Chinese Peril

Africa should avoid forfeiting sovereignty to China over loans: Tillerson
By Aaron Maasho

African Union (AU) Commission Chairman Moussa Faki, of Chad, and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hold a news conference after their meeting at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 8, 2018.

ADDIS ABABA -- U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday that African countries should be careful not to forfeit their sovereignty when they accept loans from China, the continent’s biggest trading partner.
Tillerson is using his first diplomatic trip to the continent to bolster security alliances on a continent increasingly turning to Beijing for aid and trade.
He may also seek to smooth relations after U.S. President Trump reportedly dismissed some African nations as “shithole countries” in January. 

Trump later denied making the comment.
“We are not in any way attempting to keep Chinese dollars from Africa,” Tillerson told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital. 

“It is important that African countries carefully consider the terms of those agreements and not forfeit their sovereignty.”
The United States is the leading aid donor to Africa but China surpassed it as a trade partner in 2009. Beijing has pumped billions into infrastructure projects, though critics say the use of Chinese firms and labor undermines their value.
Tillerson said Chinese investments “do not bring significant job creation locally” and criticized how Beijing structures loans to African government.
If a government accepts a Chinese loan and “gets into trouble”, he said, it can “lose control of its own infrastructure or its own resources through default.” 

He did not give examples.
The growing Chinese lending to the continent has also attracted criticism from some Africans, who say China’s agenda is to feed its appetite for African raw materials like oil, timber and minerals, and secure contracts for its firms.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, visiting Zimbabwe on Thursday, told reporters it was inappropriate for Tillerson to criticize China’s relationship with African countries.
“It was not appropriate to criticize the relations of his hosts — when he was a guest there — with another country,” he said. 

Many African governments enjoy close ties with both Washington and Beijing.
Kenya, for example, inaugurated a $3.2 billion railway funded by China last year. 

For the last three years, Kenya has received more than $100 million annually in U.S. security assistance.
Asked about Tillerson’s criticism of China’s approach on the continent, Kenya’s foreign affairs minister Monica Juma said: “This country is engaging with partners from across the world driven by our own interests and for our own value.”

OPAQUE CONTRACTS
Tillerson arrived in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous nation, on Wednesday and visited the African Union headquarters on Thursday. 

The complex was funded and built by China and is seen as a symbol of Beijing’s thrust for influence and access to the continent’s natural resources.
Ethiopia is home to some of Beijing’s biggest investments, from a railway to Djibouti that opened last year to factories and industrial parks.
Earlier this week, Tillerson criticized China’s approach to Africa which encouraged dependency through opaque contracts and predatory loan practices.
Ethiopia’s prime minister resigned suddenly last month and a state of emergency was imposed but protests in the restive Oromia region have continued.
The secretary of state met Hailemariam Desalegn, who resigned as prime minister but is still acting in the post awaiting a replacement. 

Details of their discussions were not released.
Tillerson said after meeting his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu that the answer to political turmoil in Ethiopia was greater freedoms.
“It is important that the country moves on past the state of emergency as quickly as possible,” he said.
Tillerson reiterated previous calls for African states to cut ties with North Korea.
North Korea has more than a dozen embassies on the continent. 

The Trump administration has said that Pyongyang earns hard currency from arms deals with African government and the trafficking of wildlife parts from Africa.
Tillerson is due to fly to Djibouti, host to military bases owned by the U.S., China, Japan, France, and Italy.
He will then visit Kenya, a key U.S. ally in the fight against al Shabaab Islamist militants in Somalia, before traveling to Chad and Nigeria, which are also battling to contain Islamist insurgents.
Analysts say Trump has focused mainly on security concerns in Africa at a time when China, Turkey and other nations are ramping up diplomatic and business links.
“When you look at the set of countries that are being visited I think it kind of reinforces the perception that security, indeed, is the overwhelming focus,” said Brahima Coulibaly, the director of the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings Institution.

Axis of Evil

Trump: China appears to have 'no impact on Little Rocket Man'
By Makini Brice, Andrew Osborn

Little Rocket Man is seen as the newly developed intercontinental ballistic rocket Hwasong-15's test was successfully launched, in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang November 30, 2017.

