Trump is a Real Bastard but Has He the Balls?

White House Won’t Say if Trump Will Sign Hong Kong Bill That Has Angered China

Trump has avoided a strong defense of pro-democracy protesters, but Congress has thrown the issue into his lap.

By Michael Crowley and Ana Swanson

Protesters clashing with the police this week near the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

WASHINGTON — Trump has spent months delicately sidestepping Hong Kong’s escalating battle between pro-democracy demonstrators and security services enforcing China’s authoritarian government line.
But on Wednesday, Congress put Trump on the spot, sending him tough legislation that would impose sanctions on Chinese officials for cracking down on the protesters and could end Hong Kong’s favored economic relationship with the United States.
The measure lands on the president’s desk at a sensitive moment. 

His trade talks with Beijing are becalmed, and a Dec. 15 deadline for Trump to decide whether to renew major tariffs on Chinese goods is approaching. 

China’s government has responded with fury to the measure and demanded that it not become law.
The bill, titled the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, is a test of Trump’s commitment to the United States’ historical mission of promoting human rights and democracy abroad. 

Members of both parties have urged the president to speak out more forcefully on behalf of demonstrators resisting Beijing’s tightening grip over the semiautonomous island territory, to little avail.
“He’s largely tried to ignore it so far,” said Laura Rosenberger, a top National Security Council aide for China affairs in the Obama White House.
“This is really going to be a test. In general his approach to the China challenge has been very focused on the trade aspects of the relationship,” added Ms. Rosenberger, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
The White House declined to comment on whether Trump would sign the measure, which passed the Senate unanimously and the House with only one lawmaker opposed, creating a solidly veto-proof majority. 

Presidents have 10 days to sign approved legislation, but that clock is suspended when Congress is adjourned, as it will be next week for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Speaking on CNBC on Thursday, the measure’s Senate sponsor, Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said that he expected it to win Trump’s approval.
“My understanding is they will sign it,” he said.
Trump could still invoke presidential authorities to avoid or delay enforcing some of the bill’s provisions, according to people familiar with the measure, potentially blunting its impact in the near term as well as criticism from Beijing.

China often issues angry criticisms of Washington with little follow up. 

And Chinese negotiators have also pushed to isolate the trade talks from a range of security-related matters, including the Trump administration’s crackdown on the Chinese telecom firm Huawei and the American sale of fighter jets to Taiwan.
“What has been surprising to me throughout the trade negotiations has been the degree of China’s willingness to compartmentalize issues,” said Evan S. Medeiros, another top China aide in the Obama White House.
“Obviously the Chinese don’t want the president to sign it. But are they going to be willing to blow up the trade deal to do so?” added Mr. Medeiros, now a professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. 

“I don’t think they will, in large part because they understand he has a lot of discretion with this particular bill.”
In June, Trump told Xi Jinping that he would not publicly back the protesters as long as trade talks were progressing. 

Administration officials have said that they have some reservations about striking a trade deal with China at a time when violence in Hong Kong could worsen, but that it is not the main impediment to reaching an agreement.
Congress acted on the measure, which had been stalled, after the riot police challenged student activists on campuses for the first time this month. 

Trump has said he hopes the crisis “works out for everybody,” and has suggested that the matter is an internal affair for China to resolve.
But leaders in both parties have pressed Trump to offer more support for the protesters.
“I would encourage this president, who has seen Chinese behavior for what it is with a clarity that others have lacked, not to shy away from speaking out on Hong Kong himself,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said on Wednesday. 

“The world should hear from him directly that the United States stands with these brave men and women.”
Senator Charles Schumer, the Democratic leader, denounced the president’s position, asking on Twitter this month, “Why is Trump giving the Chinese Communist Party a free hand?”

While Trump has said little about Hong Kong to provoke Beijing, other administration officials have used stronger words. 

“We stand with you. We are inspired by you. We urge you to stay on the path of nonviolent protest,” Vice President Mike Pence said in an address last month.
The measure requires the State Department to certify annually whether Hong Kong’s government is maintaining democratic and civil society freedoms, such as judicial independence and freedom of the press, that were promised by China’s government when Britain handed over its former colony to Beijing in 1997. 

If Hong Kong fails that test, it would lose a preferred trading status that plays a major role in its economy.
It would also require sanctions on Chinese officials deemed responsible for arbitrary detention, torture, or forced confession of demonstrators and other political dissidents.
But the bill could be another impediment to a so-called Phase 1 trade deal whose fate is increasingly unclear.
Michael Pillsbury, a China expert at the conservative Hudson Institute with close ties to the Trump administration, said that Trump could blunt the measure’s impact on the trade talks by delaying his signature until after such a deal is reached.
Trump announced last month that he had reached a trade agreement with China that would strengthen intellectual property protections, lock in extensive purchases of American farm goods and forestall some of the tariff increases he had planned for later this year.
The agreement would help ease tensions in a trade war that has dragged on for more than a year and harmed businesses and consumers on both sides of the Pacific. 

But in recent weeks, the countries have sparred over the pact’s provisions, with China pushing for the removal of more of the tariffs that Trump has placed on $360 billion of its products.
The cancellation of a summit in Chile where Trump and Xi were expected to sign the agreement also threw plans for the pact’s completion into disarray.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday as he toured an Apple plant in Austin, Texas, Trump said he had resisted a deal because China was not offering enough concessions.
“I haven’t wanted to do it yet because I don’t think they’re stepping up to the level that I want,” he said.
Chinese officials have asked their American counterparts to travel to China for another round of negotiations. 

But Trump’s advisers have been reluctant to do so, insisting that China is offering too little in the form of concessions to warrant the level of tariff relief it is requesting, one person briefed on their plans said.

Hong Kong Protesters Call for U.S. Help.

The United States, viewed as a champion of democracy, occupies a symbolic role in the protests. Activists now want President Trump to take a tougher stand against Beijing.
By Edward Wong

Protesters rallying last month in Hong Kong.

HONG KONG — The Hong Kong protests at times seem like love fests with the United States. Depending on the day, demonstrators wave American flags or Uncle Sam recruitment posters, and even dress as Captain America, complete with shield.
The United States represents democracy, and the activists hope that maybe, just maybe, it will save Hong Kong. 

Five months in, they are trying harder than ever to draw the United States into their movement.
The protesters are pressing Hong Kong officials and their overseers, the authoritarian Communist Party leaders of China, for greater democratic rights and rule-of-law in the autonomous territory. 

As they see it, the Trump administration might be able to make demands of Chinese leaders or Hong Kong officials, especially because members of elite political circles want to maintain access to the United States.
Also, they note, the trade war with China, started by President Trump, is adding pressure over all on Xi Jinping.
For the American government, the protests are more complicated — a potential policy dilemma but also a potential point of leverage with Beijing and a way to channel American values to the rest of the world.
“The United States should continue to deter Beijing from use of force, maintain an unblinking eye on Hong Kong, and make Beijing pay a heavy reputational cost for curtailing the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong citizens,” said Ryan Hass, a former State Department and National Security Council official now at the Brookings Institution.
Yet, he added, “I worry that the protesters in Hong Kong risk misinterpreting American sympathy and support of their cause for expectation that the United States will shield them from Beijing’s heavy hand.”
Hong Kong protesters see the United States as a potential savior in their quest for greater democratic rights.

If the protesters are sending out a siren song, some American officials and lawmakers are answering it, eager to show their commitment to the cause.
Members of Congress have appeared in Hong Kong in public displays of solidarity. 

Last month, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, donned an all-black outfit, while Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, posted photographs from a protest.
In Washington, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, has met with activists, pro-democracy politicians and Jimmy Lai, a publisher considered radioactive by Beijing. 

Vice President Mike Pence singled out Hong Kong as a beacon of liberty in a speech, saying, “We stand with you; we are inspired by you.”
And versions of a bill that would give support to the protesters are moving though Congress with bipartisan backing. 

The legislation, among other things, would allow the United States to impose economic sanctions and a travel ban on Hong Kong officials deemed responsible for human rights abuses.
“We hope this bill will pass,” said Selina Po, a 27-year-old protester wearing a mouth mask in the Admiralty neighborhood as she held up a sign with the bill’s name, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. 

