftonbladet, the tourists had arrived at the hotel the night before their scheduled booking and asked to remain in the lobby through the night. 

They disregarded repeated requests to leave, remaining instead on the lobby sofas. 

One eyewitness said the police remained calm as the Chinese family grew agitated. 

The son, this source said, acted particularly oddly, “throwing himself flat on the ground”. 

Quoted by local media, a Swedish prosecutor later said: “We made the assessment that no crime on the part of the police had been committed.”
The Chinese embassy, in a statement on 15 September, insisted that the tourists had been “brutally abused by the Swedish police”, which had “severely endangered the life and violated the basic human rights of Chinese citizens”.
Many Chinese people who viewed the video clips on domestic social media platforms were furious about what they saw as mistreatment. 

But others saw something different: a familiar pattern of using over-dramatisation as a means of recourse for imagined injustice. 

Called “porcelain bumping”, or pengci, this pattern became a focus of attention as the hubbub over the Stockholm incident continued in China. 

Pengci refers to the practice of manufacturing drama to obtain a desired outcome. 

The term was coined to describe a technique used by fraudsters who would wait with delicate porcelain vessels outside busy markets and demand payment when these shattered, ostensibly due to the carelessness of others. 

Now, pengci often refers to the act of throwing oneself into oncoming traffic in order to claim compensation – a practice so common in China that related compilations of clips online are now nearly as ubiquitous as cat videos.
Still, the Chinese embassy in Sweden continued to depict the incident as a grave case of human rights abuse. 

The foreign ministry’s position was parroted by state-run media. 

One article shared by a social media account of the People’s Daily alleged that talk of “porcelain bumping”, and other attempts to minimise the Stockholm incident, had been cooked up overseas by Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that the Chinese government has labelled an enemy.
At this point official Chinese outrage had moved on to a skit aired on 21 September on a satirical show by the Swedish national broadcaster, SVT, that made light of the incident. 

A statement from the Chinese embassy said the skit had “breached the basic moral bottom line of humankind”. 

Moreover, it had “seriously infringed on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity” by projecting a map behind the host that did not show Taiwan and Tibet as an integral part of China.
This came at an already tense time in the bilateral relationship. 

The Dalai Lama had visited Sweden just days before the video of the tourists appeared. 

Another sore point was China’s continued imprisonment of a Hong Kong-based bookseller, Gui Minhai, who is a Swedish citizen. 

Oscar Almén, a researcher at Uppsala University, told Radio Sweden: “The Chinese embassy is now actively trying to deliver a message to the Swedish media and the public.”
That message is a solemn promise to government and society in Europe and beyond: wherever you seek to criticise our policies or forestall our ambitions, we will topple your agenda. We will shatter the porcelain of diplomatic composure and fan the anger of our population with debased facts until every issue you raise is about just one issue – China’s national "dignity".
Earlier this month “broken porcelain” diplomacy moved on to the British Conservative party’s annual conference in Birmingham, as a journalist from state-owned China Central Television shouted down a panellist at an event on Hong Kong organised by the party’s human rights committee, which was attended by prominent members of the pro-democracy community in Hong Kong. 

As the woman was confronted and asked to leave, she apparently slapped a student volunteer. 

She shouted, “How democratic [is the] UK!” as she was being escorted out.
The Chinese embassy in London demanded an apology. 

And while it made a fuss about the reporter’s rights, it also pointed out, in a statement, that “any plot or action conspiring to divide China is contrary to the current of history”. 

Discussion of Hong Kong’s future, in other words, was to be avoided.
The pattern is clear. 

When it comes to foreign criticism of the Chinese government, or to the strategic issues it cares about, we’re all tiptoeing through a china shop now. 

The danger is that such histrionics could make European governments, universities, scholars and journalists, to remain silent, retreat from issues likely to prompt an outburst. 

Europe must send a message that it welcomes free, open and calm discussion of all issues, and that it will not suspend its values or the rights of its citizens to appease China’s official bouts of staged anger. 

If we refuse to indulge such tactics, China’s government will eventually come to understand what many of its citizens already know – that you don’t win hearts or minds through intimidation.

European Horses

China Seeks Influence in Europe, One Business Deal at a Time

By David Barboza, Marc Santora and Alexandra Stevenson

The Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, center right, welcoming Milos Zeman, center left, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2015. Ye Jianming, far left, headed CEFC China Energy, which spent more than $1 billion on deals in the Czech Republic.

PRAGUE — When Xi Jinping became the first top Chinese leader to visit the Czech Republic, he was accompanied by a mysterious Chinese tycoon with big political ambitions, money to burn and strong ties to the Czech president.
Ye Jianming was the sole businessman among the group of Chinese and Czech government officials who gathered two years ago outside the presidential summer residence where Xi and Milos Zeman, his Czech counterpart, planted ginkgo trees. 