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW -- U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed a Chinese diplomatic effort to rein in North Korea’s weapons program as a failure on Thursday, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Beijing was doing a lot, but could do more to limit oil supplies to Pyongyang.
In a tweet, Trump delivered another insulting barb against Kim Jong Un, who he called “Little Rocket Man” and a “sick puppy” after North Korea test-fired its most advanced missile to date on Wednesday.
Trump’s tweets further inflamed tensions reignited this week after North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a “breakthrough” that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons whose warheads could withstand re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere.
“The Chinese envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man,” Trump said on Twitter, a day after speaking with Xi Jinping and reiterating his call for Beijing to use its leverage against North Korea.
Tillerson on Thursday welcomed Chinese efforts on North Korea, but said Beijing could do more to limit its oil exports to the country.
“The Chinese are doing a lot. We do think they could do more with the oil. We’re really asking them to please restrain more of the oil, not cut it off completely,” Tillerson said at the State Department. China is North Korea’s neighbor and its sole major trading partner.
Tillerson has stubbornly held out hopes for a return to dialogue if North Korea shows it is willing to give up its nuclear weapons program.However, Tillerson may not remain in his job long, with disagreements with Trump over North Korea being one factor.
On Thursday, senior Trump administration officials said the White House was considering a plan to replace Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea and that the United States would be “unrelenting” in working through the United Nations.
In spite of Trump’s warnings that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea, his administration has stressed it favors a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
Trump has pledged more sanctions in response to the latest test and, at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting late Wednesday, the United States warned North Korea’s leadership would be “utterly destroyed” if war were to break out.
“This administration is focused on one big thing when it comes to North Korea, and that’s denuclearization of the Korean peninsula,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a regular White House briefing.
“Anything beyond that is not the priority at this point,” she said, responding to a question on whether regime change was on the administration’s agenda after Trump’s recent tweets and a speech by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

LAVROV REJECTS U.S. CALL
Lavrov pointed to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises planned for December and accused the United States of trying to provoke Kim into “flying off the handle” over his missile program to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country.
He also flatly rejected a U.S. call for Russia to cut ties with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile program, calling U.S. policy toward North Korea deeply flawed.
In a call with Trump on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the missile launched this week was North Korea’s most advanced so far, but it was unclear whether Pyongyang had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and it still needed to prove other things, such as its re-entry technology.
A White House statement said Trump and Moon reiterated their strong commitment to enhancing the deterrence and defense capabilities of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and added: “Both leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to compelling North Korea to return to the path of denuclearization at any cost.”
North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim’s leadership and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September.
It has said its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade.
The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention.
Previous U.S. administrations have failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and a sophisticated missile program.
Trump, who has previously said the United States would “totally destroy” North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from the nuclear threat, has also struggled to contain Pyongyang since taking office in January.

The Indo-Pacific Alliance

• The Trump administration has begun using the term "Indo-Pacific to describe the Asia region.
• This signals a shift away from a China-centric narrative of Asia, and aligns the US more closely with India.
• Changing which nations are included in a region can alter international relationships and affect how resources are distributed.

By Tara Francis Chan
U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, during a news conference at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Japan, November 6, 2017. 

"Indo-Pacific" is the official term the Trump administration is now using for Asia.
Forgoing the more popular "Asia-Pacific," the White House repeatedly referred to the Indo-Pacific region ahead of US President Donald Trump's current visit to Asia. 

The term change, which subtly shifts the focus from China to India, could frustrate China and have real implications for how the region allocates its resources in the coming years and decades.
A recent statement from the White House containing Trump's Asia itinerary twice stated the importance of a "free and open Indo-Pacific region" while National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster told the press more than once that Trump had called "Indo-Pacific leaders" ahead of his trip.
And last week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a speech that used the phrase Indo-Pacific 23 times.