“It’s our hope for winning this war. We’re trying all we can.”

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, with Hong Kong activists at a news conference in September.

Greater involvement by Americans could give Beijing more ammunition in its propaganda effort to portray the pro-democracy movement as one stoked by foreign forces.
The Chinese government and state-run news organizations talk about “black hands” behind the unrest and spread conspiracy theories, including one centered on an American diplomat in Hong Kong who was photographed with activists in the lobby of the JW Marriott Hotel.
As the protests persist, American officials are watching for surges in violence and tracking the movement of People’s Liberation Army soldiers into Hong Kong. 

Some are beseeching demonstrators to stick to nonviolent tactics, even in the face of police crackdowns and attacks by people sympathetic to Beijing.
On Sunday, at least six people were injured when a man with a knife who is believed to be against the democracy movement attacked a family at a shopping mall. 

In the melee, the attacker bit off part of the ear of a pro-democracy district council member, Andrew Chiu.

Two Democratic Congressmen, Tom Suozzi of New York and John Lewis of Georgia, the icon of the American civil rights movement, posted a video last month praising the activists for their “great work” and urging them to stick to nonviolence.
Whether the United States takes greater action on Hong Kong hinges on the unpredictable Trump. 

Administration officials and American lawmakers talk openly about checking the authoritarian impulses of the Chinese Communist Party. 

But Trump rarely, if ever, mentions human rights and democracy, and he has not made strong statements on Hong Kong.

In June, he told Xi Jinping on a call that he would stay quiet on Hong Kong as long as Washington and Beijing were making progress on trade talks, according to an American official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In October, the Trump administration imposed some restrictions on Chinese companies and organizations for their roles in the mass repression of Muslims in mainland China, but Trump has held back from harsher actions for fear of upsetting the trade negotiations.
If a Hong Kong bill reaches Trump’s desk, analysts say, he might see it as merely a tool to wring concessions from China and could forego support if a trade agreement were close.
“Strong American bipartisan support for the peaceful protesters is not enough to override Trump’s transactional instincts,” Mr. Hass said. 

“He does not look at Hong Kong through a values-based lens. And as long as he remains president, this outlook will limit America’s responses to developments in Hong Kong.”
Administration officials argue that Trump’s approach gives the United States a stronger hand in constraining Beijing on Hong Kong — even if it appears that Trump just wants to use the Chinese territory to his advantage.
“America expects Beijing to honor its commitments,” Mr. Pence said, “and President Trump has repeatedly made it clear it would be much harder for us to make a trade deal if the authorities resort to the use of violence against protesters in Hong Kong.”
In the eyes of Beijing, there has been no shortage of "provocations" by American politicians. 

On Oct. 22, Ms. Pelosi posted on Twitter a photograph of herself on Capitol Hill with three pro-democracy figures — Mr. Lai, Martin Lee and Janet Pang.
“My full support and admiration goes to those who have taken to the streets week after week in nonviolent protest to fight for democracy and the rule of law in #HongKong,” she wrote.


Nancy Pelosi
✔@SpeakerPelosi
So pleased to welcome Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee and Janet Pang to the U.S. Capitol. My full support and admiration goes to those who have taken to the streets week after week in non-violent protest to fight for democracy and the rule of law in #HongKong.

12.2K
12:04 AM - Oct 23, 2019

On Wednesday, Ms Pelosi slammed the decision by Hong Kong officials to bar the activist Joshua Wong from running in local elections. 

She said it was “another blow against rule of law in Hong Kong and the principle of ‘one country, two systems,’” referring to the foundation for the policy of autonomy that Britain and China agreed would be used to govern the territory.
Ms. Pelosi met Mr. Wong in Washington in September.

Many demonstrators want American intervention and are focusing their attention on the legislation. The mere threat of American sanctions, they say, would give the movement greater voice with Beijing.
On Oct. 14, the night before a vote on the bill in the House of Representatives, protesters held a rally in the Central district to call for its passage. 

Tens of thousands attended, many of them carrying American flags.

American flags have become commonplace at the protests. 

“The power of Hong Kong people alone is limited, and we need other countries, such as the U.S., to help us counter China and keep ‘one country, two systems,’” said Eric Kwan, 32. 

“I doubt the act can be an ultimate game-changer, but I think it is enough to give pressure to China.”
Along with allowing for sanctions, the legislation requires the State Department to review each year whether Hong Kong is still autonomous enough to qualify for the benefits of the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act, which grants the city a trade and economic status different from that of mainland China.
Some American officials say the bill could harm Hong Kong residents if the United States determines that the territory no longer qualifies as an autonomous entity. 

But the bill’s proponents defend its practical and symbolic value.
“Standing in support of Hong Kongers and preserving Hong Kong’s autonomy should be a priority of the United States and democracies worldwide,” said one of the bill’s sponsors, Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida.
The bill passed the House by unanimous vote last month. 

Though the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has not scheduled a vote yet, the measure is expected to pass that chamber easily, with a veto-proof majority. 

Then Trump would have to decide whether to sign it into law.

U.S. Senate leader: Any violent crackdown in Hong Kong would be 'completely unacceptable'

By David Brunnstrom, Jeff Mason

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks with reporters following the weekly policy luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., May 7, 2019. 

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell warned China on Monday that any violent crackdown on protests in Hong Kong would be “completely unacceptable,” while Trump administration officials urged all sides to refrain from violence.
“The people of Hong Kong are bravely standing up to the Chinese Communist Party as Beijing tries to encroach on their autonomy and freedom,” McConnell wrote in tweet.
“Any violent crackdown would be completely unacceptable. ... The world is watching.”
Increasingly violent demonstrations in Hong Kong have plunged the Chinese-ruled territory into its most serious crisis in decades, presenting Chinese dictator Xi Jinping with one of his biggest popular challenges and raising fears of direct intervention by Beijing.
Some Hong Kong legal experts say Chinese descriptions of some protesters’ actions as terrorism could lead to the use of extensive anti-terror laws and powers against them.
China’s People’s Armed Police have also assembled in the neighboring city of Shenzhen for exercises, the Chinese state-backed Global Times newspaper said.
On Tuesday, China’s state media said an unidentified official with the Foreign Ministry office in Hong Kong denounced the “arrogance and biases of some U.S. politicians”, adding that McConnell’s remarks sent protesters a “seriously mistaken signal”.
Donald Trump, who has been seeking a major deal to correct trade imbalances with China, drew criticism this month after he described the Hong Kong protests as “riots” and said they were a matter for China and Hong Kong to deal with as the territory was part of China.
On Monday a senior Trump administration official and a State Department spokeswoman urged all sides to refrain from violence, while stressing support for democracy.
The senior official reiterated Trump’s remark that it was a matter between Hong Kong and China, “with the understanding that ‘they’re looking for democracy and I think most people want democracy.’
“Societies are best served when diverse political views are respected and can be freely and peacefully expressed. The United States urges all sides to refrain from violence,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

CALL TO RESPECT AUTONOMY
A State Department spokeswoman repeated calls for Beijing to adhere to its commitments after its 1997 handover from British rule to allow Hong Kong a high degree of autonomy. 

She said it was important for the Hong Kong government to respect freedoms of speech and assembly
“We condemn violence and urge all sides to exercise restraint, but remain staunch in our support for freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly in Hong Kong,” she said.
“The ongoing demonstrations in Hong Kong reflect the sentiment of Hongkongers and their broad concerns about the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy,” she added. 

“Freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly are core values that we share with Hong Kong; these freedoms must be vigorously protected.”
While some commentators have accused Trump of all but giving China a green light for a crackdown, Beijing has accused Washington of encouraging the protests and angrily denounced July meetings between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence and Hong Kong publisher and democracy activist Jimmy Lai.
Trump has drawn criticism even from some normally supportive media. 

On Aug. 3, the conservative Washington Examiner called his Hong Kong remarks “a bizarre regurgitation of mainland Chinese propaganda” and added: “We hope this is Trump speaking off the cuff and not him selling out Hong Kong.”