For Ye, it was recognition of his role as a major power broker in Prague, having bought landmark properties, a local brewery and a much beloved soccer team.
The meeting — and the Ye's presence — cemented China’s newfound influence on politics and business in Zeman’s Czech Republic and signaled its broader ambitions in Europe.
In just two years Ye’s company, CEFC China Energy, had spent more than $1 billion on deals in the Czech Republic. 

He hired former Czech officials, including a onetime defense minister. 

Ye was even named a special economic adviser to Zeman.
Zeman, in turn, became a big backer of Beijing, tamping down domestic opposition to Chinese influence and taking up Chinese causes. 

He publicly supported China’s claims over Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing claims as its territory. 

When Xi visited, police tried to keep protesters out of sight; some later accused the police of using violence to suppress them. 

The family of a prominent Holocaust survivor said Zeman withdrew a proposed medal for the man after his nephew met with the Dalai Lama, an exiled spiritual leader whom China considers a rebel.

China's fifth column: Xi's myrmidons demonstrated during his visit in Prague in 2016.

For China, the Czech courtship was an unqualified victory: It had won a sure friend in Europe, an American military ally and a country once seen as a bulwark for liberal democracy in a strategically important region. 

As Zeman declared, the Czech Republic hoped to become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier of Chinese investment expansion” in Europe.
Then, Ye was detained in China this year, exposing the Czech Republic to the perils of this new relationship and forcing the president to defend his quick embrace of the Chinese deal maker. 

While the reason for Ye’s detention was never made public, critics of the Czech president saw Ye’s disappearance as proof that the country shouldn’t have tied its future and its fortune to the Chinese.
An emboldened, globally ambitious China is using money, business deals and other incentives to extend its power abroad. 

The pitch can hold great appeal in a world shaken by Washington’s growing disengagement and Europe’s struggles.
But tighter ties to China mean greater susceptibility to an opaque political system where decisions are made behind the scenes. 

Investments can be driven by politics rather than economics, resulting in costly white elephants.
In the Czech Republic, Ye’s sudden disappearance took the country’s leaders by surprise. 

They couldn’t discern why that would happen to someone who seemed to have the government’s blessing. 

They had not pressed him on where he was getting his money to make big flashy deals in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. 

Officials also had difficulty answering questions about criminal allegations in the United States that a senior business associate of CEFC had tried to bribe his way into new business opportunities in Africa.
Zeman dispatched a team of officials to determine what the tycoon’s problems meant for the Czech Republic. 

He soon found out.
Prague was about to become even more enmeshed with the Chinese government. 

A state-owned company stepped in to take control of Ye’s empire, fueling suspicions that the company was politically important to the Chinese leadership.

Xi and Zeman during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2014. Zeman’s visit was the first by a Czech leader in nearly a decade.

Eastern Appeal
Early in his political career, Zeman, a blunt-spoken populist, warned against toadying up to Russia and China. 

Those seeking deeper ties with Beijing, he told a local newspaper in 1996, are “ready to go under plastic surgery to slant their eyes.”
But the realities in Europe were changing by the time he won the Czech presidency in 2013.
The global financial crisis had tested Europe’s unity. 

Refugees from Syria had begun to arrive, fueling nativist sentiment and pitting local politicians against the bloc’s leaders. 

Western Europe no longer seemed to be the only option.
At the time, Beijing was beginning to pour money and political capital into Eastern and Central Europe as part of a broad bid to increase its heft in Europe. 

China’s leaders see the region as potentially fertile ground. 

While Britain, France and Germany welcomed greater investments from Beijing, they still bucked China’s stances on issues like human rights and its claim to control almost all of the South China Sea. Eastern and Central Europe didn’t have the same qualms.
Looking for further inroads, China started what came to be called the 16+1 initiative, an effort to expand cooperation with more than a dozen Eastern and Central European nations. 

It became a forum for China to show off what it could offer the region, like access to technology for a high-speed rail system. 

Xi later included Eastern and Central Europe in his Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious plan to develop economic and diplomatic ties through infrastructure projects around the world.
China’s influence in Europe is already apparent. 

Greece last year blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record. 

Greece and Hungary worked to water down a 2016 European Union statement regarding the South China Sea.
For Zeman, the courtship basically had to start from scratch.
The former Czechoslovakia recognized the Communist-led China in 1949, but a rift between Moscow and Beijing kept them apart. 

The post-Soviet Czech Republic, remembering the brutal 1968 Soviet crackdown on reform efforts in Prague and subsequent Communist domination, found common cause with Beijing’s critics.
Vaclav Havel, the anti-Communist activist and the country’s first leader after the fall of the Berlin Wall, invited the Dalai Lama to a state visit in 1990, angering Beijing. 