This indicates a shift away from China
This language change signifies a desire to move away from a China-centric narrative of Asia and promote the US relationship with India.
"As China seeks to dominate the Asia-Pacific, the Trump administration is broadening the geographic area to South Asia and the Indian Ocean since it is not likely that India will fall into the Chinese orbit," Stanley Rosen, a specialist in Chinese politics at the USC US-China Institute, told Business Insider.
"The US and India have a common interest in not having an assertive China dominating the region," said Rosen.
The shift has strengthened in the last few weeks ahead of a likely "quadrilateral" meeting between the US, India, Japan, and Australia during Trump's Asia tour.
Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop recently said she welcomes the meeting "to maximize our opportunities within the Indo-Pacific region in which international law and the rules-based order is respected."
"Rules-based order" is often a veiled reference to China's more authoritarian rule.
The phrase Indo-Pacific has existed for some time and is commonplace in India and Australia — the two countries that mark the region's edges — particularly with policy experts.
"It didn’t start with the Trump Administration," S. Paul Kapur, a national-security professor at the US Naval Postgraduate School told Business Insider. 

"For example, the 2015 US Maritime Strategy referred to the region as the Indo-Asia-Pacific."
But the term is a clear shift away from policies of the Obama administration, which still referred to the Asia-Pacific on Obama's last visit to the region in September 2016. 

A search of the Obama White House archives for "Asia-Pacific" returns 837 results, while "Indo-Pacific" has just six.
It's also a departure from previous Republican administrations. 

White House archives for George W. Bush contain 537 documents referring to the Asia-Pacific but not a single one mentions the Indo-Pacific.

New terms will affect how the region develops
While changing four letters seems small, it can have huge implications. 

How a region allocates resources, prioritizes security of regional partners and grants membership to diplomatic organizations can all shift based on which countries are included in a specific region.
And the US is hoping that treating the region holistically will shift the balance of power.
"The Chinese government would not be unreasonable in viewing this as part of an effort to offer the region a liberal alternative to China’s socialist and more authoritarian approach to regional development and integration," said Kapur.
"The US is approaching the region in this holistic fashion in the hope that liberal norms and structures such as the rule of law, free markets, mechanisms for deliberative dispute resolution, and open access to commons emerge not in piecemeal fashion, but rather in a single institutional web stretching from the United States westward to India and beyond."
It's a shift China is unlikely to be thrilled about.
"China of course will not be happy if the US and India draw closer together ... they will watch the relationship with India carefully," said Rosen.

Chinese Peril

Mattis to make call for Asean unity against China at meeting of defence ministers

The Straits Times

US Defence Secretary James Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Oct 23 to discuss North Korea. He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

CLARK FREEPORT, PHILIPPINES - US Defence Secretary James Mattis is expected to make a call for South-east Asian unity against China during a meeting of defence ministers in the Philippines on Monday (Oct 23), the Associated Press reported.
The Asean bloc has been divided as the US and China vie for influence in the region, with the tensions magnified by a dispute over China's island-building activities in the South China Sea.
US influence has taken a hit from President Donald Trump's decision to cancel the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact championed by his predecessor, Mr Barack Obama, appearing to give Mr Obama's "pivot to Asia" short shrift.
"(Asean gives) voice to those who want relations between states to be based on respect, and not on predatory economics or on the size of militaries," General Mattis told reporters ahead of his meetings in the Philippines, though he did not mention China by name. 

"The United States remains unambiguously committed to supporting Asean."
The US sees a united Asean as a bulwark against China, which pursues individual bilateral relations with members at the expense of the bloc. 

It also wants Asean to squeeze North Korea amid a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
Gen Mattis' comments echoed US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's call for a India as a populous, democratic counterweight to China, inviting it to take a leading security role in the Indo-Pacific region. 

The US has made India a major defence partner, offering it top-flight weapons systems. 

Gen Mattis will meet Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman during his trip to the country this week.
On Monday, Gen Mattis was to hold an informal meeting with Asean members, who have been divided on taking a strong joint position over the South China Sea, making no mention of a 2016 ruling in The Hague that found no legal basis for China's expansive territorial claims.
Cambodia and Laos have taken sides with China in the dispute, while US allies Thailand, Vietnam and recently the Philippines have opposed Beijing. 

But under Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines relationship with China has warmed even as US ties soured.
Gen Mattis will meet his counterparts from Japan and South Korea on Monday to discuss North Korea. 

He is due to visit Thailand and South Korea as well on his eight-day tour.