On Monday, Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton told reporters on a visit to London he had talked about Hong Kong with British officials “as part of a general discussion about China.”
He rejected Chinese allegations that a U.S. diplomat was a “black hand” in the demonstrations as “ridiculous” and said it was “incumbent on the Chinese to live up to their obligations” on Hong Kong.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said earlier that Britain was concerned about the latest violence in Hong Kong and called for calm from all sides.
Last week, State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus called China a “thuggish regime” for disclosing photographs and personal details of a U.S. diplomat who met with Hong Kong’s student leaders. 

On Friday, she said the reports had “gone from irresponsible to dangerous” and must stop.
Hong Kong’s airport canceled all flights on Monday, blaming demonstrators for the disruptions. China said the anti-government protests that have roiled the city through two summer months had begun to show “sprouts of terrorism.”

Global Magnitsky Act

Vice President Mike Pence signals openness to sanctions over China's human rights abuses
By Erica Pandey, Jonathan Swan

Vice President Mike Pence at the UN. 

Vice President Mike Pence has signaled that the Trump administration is open to using the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction top officials in East Turkestan, China, where more than 1 million Uighur Muslims are being held in concentration camps, according to a Chinese religious freedom advocate who met with Pence at the White House Monday.

Driving the news: Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, said that Pence also told him that he planned to give a second speech about China in the fall to address religious freedom issues.

Beijing has been paying close attention to Pence's plans for a second speech, as the vice president has been at the forefront of the administration's confrontation with China. 

Behind the scenes: Fu told Axios he sat next to Pence at the meeting and handed him a list of 9 officials, including Chen Quanguo — the Chinese Communist Party's secretary of East Turkestan who has been dubbed the brains behind the detention camps. 

Fu said Pence made no commitments but told him he would personally follow up about the recommendation to sanction the individuals. 

Pence's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Why it matters: As we've reported, much of the world has shrugged as the Chinese Communist Party has detained over a million Uighur Muslims in East Turkestan in "political re-education" camps. 

The Communist Party has posted 100,000 jobs for security personnel in East Turkestan in just the last year, reports Quartz. 

The province has turned into a police state, with officials surveilling Muslim residents, collecting their DNA and seizing their passports.
Only a handful of countries have come out against Beijing on the East Turkestan issue. 

Meanwhile, all authoritarian regimes, including Saudi Arabia, Russia and North Korea, have signed a letter expressing support for China.

Between the lines: While the Trump administration has condemned the concentration camps, it has taken no specific action against Beijing for the human rights abuses. 

Magnitsky sanctions — if imposed — would be a significant step.
Since the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012, the U.S. has sanctioned more than 100 individuals for human rights abuses in Russia, Myanmar and South Sudan, among other places.
But the U.S. has only sanctioned one Chinese national under Magnitsky. 

In December 2017, President Trump sanctioned Gao Yan, a former Chinese police officer, for his role in the death of a Chinese human rights lawyer who lost her life in custody, per the South China Morning Post.
Magnitsky sanctions have never been used against an official of the Chinese Communist Party.

The big picture: Pence's meeting with the Chinese human rights advocates on Monday came on the same day President Trump took another step to escalate his economic conflict with China. 

Just hours after the meeting, the Treasury Department labeled China a currency manipulator.
President Trump's tweet accusing China of currency manipulation came during the meeting, and Pence pointed it out to the table as an example of the president's constant focus on China, said Fu.
On the table, Pence had printed copies of his and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's recent speeches on China to demonstrate that the administration has been clear about its views on  East Turkestan, Fu said.
Fu's list of Chinese officials:

The West begins to stir over China’s massive abuse of Muslims

Foreign governments’ worries about East Turkestan reflect a deeper angst about China

The Economist

Few governments send ambassadors to China to be brave about human rights. 

Envoys to Beijing are scholars of realism, their fine minds applied to a delicate task: managing profitable relations with a deep-pocketed, unapologetic dictatorship.
It is, therefore, a big deal that at least 14 ambassadors from Western countries, led by Canada, have come together to confront China over its mass detentions of Muslims in the far-western colony of East Turkestan, most of them ethnic Uighurs. 

Officials say the purpose is to stamp out extremism. 

In a letter leaked to Reuters, a news agency, the ambassadors have asked to meet Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party’s boss in East Turkestan. 

A hardliner transferred from Tibet, Mr Chen oversees a gulag into which a million Uighurs have been sent for “transformation-through-education”, many for indefinite periods without trial.
Millions more endure surveillance by facial-recognition cameras, smartphone scanners and police patrols at every turn. 

Some must host officials as houseguests, sent to assess their loyalties. 

China calls these measures vital after violent attacks carried out in recent years by Uighur patriots.
It is revealing that China seems startled to find itself under ambassadorial scrutiny. 

It has some reason to be. 

Chinese officials cynically believe that Western leaders and envoys raise human rights out of a sense of reluctant obligation, in order to placate activists and public opinion back home. 

This time, however, the charge is being led by ambassadors, not the public. 

Envoys in Beijing admit that most people in their countries have never heard of East Turkestan or the Uighurs. 

They also concede that some folk back home might have mixed feelings were they to learn that the Uighurs stand accused of "terrorist" leanings.

Protesting Muslim bans, wherever they are found
East Turkestan’s agonies are hardly a vital national interest for the first countries to sign the draft letter—Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, joined by the European Union. 

Instead, a Western diplomat sees a stark test of principle, asking: if we do not protest when a million people are detained without trial, when will we speak out?
That points to another reason for China to be startled. 

It is years since human rights seriously disrupted Chinese foreign policy. 

China won a big victory in 1994 when America’s then president, Bill Clinton, abandoned his previous commitment to make China’s access to American markets conditional on its human-rights record. 

“We have reached the end of the usefulness of that policy,” Clinton mumbled, before expressing "hopes" that China would be changed by engagement with the world. 

For selfish reasons, other governments fell in line behind that same plan: a bet that a prosperous China would surely converge with an international order crafted by Western powers after the second world war, based on global trade, universal rights and the rule of law.
China has not converged. 

In the meantime, the post-war rules-based order has rarely felt so fragile.

That fragility explains why once-meek governments are finding their voices. 

It is why East Turkestan crashed onto the agenda of the Stockholm China Forum, a twice-yearly gathering of American, Chinese and European ambassadors, diplomats, scholars, politicians and business leaders, hosted recently by Sweden’s foreign ministry and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think-tank. 

A speaker predicted that East Turkestan’s woes would “explode in public opinion”.
Normally dispassionate, the forum saw sharp exchanges about East Turkestan. 

Speakers described hearings in Washington at which farm-state senators, who once cheered trade with China, used phrases like “Orwellian” and “concentration camps”. 

It was noted that China’s high-tech police state appals Europeans, who dread government surveillance, especially in Germany. 

Chinese accused the West of hypocrisy, saying: “This is not Guantánamo.” (True: there are only 40 inmates in Guantánamo.)
To be sure, the West is not united over how to defend the rules-based order. 

EU signatories to the ambassadors’ letter are mostly from northern Europe. 

From the China-led “16 plus one” grouping of former communist countries in Europe, the only signatory at the time of publication was Estonia. 

Australia, a big exporter to China, signed. 

New Zealand, another big exporter, did not.
America’s position is hard to predict. 

In a recent China-pounding speech, Vice-President Mike Pence was stern about East Turkestan. 

A bipartisan group of members of Congress wants Chinese officials to face sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act, a law targeting human-rights abusers. 

But America’s envoy in Beijing did not sign the Canadian-drafted letter. 

Nobody can guarantee that Trump will uphold his government’s line when he sees his counterpart, Xi Jinping, later this month at a G20 meeting in Argentina, rather than beam that China is smart to be tough on Muslim "terrorists".
The wider world is not united. 

Turkey, which feels bonds of kinship with Uighurs, a Turkic people, was the only Muslim country to rebuke China at a recent meeting of the un Human Rights Council in Geneva. 

Other Muslim countries, many of them recipients of Chinese loans, praised China’s human rights.
Global argument over East Turkestan is likely to get fiercer. 