He had stern words for China. 

“Intimidation, propaganda campaigns, and repression,” he wrote, “are no substitute for reasoned dialogue.”

The Piraeus Container Terminal, operated by the Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco in Athens. Greece, which has received significant Chinese investment, blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record.

Zeman, a well-known smoker and drinker who once publicly denied that he showed up at his inauguration drunk, broke with that history. 

He rejected Havel-era support for the Dalai Lama and its close ties to the government of Taiwan.
He visited China in 2014, the first visit by a Czech leader in nearly a decade. 

A year later, he was the only European Union leader to attend a military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. 

That helped him secure Xi’s 2016 visit to Prague.
“This is a restart,” Zeman told Chinese official media before Xi’s visit, adding that the previous government had been “very submissive” to the United States and the European Union.
“Now, we are again an independent country,” he said, “and we formulate our foreign policy, which is based on our own national interests, and we do not interfere with the internal affairs of any other country.”
His focus on China won wide praise from the Czech political apparatus.
“If anybody thinks that under current circumstances it is possible to create safe and prosperous world without cooperation with China, then he has missed the train long ago,” said Katerina Konecna, vice chairman of the Czech Republic’s Communist Party.
Zeman’s office said its efforts to court China were no different from the efforts of others.
“Those that have expressed such criticism offend our Western allies who collaborate extraordinarily tightly with the People’s Republic of China,” said Jiri Ovcacek, a spokesman for Zeman. 

Zeman’s office didn’t respond to further requests for comment.

CEFC’s European headquarters in Prague. The company bought a stake in one of Prague’s biggest office complexes. It invested in the Czech national airline, two hotels and a pair of Renaissance-era buildings. It also bought a brewery that traces its roots back more than 700 years.

A Shadowy Suitor
Zeman’s 2014 visit proved fateful for the Czech Republic. 

Among the business deals reached was a cooperation pact between a Czech financial firm and an up-and-coming energy company called CEFC.
It was led by Ye Jianming, who was born in a small village in the southern Chinese province of Fujian. 

He grabbed hold of assets once controlled by a notorious smuggler and in a few years parlayed them into a sprawling business empire with 30,000 employees. 

Ye traveled the world on his twin-engine Airbus 319 private jet, meeting heads of state, Russian oligarchs and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
CEFC was modeled on Xi’s vision of a stronger China — and it went where Xi wanted China to go. It struck deals in the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan. 

It courted top leaders in places like Albania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Sudan and Uganda. 

Last year, it agreed to buy a $9 billion stake in Rosneft, the Russian oil giant, which put it firmly in the middle of the complicated but important relationship between Beijing and Moscow.
Its fast rise fueled rumors in China that Ye had ties to Xi, who once worked in Fujian, or other Chinese leaders. 

CEFC did little to discourage them. 

Ye was part of a group tied to the Chinese military, according to documents and experts. 

On its website, CEFC cited the military and Communist Party experience of its top executives.
The Czech Republic made a tempting target for CEFC’s international push. 

The country was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was disillusioned with the West and ready to do business.
CEFC bought a stake in Florentinum, one of Prague’s biggest office complexes. 

It invested in the Czech national airline, two hotels and a pair of Renaissance-era buildings. 

It bought a brewery that traces its roots back more than 700 years.
Zeman’s staff trumpeted the deals as proof that courting China made economic sense.
“People believed the rhetoric,” said Olga Lomova, the head of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation International Sinological Center of Charles University in Prague. 

“We have the Chinese. We will be happy again.”
CEFC also hired figures close to Zeman, leading to accusations from critics of a revolving door between the Chinese company and the president. 

Jaroslav Tvrdik, the country’s former minister of defense, was hired to run CEFC’s Czech operations while serving as an adviser on China to the government. 

Czech officials defended keeping Tvrdik as an adviser, saying the position was unpaid.
Miroslav Sklenar, Zeman’s protocol chief, left that position in 2015 for a role at CEFC. 

He returned to the presidential palace at the end of 2016.
Early on, CEFC worried that its growing involvement would upset the public. 

Its solution: Buy the local soccer team.

Slavia Prague had been on the brink of bankruptcy when CEFC purchased a majority stake in 2015. The team’s uniforms were changed to say “CEFC China” in Roman letters and in Chinese characters.

Slavia Prague had been on the brink of bankruptcy when CEFC purchased a majority stake in 2015. The team began to spend heavily under its new owner, retaining its star forward, Milan Škoda, and signing a Dutch player, Gino van Kessel. 

Last year, the club won its first league championship since 2009. 

Slavia Prague played in uniforms that said “CEFC China” in Roman letters and in Chinese characters.
CEFC’s deals made little business sense to observers. 

“So many of the acquisitions were made in a rush, and were nonsense,” said Ms. Lomova, of Charles University. 