Chinese Peril

Tillerson calls for India ties to counter China
BBC News
Mr Tillerson visits India next week
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said the US wants to deepen co-operation with India in the face of growing Chinese influence in Asia.
He described India as a "partner" in a "strategic relationship", adding the US would "never have the same relationship with China, a non-democratic society".
He said Beijing sometimes acted outside international conventions, citing the South China Sea dispute as an example.
His comments come ahead of his visit to India next week.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump will visit a number of Asian countries including China, in November.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, Mr Tillerson said "the United States seeks constructive relations with China, but we will not shrink from China's challenges to the rules-based order and where China subverts the sovereignty of neighbouring countries and disadvantages the US and our friends".
He also described the US and India as "increasingly global partners" who "don't just share an affinity for democracy. We share a vision of the future."

The secretary of state's remarks came hours after Xi Jinping's speech at the Chinese Communist Party congress, where Xi signalled that Beijing intended to play a greater role in world affairs.
Xi said that China had now "become a great power in the world", and that the Chinese growth under Communist rule had given "a new choice" to other developing countries.
However, in his speech on Wednesday, Mr Tillerson criticised "China's provocative actions in the South China Sea", saying they directly challenged "the international law and norms that the United States and India both stand for".
"China, while rising alongside India, has done so less responsibly, at times undermining the international, rules-based order," he added.
He called on India to play a greater security role in the region, saying "India and the United States should be in the business of equipping other countries to defend their sovereignty... and have a louder voice in a regional architecture that promotes their interests and develops their economies."

Chinese Aggressions

Rex Tillerson warns of potential conflict with China
by Joel Gehrke

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told lawmakers Wednesday that he has warned Chinese counterparts that their current foreign policy will "bring us into conflict" in the Pacific.
"We have told them, ‘you are creating instability throughout the Pacific region that will bring us into conflict; please don't do that,'" Tillerson said Wednesday during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.
China has been building artificial islands in the South China Sea, replete with military equipment, as part of an aggressive move to assert control over some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. 

Tillerson cited that behavior as one of the most pressing issues in the U.S.-China relationship, which he acknowledged is reaching "an inflection point" that could lead to war if managed incorrectly.
"We are at an inflection point in the U.S.-China relationship," he told lawmakers. 

"They see it; we see it. Our conversations are around how are we going to maintain stability and a relationship of no conflict between China and the United States for the next 50 years."
Tillerson offered that assessment in response to a question about how the United States could avoid falling into a foreign policy dynamic known as the Thucydides Trap. 

The term refers to the possibility of conflict between an incumbent power and a rising power; it derives from he name of the historian who chronicled the war between ancient Athens and Sparta.
"We cannot constrain their economic growth," Tillerson said. 

"We have to accommodate their economic growth. But as their economic growth then translates into spheres of influence that then begin to threaten our national security, this begins to disrupt these conditions that have allowed us to live without conflict for the last 50 years."
Some Democrat and Republican lawmakers worry that China is gaining influence over traditional allies, including in the Pacific. 

That trend was exacerbated by Trump's decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement involving 11 Pacific Rim countries.
"[Pacific allies] were counting on TPP and they saw that as a strong message from America," Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who chairs a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Asia-Pacific, told the Washington Examiner. 

"But it wasn't going to pass. The Democrats weren't going to support it, the majority of them. I wasn't going to support it, being a Republican. And they use that to say, well, we've got to go to China."
In the Phillippines, Rodrigo Duterte has talked openly about a "separation" from the United States and a realignment with China. 

And South Korea's newly-elected president suspended the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system intended to protect against North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. 

China opposes the deployment of that missile defense system, fearing the radar could make diminish the effectiveness of their own nuclear weapons; the communist regime used a series of retaliatory economic measures to punish South Korea for allowing part of the system to be deployed.
"Our policy is, as important as trade is, and as important as China's huge economy is, we cannot allow China to use that as a weapon," Tillerson said. 

"We cannot allow them to weaponize trade. And they are doing that today, and our message to them is, 'you will not buy your way out of these other difficult issues, like North Korea, the South China Sea, with your trade."

Paper Tiger

Did Rex Tillerson Intentionally Kowtow to China?
BY LAURA ROSENBERGER

During his visit to Beijing last weekend, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a strange move — adopting Chinese verbiage to characterize the U.S.-China relationship. 