Horrible things are happening. 

International investors are growing jumpy about stakes in firms selling security kit used there. 

It matters that China’s talking points are outrageously cynical. 

Chinese lines tested in Stockholm include the claim that the camps "protect" the rights of Uighurs raised in remote, mainly Muslim areas. 

The camps offer modern employment skills, it was explained, and the right—guaranteed in China’s constitution—to choose your own religion or to believe in none. 

More propaganda like that, and ambassadors will not be the only ones asking hard questions.

Rogue Nation

China has not altered predatory trade practices
BBC News

The Trump administration has accused China of not changing its unfair practices, inflaming a trade dispute between the world's two largest economies.
In an update to a March report, the US said China had failed to alter its unreasonable practices.
The US has, along with other countries, long criticised Beijing over its trade policies.
The move raises tensions ahead of a high-stakes leaders meeting this month.
US President Donald Trump and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping are due to meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina. 

Their meeting will be closely watched for any progress on resolving the bitter trade dispute.

'Strengthened monitoring'
"China has not fundamentally altered its unfair, unreasonable, and market-distorting practices," US Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Lighthizer said in a statement on Tuesday.
The findings are part of an investigation into Beijing's intellectual property and technology transfer practices, which has prompted tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods.
Mr Lighthizer said the updated report was part of the Trump administration's "strengthened monitoring and enforcement effort".I
The report said despite the relaxation of some foreign ownership restrictions, "the Chinese have persisted in using foreign investment restrictions to require or pressure the transfer of technology from US companies to Chinese entities".
So far, the US has imposed three rounds of tariffs on Chinese goods, totalling more than $250bn (£195.5bn).
Beijing has struck back. 

It's accused the US of starting "the largest trade war in economic history" and imposed tariffs on $110bn worth of American goods.
For the first time in its history, an Asian economic summit last weekend failed to conclude with a joint leaders statement because of US-China divisions over trade.
At the meeting, US Vice-President Mike Pence said he was prepared to "more than double" the tariffs imposed on Chinese goods.

China steps up efforts to steal Australian company secrets

• China directed an increase in cyber attacks on Australian companies this year that breached a bilateral agreement between the two countries to not steal each other's commercial secrets.
• An investigation by Fairfax Media and broadcaster Nine News found that China's Ministry of State Security was responsible for the so-called "Operation Cloud Hopper."
• It was a wave of attacks that were detected by Australia and its partners in the "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing alliance — the U.S., U.K., New Zealand and Canada.

By Saheli Roy Choudhury

China directed an increase in cyber attacks on Australian companies this year that breached a bilateral agreement between the two countries pledging not to steal each other's commercial secrets, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Tuesday.
An investigation by Australian broadcaster Nine News and Fairfax Media — which owns the Sydney Morning Herald — found that China's Ministry of State Security was responsible for the so-called "Operation Cloud Hopper." 

It was a wave of attacks that were detected by Australia and its partners in the "Five Eyes" intelligence sharing alliance — which is made up of the U.S., U.K., New Zealand and Canada.
A senior Australian government source told the Sydney Morning Herald that China's activity was a "constant, significant effort" to steal intellectual property. 

Others said local companies and universities were not doing enough to tighten their cybersecurity against such attacks, the newspaper reported.
Cybersecurity experts also told the newspaper they had noticed "a significant increase in attacks in the first six months of this year" and that the activity was "mainly from China."
Relevant contact details for China's Ministry of State Security were not immediately available.
The Sydney Morning Herald's report came after recent remarks from U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who accused Beijing of intellectual property theft during the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.
Western countries have long accused China of stealing intellectual property as well as commercial and military secrets.

In recent years, China has stepped up efforts to create sophisticated home-grown technologies as it aims to catch up with other high-tech countries like the U.S. and Germany.
In 2015, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping struck an agreement with former President Barack Obama to curb cyber espionage. 

However, a U.S. intelligence official said earlier this month that China was violating the agreement.

Chinese Paranoia

Inside China’s ‘tantrum diplomacy’ at APEC

By Josh Rogin 

Chinese and Papua New Guinea flags line a street in front of the parliament building in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, host of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. 

PORT MORESBY, PAPUA NEW GUINEA — For the first time in its 20-year history, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit ended in disarray Sunday when the 21 member countries could not reach consensus on a joint statement because of objections by one member — China. 

When the summit failed, to the disgust of the other diplomats, Chinese officials broke out in applause.
But that was only the final incident in a week during which China’s official delegation staged a series of aggressive, bullying, paranoid and weird stunts to try to exert dominance and pressure the host nation and everyone else into succumbing to its demands.
“This is becoming a bit of a routine in China’s official relations: tantrum diplomacy,” a senior U.S. official involved in the negotiations told me. 

“Them walking around like they own the place and trying to get what they want through bullying.”
Even before the summit started, and continuing right up to its end, Chinese officials used every opportunity to strong-arm or undermine the host nation government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the other summit members. 

Chinese tactics included being thuggish with the international media, busting into government buildings uninvited, papering the capital city of Port Moresby with pro-Beijing propaganda and using cyberattacks to stifle the message of Vice President Pence, the U.S. delegation leader.
I was traveling with Mr Pence, and the APEC summit was his last stop in a week-long Asia tour, which included visits to Japan, Australia and Singapore, where the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit was held. 

The PNG stop was a showdown of sorts between Mr Pence and Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, who had been in Port Moresby for several days prior for an official state visit.
China’s attempted “charm offensive” was visible everywhere. 

The Chinese delegation had filled the streets of Port Moresby with Chinese flags for Xi’s state visit. The PNG government demanded that they be taken down before the APEC summit.

The Chinese officials eventually complied, but then replaced them with solid red flags — almost identical to the official Chinese flags, but without the yellow stars.
A huge banner along a major thoroughfare touted China’s One Belt, One Road economic initiative as “not only a road of cooperation and win-win situation, but also a road of hope and peace!” 

In his speech at APEC, Vice President Pence called it “a constricting belt” and “a one-way road.”
China’s first outwardly intimidating move was to ban all international media from Xi’s meeting with the leaders of eight Pacific nations. 

Journalists had traveled from around the region to attend the event, and the PNG government gave them credentials. 

But Chinese officials barred them from entering the building and only allowed China’s state media to cover it. 

A U.S. official called it an “own goal” by China, because the journalists then could only write about China’s brutish behavior.
Things got worse from there. 

On Saturday, Xi and Vice President Pence were the final two official speakers at the public part of the summit. 

They gave their speeches on a cruise ship docked off the coast, while most journalists were stationed on shore in the International Media Center. 

But five minutes into Vice President Pence’s remarks, the Internet in the media center crashed for most of the reporters there, meaning they couldn’t hear or report on it in real time.

Just as Mr Pence was finishing his speech, the media center’s Internet mysteriously came back on. U.S. officials told me they were investigating what happened.
“Was there any trouble with the Internet for the speaker before Mr Pence?” another senior U.S. official asked me. (No.) “And who was that speaker again?” (Xi.)
Then things got even crazier. 

Behind the scenes, the member countries were furiously negotiating over the joint statement. 

Chinese officials, not happy with how they were faring inside the negotiations, demanded a meeting with the PNG foreign minister. 

He declined, not wanting to appear to violate PNG’s neutrality as summit chair.
The Chinese wouldn’t take no for an answer. 

They went to the foreign ministry and physically barged into his office, demanding he meet with them. 

He called the local police to get them out of the building. 

Every diplomat I talked to in PNG was stunned by China’s actions. 

But that’s not the end of it.
The negotiations continued into Sunday, and the Chinese delegation’s bad behavior continued apace. According to U.S. officials, Chinese were getting so paranoid about the statement that they began pushing into the meetings of smaller groups of countries on the summit’s sidelines. 

Inside the official sessions, Chinese yelled about countries “scheming” against China. 

Nobody else in the room was yelling, the U.S. officials said.
All 20 countries except China finally agreed to the joint statement, except for China.

The Chinese delegation objected primarily to one line that read: “We agree to fight protectionism including all unfair trade practices.” 