“They were not investments that were able to pay for themselves.”
And CEFC acknowledged that its motivations went beyond business. 

“Our company cares about what we can do to bridge the cultural gap,” Jiang Chunyu, a senior executive at CEFC said at a forum in China in December.
Protestors carrying Tibetan flags shouted slogans against Xi during his visit in Prague in 2016.

Promises Undone
Xi’s historic 2016 visit to Prague showed the China-Czech relationship to be the closest in the history of the two countries. 

It also showed that cracks were forming.
Thousands of protesters tried to greet the Chinese leader as he met with Zeman in Prague Castle. Members of both the Czech and European parliaments joined. 

One lawmaker, who owns a home on the hill beneath the castle, set up a projector to cast the words “Truth and Love” on the castle wall — an invocation of a famous quote of Havel’s, who said that truth and love would vanquish lies and hatred. 

Flags lining Xi’s route from the airport were defaced.
Czech authorities, with the help of CEFC, tried to obscure the tensions. 

Police officers blocked demonstrators from getting too close to the castle, setting off complaints from protesters about police violence.
“Why are the police protecting the Chinese and limiting the ability of the Czech people to express themselves?” said Ondrej Kolar, the mayor of a Prague district.
Wherever Xi traveled, busloads of local Chinese supporters appeared, too.
Filip Lexa, a 33-year-old teacher and doctoral student studying Chinese literature, said he showed up with a flag representing the Uighur minority of western China, where the authorities there have cracked down on the local population. 

He said he was harassed by a group of Chinese men bused into the event.
“When I took the flag out, everyone attacked me,” he said, adding that he escaped serious injury. “They pulled me into the middle of this group and started kicking me and hitting me with the flag poles they were carrying. One even broke a pole on my back.”
CEFC played a major role in trying to make sure the Chinese dictator’s visit went smoothly, said Mr. Kolar, the mayor who was involved in preparations for the event because his district is home to a number of embassies.
“It wasn’t organized by the state, but by a private company,” he said. 

“CEFC organized the whole event.”
CEFC arranged for the display of Chinese flags along the route through Mr. Kolar’s neighborhood — flags with red and yellow color reminiscent of the Soviet Union. 

When some were defaced, CEFC workers replaced them.
“It felt like the ’70s or ’80s again,” Mr. Kolar said. 

“Then it was revealed that it was CEFC who paid for those flags.”
Many Czechs had other reasons to sour on the relationship with China. 

Investment figures have proved disappointing — Taiwan’s investment in 2017 was nearly three times that of China’s, according to data from Sinopsis, a research group focused on China. 

Zeman attributed the shortfall to new Chinese limits on money flowing abroad.
The revocation of an award to a famous Czech Holocaust survivor also set off outrage. 

George Brady, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, was set to be honored at a Czech state dinner in 2016 and receive a medal for his work. 

His sister, Hana Brady, died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz, and he had turned her story into a popular children’s book called “Hana’s Suitcase.”
But his nephew was the Czech Republic’s culture minister — and he was set to meet with the Dalai Lama. 

Before the ceremony, the nephew, Daniel Herman, received a call from Zeman’s office.
“I was told that if I went ahead with a meeting with the Dalai Lama, there would be no medal,” Mr. Herman said in an interview. 

He went ahead with the meeting. 

“And there was no ceremony,” he said.
Czech officials acknowledged that Zeman asked Mr. Herman not to meet with the Dalai Lama. 

They said the withdrawal of the medal was unrelated, although they did not specify a reason.

Zeman, right, and Xi on the terrace of the Strahov Monastery overlooking Prague. Xi’s historic 2016 visit showed the China-Czech relationship to be the closest in the history of the two countries.

But China’s biggest challenge to its Czech strategy began elsewhere.
In November, American authorities arrested Patrick Ho, a top executive of CEFC’s nonprofit arm, and charged him with offering bribes to officials in Uganda and Chad in exchange for oil rights.
Czech officials and one person with direct knowledge of Ye’s case say he was detained by the Chinese authorities after Ho’s arrest. 

A short time later, the company was hit with a number of problems. 

Its bid for a stake in Rosneft collapsed. 

And Chinese rating firms warned that CEFC had taken on considerable debt.
In April, Zeman met with officials from Citic Group, a state-controlled Chinese company that had agreed to buy just under half of CEFC’s Europe venture. 

While Ye’s ties to China’s leadership had been just rumored, Citic is a company firmly under Beijing’s control. 

Citic didn’t respond to requests for comment.
If a direct role for Beijing in Czech businesses bothered Zeman, he has shown little public sign. 

He is set to make another visit to the Chinese capital this autumn.

A security guard at the entrance of an unmarked building in Shanghai listed as an address for CEFC.