Both before and after his meetings with his Chinese counterpart, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Tillerson said that “the U.S.-China relationship has been guided by an understanding of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.” 

In using such language, Tillerson adopted wholesale the Chinese definition of U.S.-China relations — repeating nearly verbatim language that Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials have used previously.
China doesn’t use these words because they sound nice (in fact they sound very strange to a native English speaker). 

They use them because they convey a specific definition of China’s proposed “new model of great power relations” — of accommodation, non-interference, and spheres of influence. 

Pressing for them is standard-fare for Chinese diplomats ahead of a high-level U.S.-China meeting. And by adopting them, Tillerson has shown that not only will he acquiesce to their request, but also has assented to the Chinese definition of the relationship — a definition that is not in the U.S. interest. 

This was not lost on Beijing. 

China’s Communist Party-run Global Times newspaper trumpeted that, with the use of those words, Tillerson has “implicitly endorsed the new model of major power relations.”This is troubling for a number of reasons.
Trump has been full of bellicose talk on China. 

But to date, Trump’s tough talk has only been followed by accommodation. 

Tillerson’s comments did not come in isolation. 

They follow Trump’s threat to reconsider the “one-China policy,” which ended with him not only reaffirming that policy (the right move, incidentally), but — according to the White House readout of the call, making clear that he did so “at the request of President Xi” — signaling accommodation. 

China respects strength. 

But strength actually requires having a strategy and only using tough rhetoric when committed to following through. 

Empty bellicose rhetoric that isn’t backed by action isn’t strength. It signals weakness.

This pattern shows Beijing that it can ignore the administration’s words.
China will likely test the administration’s lines through assertive action — possibly in the South China Sea. 

Deterrence requires clear and consistent signaling to adversaries about expectations and what is and is not acceptable; the administration’s conflicting statements make deterring bad behavior all the more difficult. 

And an accomodationist definition of U.S.-China relations will be read by Beijing as a permission slip for greater assertiveness.
Our allies carefully watch the words of U.S. officials on China. 

The flipside of deterrence — reassurance — similarly requires clear and consistent signaling. 

While Tilllerson said all the right reassuring lines about our alliances in Tokyo and Seoul, our allies may question those commitments given Tillerson’s words in Beijing. 

And our friends in Taiwan are now likely to feel doubly burned, believing that the adoption of Beijing’s definition of U.S.-China relations undermines Washington’s support for Taipei, which it is already questioning after the Trump administration’s “one-China” episode.
All of this will make it more difficult to manage the relationship with China. 

We do need to be tough on China — tougher than the Obama administration was. 

But we have to be smart about how we do that, which includes ensuring that our allies know our commitment to their security is real. 

And if Beijing sees the Trump administration as a paper tiger — all roar and no bite — it will be hard persuade them to refrain from assertive behavior that harms U.S. interests, such as on trade, cyber intrusions, or the South China Sea — not to mention adopting policies that would be in the U.S. interest, such as getting tough on North Korea.
Getting the balance right with China is not easy. 

I sat through many painful hours with Chinese officials negotiating language for statements and remarks ahead of high-level meetings, often in to the wee hours of the night.
Beijing pressed hard for the Obama administration to use the very words that Tillerson uttered. 

We were conscious that any words we chose to adopt would carry a very specific meaning in the Chinese minds, and thus we chose them carefully. 

Some may not like the balance that was struck, but it stopped well short of where Tillerson went. 

In its piece lauding Tillerson’s comments, China’s Global Times in fact noted that while China has used the phraseology for some time, there was no record of the Obama administration doing so.
That consciousness was partly based on learning from an early mistake. 

Ahead of Barack Obama’s first summit with China in 2009, the Chinese prevailed in including the importance to “respect and accommodate each other’s core interests” in the Presidential Joint Statement. 

This was a major misstep that — unintentionally — signaled an accomodationist approach to Beijing, and raised alarm bells in allied capitals that we were abandoning them on key issues where they faced threats from China. 

It took years and lots of hard work to correct those perceptions.
We don’t know the motive behind Tillerson’s choice of words. 

Was it inadvertent or deliberate? 

An optimist would hope that it was the former, and that the Trump administration will learn its lesson. 