They perceived that as singling out and targeting China.
The Chinese filibustered inside the session, giving long monologues, knowing that time was short and the world leaders had planes waiting to take them home. 

When the time ran out and therefore the summit had officially failed, the Chinese delegation stationed in a room near the main session broke out in applause.
There are three conclusions we can take away from this tragicomedy of errors put on by the Chinese government. 

First, they are behaving in an increasingly brazen and coercive way. 

This is especially true with the small Indo-Pacific countries — such as Papua New Guinea — that they are flooding with development projects and saddling with massive debt.
Second, the paranoid and oversensitive nature of China’s behavior is a clear indication that the government feels under threat from the United States and its allies. 

Lastly, the fact that Beijing is acting in a way that actually alienates other countries — which is clearly against China’s own interests — shows that Chinese official action is controlled from the top down in ways that often prevent good decision-making. 

Even when the Chinese delegation saw its tactics were backfiring, they didn’t have the authority to change course.
This is what the Chinese government is today: pushy, insecure, out of control and with no desire to pretend anymore they will play by the rules the international community has been operating under for decades. 

How to deal with that reality is the debate the rest of the world must now begin in earnest.

Trade War

Vice President Mike Pence vows no end to tariffs until China bows

Reuters

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the APEC CEO Summit 2018 at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 17 November 2018. 

PORT MORESBY -- The United States will not back down from its trade dispute with China, and might even double its tariffs, unless Beijing bows to U.S. demands, Vice President Mike Pence said on Saturday.
In a bluntly worded speech at an Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea, Pence threw down the gauntlet to China on trade and security in the region.
“We have taken decisive action to address our imbalance with China,” Pence declared. 

“We put tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods, and we could more than double that number.”
“The United States, though, will not change course until China changes its ways.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is not attending the APEC meeting, is due to meet Chinese dictator Xi Jinping in Argentina.
President Trump has imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports to force concessions on a list of demands that would change the terms of trade between the two countries. 

China has responded with import tariffs on U.S. goods.
Washington is demanding Beijing improve market access and intellectual property protections for U.S. companies, cut industrial subsidies and slash a $375 billion trade gap.
There was no hint of compromise from Pence.
“China has taken advantage of the United States for many years. Those days are over,” he told delegates gathered on a cruise liner docked in Port Moresby’s Fairfax Harbour.
He also took aim at China’s territorial ambitions in the Pacific and, particularly, Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative to expand land and sea links between Asia, Africa and Europe with billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.
“We don’t offer constricting belts or a one-way road,” said Pence.
While not referring directly to Chinese claims over various disputed waters in the region, Pence said the United States would work to help protect maritime rights.
“We will continue to fly and sail where ever international law allows and our interests demand. Harassment will only strengthen our resolve.”

Rogue Nation

China hoped for a sharp power win at APEC, instead Xi Jinping left dissatisfied
By John Lee

With the presidents of the United States and Russia staying home, it seemed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping would dominate this weekend at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit and increase his country's influence in the Pacific.
China has already lent at least $1.3 billion to the Pacific Islands and about $590 million alone to the summit's host, Papua New Guinea (PNG). 

And to coincide with the PNG visit, Beijing promised $4 billion of finance to build PNG's first national road network, one of several gestures for which China secured effusive praise from Pacific Island countries including Samoa, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Niue, Fiji and the President of the Federated States of Micronesia.
But nevertheless, Xi left PNG dissatisfied and disgruntled.
Xi Jinping says no one wins in 'cold war,' but Pence won't back down

For the first time in APEC's 25-year history, PNG was forced to end the summit with leaders failing to agree on a communique. 

And Beijing was also left embarrassed by reports of four Chinese officials being unceremoniously banished from the office of PNG Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato after trying to influence his statement.
For China, the trade summit should have been a public relations victory -- but it was turned into partial defeat when Chinese officials barred most reporters from participant countries and other international outlets from the forum and instead only allowed Chinese state-owned media journalists, citing space and security concerns according to Reuters.

Concerted and coordinated push back by the US and its allies
Of more enduring consequence than diplomatic embarrassment, is the concerted and coordinated push back by the US and its allies -- such as Japan and Australia -- which was done in a very public way. 

Earlier this month, Australia announced a $2.2 billion "step-up to the Pacific" -- which includes an Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility and an export credit agency to help Australian companies invest in the region.
Then on Saturday, the Trilateral Partnership countries of the US, Japan and Australia released a joint statement declaring together they would identify infrastructure projects for development and financing. 

Pointedly, these projects would adhere to "international standards and principles for development, including openness, transparency, and fiscal sustainability." 

That approach, it said, would "help to meet the region's genuine needs while avoiding unsustainable debt burdens for the nations of the region."
US Vice President Mike Pence was even more blunt during his speech at the APEC summit.

Taking a swipe at China, he said that the US "offers a better option" and "does not drown partners in a sea of debt... coerce" them or "compromise" their independence.
To indicate that the US and allied powers were serious about using economic and military means to counter Chinese influence, Pence announced over the weekend the US will join with Australia and PNG to redevelop and create a joint naval base on Manus Island. 

"We will work with these two nations to protect sovereignty and maritime rights in the Pacific Islands," he said.

Public distaste for 'sharp power' on show
Previously, in August, it was reported that China could be given the contract to redevelop a port on Manus Island. 

A military facility on Manus Island is of high strategic significance -- this is a deep-water port capable of hosting aircraft carriers and hundreds of naval vessels.
As one of the most important bases for the US fleet in the Pacific theater during World War II, it will be a second line of defence should China's People's Liberation Army Navy successfully break out of the so-called First Island Chain, a line of archipelagos that cover the Kuril Islands, Japan, Taiwan, northern Philippines and Borneo, and the Malay Peninsula.
But even if the reports about Chinese involvement in the Manus Island port are untrue, Beijing would be alarmed at the prospect of American and Australian military assets in PNG to counter any Chinese naval breakout.

As far as Beijing is concerned, the weekend was the time to showcase China's emergence as a benign superpower in the South Pacific. 

Instead, public distaste for and rebuke of its 'sharp power' was on show.
Xi defended China's trade practices and denied that its Belt and Road Initiative contained hidden geo-political and other sinister motivations. 

And no matter how adamantly he did so, it was not a conversation that Xi intended to have when he first landed in Port Moresby.
And it has not ended.
The more China offers economic largesse and inducements, the more it will need to reassure the recipient and the world that it is not laying a 'debt trap' or seeking to buy influence.
The weekend was supposed to be China's moment in the sun during this most important regional economic meeting. 

Instead, it became obvious to all that Beijing's ambitions are as feared and resisted by at least as many countries, as welcomed by others.

US criticises China’s empire and aggression in Asia

US vice-president Pence takes swipe at Beijing’s regional ambitions ahead of Trump-Xi meeting at G20 
By Stefania Palma in Singapore

Mike Pence: 'Empire and aggression have no place in the Indo-Pacific' 