But that would require not just refraining from adopting China’s problematic definition of the relationship, and halting empty bellicose rhetoric, but adopting a real strategy for dealing with China. Until that happens, Beijing will take all the wrong lessons.

Rex Tillerson’s Deferential Visit to China

“Tillerson has endorsed the new model of major power relations.” -- Global Times

By Hannah Beech

Rex Tillerson and Xi Jinping.

On March 19th, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Xi Jinping, two men in dark suits, white shirts, and red neckties, sat in matching armchairs in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. 

Both of their bellies bulged slightly, and their neckties curved over their well-fed contentment. 

Their interaction, as described by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, was equally amiable. 

Xi called on the United States and China to “expand cooperative areas and achieve win-win results.” Tillerson, who was on his first visit to Asia since taking over at the State Department, and was travelling without the press gaggle that usually chronicles the movements of America’s top diplomat, agreed that “the U.S. side is ready to develop relations with China based on the principle of no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win coöperation.”
Who could argue with such inoffensive sentiments? 

Tillerson’s words, however, echoed a curious antecedent. 

On numerous occasions, Xi has used almost the same phraseology. 

As recently as last November. when he congratulated Donald Trump for winning the election, Xi vowed that he would partner with the new U.S. President “to uphold the principles of non-conflict, non-confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation.”
It is possible that during the thirty minutes that he spent behind closed doors with Xi, Tillerson took a more forceful tone with his hosts. 

Certainly, there are those in the Trump camp—including the President himself—who have urged China to rein in an increasingly belligerent North Korea and to ease restrictions on American companies. 

Nevertheless, by parroting Xi’s anodyne language, Tillerson sent a message that was picked up the next day by the Global Times, an influential newspaper linked to the Chinese Communist Party. “Tillerson has implicitly endorsed the new model of major power relations,” the paper said. 

The story added that Tillerson’s language had given “U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific region an impression that China and the U.S. are equal in the region.” 

Endorsing this model, the article continued, was something that “the previous administration of Barack Obama refused to do,” despite China’s repeated use of the term during bilateral meetings.
Ever since Trump was elected on an America First platform, Beijing has pondered not just equality but supremacy on the international stage. 

A nation that once counted Albania as one of its few diplomatic allies now serves as the biggest trading partner for dozens of countries. 

In January, at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, Zhang Jun, a top Chinese diplomat, explained China’s new positioning to reporters. 

“If anyone were to say China is playing a leadership role in the world, I would say it’s not China rushing to the front but rather the front-runners have stepped back, leaving the place to China,” he said. 

“If China is required to play that leadership role then China will assume its responsibilities.”
Davos itself provided evidence: Trump stayed away from the annual gathering of global élite, while Xi chose this year to make his first appearance there. 

Addressing a crowd spooked by the rise of nativist politicians worldwide, Xi presented China as the ultimate responsible global citizen. 

Since taking office, Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement and has pressed America to abandon its climate-change commitments. 

Into this political vacuum, Beijing has offered up trade agreements of its own design. 

Xi made sure to point out that China does, in fact, believe in global warming. 

As Trump works to close America’s borders, the Chinese capital hosts a constant stream of foreign dignitaries. 

The day before Tillerson arrived in Beijing, Xi welcomed Paul Kagame, the President of Rwanda. The day before that, the Chinese President met with King Salman bin Abdulaziz, of Saudi Arabia, to sign trade and investment deals worth as much as sixty-five billion dollars.
China now boasts the world’s second-largest economy, but it hardly serves as a global economic role model. 

As growth in China has tapered off, protectionism has surged. 

American companies, once loathe to offend Beijing lest they threaten market access, now complain openly about state-supported efforts to cut into their profits or copy their technology. 

Just as Tillerson arrived in town, news emerged that Pinterest had been added to the long list of banned Western Web sites in China, one which already includes Google and Facebook. 

Pinterest’s life hacks and craft tips seem an unlikely target, but even the most apolitical of foreign companies can fall victim to politics.
Stepping into the void created by America’s seeming retreat from vigorous foreign policy does not mean that Beijing can—or is even eager to—project moral leadership to the world. 

If anything, China’s most clearly articulated foreign policy over the decades has been non-interference in other nations’ internal affairs. 

China’s authoritarian government detains its citizens by the hundreds simply for criticizing the Communist Party. 