Mike Pence, US vice-president, has condemned “empire and aggression” in Asia in a veiled swipe at China’s growing influence across the region, fuelling tensions ahead of a meeting between the two countries’ leaders at the G20 summit later this month
 The rhetoric marks one of Washington’s strongest attacks on Beijing’s growing sway in the region, and comes amid a trade war that has seen the world’s two biggest economies slap duties on more than $350bn worth of trade, rattling global financial markets. 
 “We all agree that empire and aggression have no place in the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Pence told a gathering of Asian leaders at the Asean summit in Singapore.
“In all that we do, the United States seeks collaboration, not control. And we are proud to call Asean our strategic partner.”
 The US delegation has used the Singapore meetings to reassert its commitment to Asean — the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — from which the White House seeks support to push back against Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea and to urge North Korea towards denuclearisation.
 Mr Pence’s speech highlighted the tensions dominating Sino-US relations ahead of a key meeting between President Trump and Xi in Buenos Aires later this month, the scheduling of which had signalled a potential breakthrough in the countries’ escalating trade dispute. 
 Wang Qishan, Chinese vice-president and close confidant of Xi, last week said that Beijing was ready to talk with Washington to resolve the trade dispute, while the US and China held high-level talks in Washington that included a meeting between John Bolton, President Trump’s national security adviser, and Yang Jiechi, a Chinese state councillor with responsibility for foreign affairs. 
 The stakes of the meeting in Argentina are high.
These “significant” talks will cover a wide range of issues including trade and “will help give [the two presidents’] senior advisers guidance as to how to proceed going forward,” Mr Bolton told journalists at the Asean summit. 
 If no deal is reached, the most likely scenario is that the tariff rate on most of the $250bn of targeted Chinese exports to the US will rise from 10 per cent to 25 per cent in January.
President Trump could then proceed to what US officials describe as phase three of the trade confrontation with Beijing, imposing tariffs on all US imports from China.  
Mr Pence on Thursday said that the US’s vision of the Indo-Pacific “excludes no nation. It only requires that every nation treat their neighbours with respect, that they respect the sovereignty of our nations and the international rules of order.”
Washington has accused China of military intimidation and economic coercion of other countries in the region.
It argues that Beijing’s militarisation of the South China Sea has effectively robbed rival claimants of fair access.
Washington also says that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the foreign policy framework that builds Chinese influence through massive infrastructure projects, forces less powerful countries into dangerous dependence.
 At the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Papua New Guinea this weekend, Mr Pence is due to unveil details of America’s Indo-Pacific strategy, aimed at providing an alternative to China’s BRI.
 The US plan “stands in sharp contrast to the dangerous debt diplomacy that China has been engaging in throughout the region and has led several countries . . . to have serious debt problems from accepting loans that are not transparent”, a senior US administration official told reporters in Singapore.

Vice President Mike Pence's Churchill Moment

Mr Pence's speech blasting China was the most important of the Trump administration

• Vice President Pence's speech blasting China was a wake up call, CNBC's Jim Cramer says. 
• Pence's Oct. 4 address at Washington's Hudson Institute really freaked out the Chinese 
• It might as well have been written in 1947 about the Soviets 

By Berkeley Lovelace Jr.


Vice President Mike Pence addresses the Hudson Institute on the administration's policy towards China in Washington, DC, on October 4, 2018.
Vice President Mike Pence's speech blasting China was a "wake up call," and it had been in recent weeks "roiling" the stock market, according to CNBC's Jim Cramer.
Pence's Oct. 4 address at Washington's Hudson Institute "really freaked out the Chinese," Cramer said Wednesday on "Squawk Box."
"It might as well have been written in 1947 about the Soviets."
In the speech, the vice president accused China of "malign" efforts to undermine President Donald Trump and sway the November midterm elections from Republicans.
Cramer described the tone of the Pence speech as not just hawkish but a "declaration of economic war."
"It was the most important speech of the whole Trump administration. And it wasn't given by the president," said Cramer, the host of "Mad Money."
"It was the speech that Obama never gave," Cramer said.
"It was a recognition that it's a communist country" and not an ally of the U.S. because it "has none of the protections that democracies afford," he added.
Cramer said the Pence speech had been roiling stocks until recently, when concerns about the Federal Reserve's mission to raise interest rates took over the spotlight.
The U.S. and China are currently locked in a trade war that's seen each side imposing tariffs on each other's products.
However, Cramer said the divide between the world's two largest economic superpowers is bigger than trade.
"When you recognize that it's a communist country you're not talking about trying to sell more Prell [shampoo]. It was a wake up call," he said.

Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy Toward China

October 4, 2018

The Hudson Institute

Washington, D.C.