The human-rights activist Liu Xiaobo languishes in a Chinese jail, the only Nobel Peace Prize laureate behind bars. (His wife, meanwhile is under de-facto house arrest, even if she has not been found guilty of any crime.) 

Under Xi, who came to power in late 2012, a crackdown on lawyers, writers, and activists has dampened hopes for political reform.
That global moral authority has, traditionally, been taken up by the United States—even if it was often undercut by Washington’s support of dictators and invasions of sovereign nations. 

But the new Administration does not seem eager to assume such leadership. 

Every year, the State Department releases a human-rights report that records abuses around the world. 

Yet, earlier this month, for the first time in years, the new Secretary of State declined to personally present the report. 

Tillerson has also threatened to pull the U.S. out of the United Nations Human Rights Council. 

“The U.S. is hemorrhaging credibility because it is not standing up strongly for its values of human rights and democracy,” Nicholas Bequelin, the East Asia director for Amnesty International, told me. 

“The worst thing is that this is a self-inflicted injury because it is the U.S. that is choosing not to herald the values it has promoted since the end of the Second World War.”
By his own admission, Tillerson is not “a big media-press-access person,” as he told the one journalist from a conservative Web site, whom he allowed to fly with him on his Asia tour. 

As the former ExxonMobil chief reached Beijing, after stops in Tokyo and Seoul, American journalists found that they, on occasion, had to rely on the organs of China’s Communist Party for intelligence on their Secretary of State’s movements. 

The U.S. Department of State’s Web site offered scant details. 

Although Tillerson said that he brought up human rights with his Chinese counterparts, the overall impression of his Beijing trip was that the fundamentals of democracy—free speech, civil society, a vigorous press—were an afterthought to the niceties of “win-win cooperation.” (Although nothing was confirmed during Tillerson’s visit, Xi may meet Trump in early April in Florida.)
On March 20th, I reached Hu Jia, a Chinese dissident who has spent years in jail or under house arrest. 

Every time that there is a sensitive anniversary, a visit by a foreign dignitary, or a political conclave, Hu is tailed by state-security personnel or local authorities. 

Often, he is hustled out of Beijing or confined to his home, lest he disturb the Chinese state’s sense of order. 

During Tillerson’s visit, Hu happened to be participating in a trail-running race near the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. 

“I do not think that Tillerson has expressed concern about the Chinese Communist Party’s human-rights record,” Hu told me. 

“We dissidents in China feel a bit disappointed.” 

That didn’t matter, though, to local police in Hangzhou, who checked to make sure that Hu was racing off-road rather than speaking out in Beijing. 

“I was,” he assured me, “just running.”

In China debut, Tillerson appears to hand Beijing a diplomatic victory

By Simon Denyer

Rex Tillerson, left, chats with Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

BEIJING — While his boss was goading China over Twitter, new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has been trying to build a constructive and “results-oriented” relationship with the leadership in Beijing.
And though his warnings about the possibility of eventual military action over North Korea have raised hackles here, Tillerson received a warm welcome from Xi Jinping on Sunday.
“You have made a lot of active efforts to achieve a smooth transition in our relationship under the new era,” Xi Jinping told Tillerson as the men sat down for talks in the Great Hall of the People. “And I also appreciate your comment that the China-U.S. relationship can only be defined by cooperation and friendship.”
But Tillerson has bent too far, handing Beijing what Chinese news media reports are calling a “diplomatic victory.”
After meeting China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Saturday, Tillerson voiced Chinese catchphrases about the relationship, including the avoidance of conflict and confrontation and the need to build “mutual respect” and strive for “win-win” cooperation.
The phrase “mutual respect” is key: In Beijing, that is taken to mean each side should respect the other’s “core interests.”
In other words: The United States should stay away from issues such as Taiwan, Tibet and Hong Kong — and in principle almost anything China’s Communist Party deems a vital national security concern. 

That also includes China’s territorial claims in the contested waters of the South China Sea.
Several Chinese foreign policy experts called the comments “very positive” and in line with a concept Beijing has long advocated — what it calls “a new model of great power relationships,” which would put the two nations on a roughly equal footing.
Jin Canrong, a Sino-U.S. relations expert at Renmin University of China in Beijing, said Tillerson’s comments came as a surprise.
“China has long been advocating this, but the United States has been reluctant to accept the point of ‘mutual respect,’ ” Jin said. 