11:07 A.M. EDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Ken, for that kind introduction. To the Members of the Board of Trustees, to Dr. Michael Pillsbury, to our distinguished guests, and to all of you who, true to your mission in this place, “think about the future in unconventional ways” –- it is an honor to be back at the Hudson Institute.
For more than a half a century, this Institute has dedicated itself to “advancing global security, prosperity, and freedom.” And while Hudson’s hometowns have changed over the years, one thing has been constant: You have always advanced that vital truth, that American leadership lights the way.
And today, speaking of leadership, allow me to begin by bringing greetings from a great champion of American leadership at home and abroad –- I bring greetings from the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump. (Applause.)
From early in this administration, President Trump has made our relationship with China and President Xi a priority. On April 6th of last year, President Trump welcomed President Xi to Mar-a-Lago. On November 8th of last year, President Trump traveled to Beijing, where China’s leader welcomed him warmly.
Over the course of the past two years, our President has forged a strong personal relationship with the President of the People’s Republic of China, and they’ve worked closely on issues of common interest, most importantly the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
But I come before you today because the American people deserve to know that, as we speak, Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States.
China is also applying this power in more proactive ways than ever before, to exert influence and interfere in the domestic policy and politics of this country.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has taken decisive action to respond to China with American action, applying the principles and the policies long advocated in these halls.
In our National Security Strategy that the President Trump released last December, he described a new era of “great power competition.” Foreign nations have begun to, as we wrote, “reassert their influence regionally and globally,” and they are “contesting [America’s] geopolitical advantages and trying [in essence] to change the international order in their favor.”
In this strategy, President Trump made clear that the United States of America has adopted a new approach to China. We seek a relationship grounded in fairness, reciprocity, and respect for sovereignty, and we have taken strong and swift action to achieve that goal.
As the President said last year on his visit to China, in his words, “we have an opportunity to strengthen the relationship between our two countries and improve the lives of our citizens.” Our vision of the future is built on the best parts of our past, when America and China reached out to one another in a spirit of openness and friendship.
When our young nation went searching in the wake of the Revolutionary War for new markets for our exports, the Chinese people welcomed American traders laden with ginseng and fur.
When China suffered through indignities and exploitations during her so-called “Century of Humiliation,” America refused to join in, and advocated the “Open Door” policy, so that we could have freer trade with China, and preserve their sovereignty.
When American missionaries brought the good news to China’s shores, they were moved by the rich culture of an ancient and vibrant people. And not only did they spread their faith, but those same missionaries founded some of China’s first and finest universities.
When the Second World War arose, we stood together as allies in the fight against imperialism. And in that war’s aftermath, America ensured that China became a charter member of the United Nations, and a great shaper of the post-war world.
But soon after it took power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party began to pursue authoritarian expansionism. It is remarkable to think that only five years after our nations had fought together, we fought each other in the mountains and valleys of the Korean Peninsula. My own father saw combat on that frontier of freedom.
But not even the brutal Korean War could diminish our mutual desire to restore the ties that for so long had bound our peoples together. China’s estrangement from the United States ended in 1972, and, soon after, we re-established diplomatic relations and began to open our economies to one another, and American universities began training a new generation of Chinese engineers, business leaders, scholars, and officials.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, we assumed that a free China was inevitable. Heady with optimism at the turn of the 21st Century, America agreed to give Beijing open access to our economy, and we brought China into the World Trade Organization.
Previous administrations made this choice in the hope that freedom in China would expand in all of its forms -– not just economically, but politically, with a newfound respect for classical liberal principles, private property, personal liberty, religious freedom — the entire family of human rights. But that hope has gone unfulfilled.
The dream of freedom remains distant for the Chinese people. And while Beijing still pays lip service to “reform and opening,” Deng Xiaoping’s famous policy now rings hollow.
Over the past 17 years, China’s GDP has grown nine-fold; it’s become the second-largest economy in the world. Much of this success was driven by American investment in China. And the Chinese Communist Party has also used an arsenal of policies inconsistent with free and fair trade, including tariffs, quotas, currency manipulation, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and industrial subsidies that are handed out like candy to foreign investment. These policies have built Beijing’s manufacturing base, at the expense of its competitors -– especially the United States of America.
China’s actions have contributed to a trade deficit with the United States that last year ran to $375 billion –- nearly half of our global trade deficit. As President Trump said just this week, in his words, “We rebuilt China” over the last 25 years.
Now, through the “Made in China 2025” plan, the Communist Party has set its sights on controlling 90 percent of the world’s most advanced industries, including robotics, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. To win the commanding heights of the 21st century economy, Beijing has directed its bureaucrats and businesses to obtain American intellectual property –- the foundation of our economic leadership -– by any means necessary.
Beijing now requires many American businesses to hand over their trade secrets as the cost of doing business in China. It also coordinates and sponsors the acquisition of American firms to gain ownership of their creations. Worst of all, Chinese security agencies have masterminded the wholesale theft of American technology –- including cutting-edge military blueprints. And using that stolen technology, the Chinese Communist Party is turning plowshares into swords on a massive scale.
China now spends as much on its military as the rest of Asia combined, and Beijing has prioritized capabilities to erode America’s military advantages on land, at sea, in the air, and in space. China wants nothing less than to push the United States of America from the Western Pacific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies. But they will fail.
Beijing is also using its power like never before. Chinese ships routinely patrol around the Senkaku Islands, which are administered by Japan. And while China’s leader stood in the Rose Garden at the White House in 2015 and said that his country had, and I quote, “no intention to militarize” the South China Sea, today, Beijing has deployed advanced anti-ship and anti-air missiles atop an archipelago of military bases constructed on artificial islands.
China’s aggression was on display this week, when a Chinese naval vessel came within 45 yards of the USS Decatur as it conducted freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, forcing our ship to quickly maneuver to avoid collision. Despite such reckless harassment, the United States Navy will continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows and our national interests demand. We will not be intimidated and we will not stand down. (Applause.)
America had hoped that economic liberalization would bring China into a greater partnership with us and with the world. Instead, China has chosen economic aggression, which has in turn emboldened its growing military.
Nor, as we had hoped, has Beijing moved toward greater freedom for its own people. For a time, Beijing inched toward greater liberty and respect for human rights. But in recent years, China has taken a sharp U-turn toward control and oppression of its own people.
Today, China has built an unparalleled surveillance state, and it’s growing more expansive and intrusive – often with the help of U.S. technology. What they call the “Great Firewall of China” likewise grows higher, drastically restricting the free flow of information to the Chinese people.
And by 2020, China’s rulers aim to implement an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life — the so-called “Social Credit Score.” In the words of that program’s official blueprint, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven, while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”
And when it comes to religious freedom, a new wave of persecution is crashing down on Chinese Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims.
Last month, Beijing shut down one of China’s largest underground churches. Across the country, authorities are tearing down crosses, burning bibles, and imprisoning believers. And Beijing has now reached a deal with the Vatican that gives the avowedly atheist Communist Party a direct role in appointing Catholic bishops. For China’s Christians, these are desperate times.
Beijing is also cracking down on Buddhism. Over the past decade, more than 150 Tibetan Buddhist monks have lit themselves on fire to protest China’s repression of their beliefs and their culture. And in Xinjiang, the Communist Party has imprisoned as many as one million Muslim Uyghurs in government camps where they endure around-the-clock brainwashing. Survivors of the camps have described their experiences as a deliberate attempt by Beijing to strangle Uyghur culture and stamp out the Muslim faith.
As history attests though, a country that oppresses its own people rarely stops there. And Beijing also aims to extend its reach across the wider world. As Hudson’s own Dr. Michael Pillsbury has written, “China has opposed the actions and goals of the U.S. government. Indeed, China is building its own relationships with America’s allies and enemies that contradict any peaceful or productive intentions of Beijing.”
In fact, China uses so-called “debt diplomacy” to expand its influence. Today, that country is offering hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure loans to governments from Asia to Africa to Europe and even Latin America. Yet the terms of those loans are opaque at best, and the benefits invariably flow overwhelmingly to Beijing.
Just ask Sri Lanka, which took on massive debt to let Chinese state companies build a port of questionable commercial value. Two years ago, that country could no longer afford its payments, so Beijing pressured Sri Lanka to deliver the new port directly into Chinese hands. It may soon become a forward military base for China’s growing blue-water navy.
Within our own hemisphere, Beijing has extended a lifeline to the corrupt and incompetent Maduro regime in Venezuela that’s been oppressing its own people. They pledged $5 billion in questionable loans to be repaid with oil. China is also that country’s single largest creditor, saddling the Venezuelan people with more than $50 billion in debt, even as their democracy vanishes. Beijing is also impacting some nations’ politics by providing direct support to parties and candidates who promise to accommodate China’s strategic objectives.
And since last year alone, the Chinese Communist Party has convinced three Latin American nations to sever ties with Taipei and recognize Beijing. These actions threaten the stability of the Taiwan Strait, and the United States of America condemns these actions. And while our administration will continue to respect our One China Policy, as reflected in the three joint communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act, America will always believe that Taiwan’s embrace of democracy shows a better path for all the Chinese people. (Applause.)
Now these are only a few of the ways that China has sought to advance its strategic interests across the world, with growing intensity and sophistication. Yet previous administrations all but ignored China’s actions. And in many cases, they abetted them. But those days are over.
Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States of America has been defending our interests with renewed American strength.
We’ve been making the strongest military in the history of the world stronger still. Earlier this year, President Trump signed into law the largest increase in our national defense since the days of Ronald Reagan -– $716 billion to extend the strength of the American military to every domain.
We’re modernizing our nuclear arsenal. We’re fielding and developing new cutting-edge fighters and bombers. We’re building a new generation of aircraft carriers and warships. We’re investing as never before in our armed forces. And this includes initiating the process to establish the United States Space Force to ensure our continued dominance in space, and we’ve taken action to authorize increased capability in the cyber world to build deterrence against our adversaries.
At President Trump’s direction, we’re also implementing tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods, with the highest tariffs specifically targeting the advanced industries that Beijing is trying to capture and control. And as the President has also made clear, we will levy even more tariffs, with the possibility of substantially more than doubling that number, unless a fair and reciprocal deal is made. (Applause.)
These actions — exercises in American strength — have had a major impact. China’s largest stock exchange fell by 25 percent in the first nine months of this year, in large part because our administration has been standing strong against Beijing’s trade practices.
As President Trump has made clear, we don’t want China’s markets to suffer. In fact, we want them to thrive. But the United States wants Beijing to pursue trade policies that are free, fair, and reciprocal. And we will continue to stand and demand that they do. (Applause.)
Sadly, China’s rulers, thus far, have refused to take that path. The American people deserve to know: In response to the strong stand that President Trump has taken, Beijing is pursuing a comprehensive and coordinated campaign to undermine support for the President, our agenda, and our nation’s most cherished ideals.
I want to tell you today what we know about China’s actions here at home — some of which we’ve gleaned from intelligence assessments, some of which are publicly available. But all of which are fact.
As I said before, as we speak, Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach to advance its influence and benefit its interests. It’s employing this power in more proactive and coercive ways to interfere in the domestic policies of this country and to interfere in the politics of the United States.
The Chinese Communist Party is rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists, and local, state, and federal officials.
And worst of all, China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion, the 2018 elections, and the environment leading into the 2020 presidential elections. To put it bluntly, President Trump’s leadership is working; and China wants a different American President.
There can be no doubt: China is meddling in America’s democracy. As President Trump said just last week, we have, in his words, “found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming [midterm] election[s].”
Our intelligence community says that “China is targeting U.S. state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy. It’s using wedge issues, like trade tariffs, to advance Beijing’s political influence.”
In June, Beijing itself circulated a sensitive document, entitled “Propaganda and Censorship Notice.” It laid out its strategy. It stated that China must, in their words, “strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups” in the United States of America.
To that end, Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups, and propaganda outlets to shift Americans’ perception of Chinese policy. As a senior career member of our intelligence community told me just this week, what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what China is doing across this country. And the American people deserve to know it.
Senior Chinese officials have also tried to influence business leaders to encourage them to condemn our trade actions, leveraging their desire to maintain their operations in China. In one recent example, China threatened to deny a business license for a major U.S. corporation if they refused to speak out against our administration’s policies.
And when it comes to influencing the midterms, you need only look at Beijing’s tariffs in response to ours. The tariffs imposed by China to date specifically targeted industries and states that would play an important role in the 2018 election. By one estimate, more than 80 percent of U.S. counties targeted by China voted for President Trump and I in 2016; now China wants to turn these voters against our administration.
And China is also directly appealing to the American voters. Last week, the Chinese government paid to have a multipage supplement inserted into the Des Moines Register –- the paper of record of the home state of our Ambassador to China, and a pivotal state in 2018 and 2020. The supplement, designed to look like the news articles, cast our trade policies as reckless and harmful to Iowans.
Fortunately, Americans aren’t buying it. For example, American farmers are standing with this President and are seeing real results from the strong stands that he’s taken, including this week’s U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, where we’ve substantially opened North American markets to U.S. products. The USMCA is a great win for American farmers and American manufacturers. (Applause.)
But China’s actions aren’t focused solely on influencing our policies and politics. Beijing is also taking steps to exploit its economic leverage, and the allure of their large marketplace, to advance its influence over American businesses.
Beijing now requires American joint ventures that operate in China to establish what they call “party organizations” within their company, giving the Communist Party a voice –- and perhaps a veto -– in hiring and investment decisions.
Chinese authorities have also threatened U.S. companies that depict Taiwan as a distinct geographic entity, or that stray from Chinese policy on Tibet. Beijing compelled Delta Airlines to publicly apologize for not calling Taiwan a “province of China” on its website. And it pressured Marriott to fire a U.S. employee who merely liked a tweet about Tibet.
And Beijing routinely demands that Hollywood portray China in a strictly positive light. It punishes studios and producers that don’t. Beijing’s censors are quick to edit or outlaw movies that criticize China, even in minor ways. For the movie, “World War Z,” they had to cut the script’s mention of a virus because it originated in China. The movie, “Red Dawn” was digitally edited to make the villains North Korean, not Chinese.
But beyond business and entertainment, the Chinese Communist Party is also spending billions of dollars on propaganda outlets in the United States and, frankly, around the world.
China Radio International now broadcasts Beijing-friendly programs on over 30 U.S. outlets, many in major American cities. The China Global Television Network reaches more than 75 million Americans, and it gets its marching orders directly from its Communist Party masters. As China’s top leader put it during a visit to the network’s headquarters, and I quote, “The media run by the Party and the government are propaganda fronts and must have the Party as their surname.”
It’s for those reasons and that reality that, last month, the Department of Justice ordered that network to register as a foreign agent.
The Communist Party has also threatened and detained the Chinese family members of American journalists who pry too deep. And it’s blocked the websites of U.S. media organizations and made it harder for our journalists to get visas. This happened after the New York Times published investigative reports about the wealth of some of China’s leaders.
But the media isn’t the only place where the Chinese Communist Party seeks to foster a culture of censorship. The same is true across academia.
I mean, look no further than the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, of which there are more than 150 branches across America’s campuses. These groups help organize social events for some of the more than 430,000 Chinese nationals studying in the United States. They also alert Chinese consulates and embassies when Chinese students, and American schools, stray from the Communist Party line.
At the University of Maryland, a Chinese student recently spoke at her graduation of what she called, and I quote, the “fresh air of free speech” in America. The Communist Party’s official newspaper swiftly chastised her. She became the victim of a firestorm of criticism on China’s tightly-controlled social media, and her family back home was harassed. As for the university itself, its exchange program with China — one of the nation’s most extensive — suddenly turned from a flood to a trickle.
China exerts academic pressure in other ways, as well. Beijing provides generous funding to universities, think tanks, and scholars, with the understanding that they will avoid ideas that the Communist Party finds dangerous or offensive. China experts in particular know that their visas will be delayed or denied if their research contradicts Beijing’s talking points.
And even scholars and groups who avoid Chinese funding are targeted by that country, as the Hudson Institute found out firsthand. After you offered to host a speaker Beijing didn’t like, your website suffered a major cyberattack, originating from Shanghai. The Hudson Institute knows better than most that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to undermine academic freedom and the freedom of speech in America today.
These and other actions, taken as a whole, constitute an intensifying effort to shift American public opinion and policy away from the “America First” leadership of President Donald Trump.
But our message to China’s rulers is this: This President will not back down. (Applause.) The American people will not be swayed. And we will continue to stand strong for our security and our economy, even as we hope for improved relations with Beijing.
Our administration is going to continue to act decisively to protect America’s interests, American jobs, and American security.
As we rebuild our military, we will continue to assert American interests across the Indo-Pacific.
As we respond to China’s trade practices, we will continue to demand an economic relationship with China that is free, fair, and reciprocal. We will demand that Beijing break down its trade barriers, fulfill its obligations, fully open its economy — just as we have opened ours.
We’ll continue to take action against Beijing until the theft of American intellectual property ends once and for all. And we will continue to stand strong until Beijing stops the predatory practice of forced technology transfer. We will protect the private property interests of American enterprise. (Applause.)
And to advance our vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific, we’re building new and stronger bonds with nations that share our values across the region, from India to Samoa. Our relationships will flow from a spirit of respect built on partnership, not domination.
We’re forging new trade deals on a bilateral basis, just as last week President Trump signed an improved trade deal with South Korea. And we will soon begin historic negotiations for a bilateral free-trade deal with Japan. (Applause.)
I’m also pleased to report that we’re streamlining international development and finance programs. We’ll be giving foreign nations a just and transparent alternative to China’s debt-trap diplomacy. In fact, this week, President Trump will sign the BUILD Act into law.
Next month, it will be my privilege to represent the United States in Singapore and Papua New Guinea, at ASEAN and APEC. There, we will unveil new measures and programs to support a free and open Indo-Pacific. And on behalf of the President, I will deliver the message that America’s commitment to the Indo-Pacific has never been stronger. (Applause.)
Closer to home, to protect our interests, we’ve recently strengthened CFIUS — the Committee on Foreign Investment — heightening our scrutiny of Chinese investment in America to protect our national security from Beijing’s predatory actions.
And when it comes to Beijing’s malign influence and interference in American politics and policy, we will continue to expose it, no matter the form it takes. We will work with leaders at every level of society to defend our national interests and most cherished ideals. The American people will play the decisive role — and, in fact, they already are.
As we gather here, a new consensus is rising across America. More business leaders are thinking beyond the next quarter, and thinking twice before diving into the Chinese market if it means turning over their intellectual property or abetting Beijing’s oppression. But more must follow suit. For example, Google should immediately end development of the “Dragonfly” app that will strengthen Communist Party censorship and compromise the privacy of Chinese customers. (Applause.)
It’s also great to see more journalists reporting the truth without fear or favor, digging deep to find where China is interfering in our society, and why. And we hope that American and global news organizations will continue to join this effort on an increasing basis.
More scholars are also speaking out forcefully and defending academic freedom, and more universities and think tanks are mustering the courage to turn away Beijing’s easy money, recognizing that every dollar comes with a corresponding demand. And we’re confident that their ranks will grow.
And across the nation, the American people are growing in vigilance, with a newfound appreciation for our administration’s actions and the President’s leadership to reset America’s economic and strategic relationship with China. Americans stand strong behind a President that’s putting America first.
And under President Trump’s leadership, I can assure you, America will stay the course. China should know that the American people and their elected officials in both parties are resolved.
As our National Security Strategy states: We should remember that “Competition does not always mean hostility,” nor does it have to. The President has made clear, we want a constructive relationship with Beijing where our prosperity and security grow together, not apart. While Beijing has been moving further away from this vision, China’s rulers can still change course and return to the spirit of reform and opening that characterize the beginning of this relationship decades ago. The American people want nothing more; and the Chinese people deserve nothing less.
The great Chinese storyteller Lu Xun often lamented that his country, and he wrote, “has either looked down at foreigners as brutes, or up to them as saints,” but never “as equals.” Today, America is reaching out our hand to China. And we hope that soon, Beijing will reach back with deeds, not words, and with renewed respect for America. But be assured: we will not relent until our relationship with China is grounded in fairness, reciprocity, and respect for our sovereignty. (Applause.)
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that reads, “Men see only the present, but heaven sees the future.” As we go forward, let us pursue a future of peace and prosperity with resolve and faith. Faith in President Trump’s leadership and vision, and the relationship that he has forged with China’s president. Faith in the enduring friendship between the American people and the Chinese people. And Faith that heaven sees the future — and by God’s grace, America and China will meet that future together.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)