“Tillerson’s comment will be very warmly welcomed by China.”
But Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the United States should use its own language to describe bilateral relations, not embrace China’s.
More important, “mutual respect” signals acceptance of “a litany of issues that China views as nonnegotiable,” she said. 

“By agreeing to this, the U.S. is in effect saying that it accepts that China has no room to compromise on these issues.”
That would be a mistake, said Glaser, adding that China has shown no inclination to accept what might be seen as U.S. “core interests,” such as its alliances in Asia.
On the campaign trail last year, candidate Donald Trump pilloried China as a security threat and, particularly, a stealer of American jobs. 

On Friday, as Tillerson prepared to make his way to Beijing on the third leg of his Asian tour, Trump took to Twitter to criticize China for not helping rein in North Korea’s nuclear program.
Tillerson has almost certainly been pushing China hard on the North Korean issue behind closed doors. 

But in public, his tone has been much more measured, judging this to be a better way to save China’s face and gain its cooperation.
He could have received assurances from China — for example, over North Korea or trade — that he felt merited giving ground in return. 

Or perhaps the former ExxonMobil boss is simply not that worried about parsing diplomatic language and is more focused on results.
“Tillerson’s remarks were probably an effort to provide Xi face in public, while behind doors, the conversation was probably more direct,” said Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation. 

“At least I hope so. Because, assuming Xi paraphrased Tillerson accurately, it is certainly not true that ‘the China-U.S. relationship can only be defined by cooperation and friendship.’ ”
Ironically, the Obama administration also ran into criticism for using the phrase “new model of relations” in 2013 and 2014, before backing away from wording that was seen as uncomfortably close to the Chinese formulation.
Ely Ratner, who worked as Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s deputy national security adviser and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, took to Twitter to call it a “big mistake and missed opportunity” for parroting Chinese government “platitudes and propaganda.”
“China’s characterization of the U.S.-China relationship, as exemplified by those phrases, portends U.S. decline and accommodation,” he wrote in an email. 

“Tillerson using these phrases buys into this dangerous narrative, which will only encourage Chinese assertiveness and raise doubts in the region about the future of U.S. commitment and leadership in Asia.”
As for Trump, he had shown so little regard for Beijing’s sensitivities that he even questioned whether the United States should continue to uphold the one-China policy, which rules out independence and diplomatic recognition for Taiwan.
That had spooked and angered Beijing until Trump backed down during what has been described as a warm and cordial telephone conversation with Xi last month.
On Sunday, Xi Jinping said that, after talking, both leaders “believe that we can make sure the relationship will move ahead in a constructive fashion in the new era.”
Both sides are talking about a face-to-face meeting between the leaders. 

China realizes that a personal rapport with Trump is important and watched in consternation as Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made an early visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Tillerson seemed to acknowledge that getting his president better acquainted with China would make his job easier.
The “very lengthy” phone call between the leaders not only improved China’s understanding of the United States but also Trump’s understanding of China, Tillerson said. 

“And he looks forward to enhancing that understanding in the opportunity for a visit in the future.”
“We know that through further dialogue we will achieve a greater understanding that will lead to a strengthening of the ties between China and the United States and set the tone for our future relationship of cooperation,” he said.
Tillerson and Xi nodded as the other spoke, both flanked by officials and aides in the lavishly decorated Fujian Room in the Great Hall of the People, on the west side of Beijing’sTiananmen Square, before the news media was ushered out for Tillerson’s last meeting of his three-nation Asian tour.
Even more than trade ties, North Korea has emerged as the biggest thorn in the relationship between Washington and Beijing. 

The United States wants firmer action to isolate Pyongyang and persuade the regime to abandon its nuclear program.
Tillerson says diplomatic efforts have failed and has not ruled out eventual military action. 

China, though, opposes anything that could bring down the regime in Pyongyang and bring instability to its borders.
It insists that dialogue is the only way forward, and Wang, the foreign minister, told Tillerson on Saturday that the United States should remain “coolheaded.”
Yet North Korea upped the ante even further Sunday by announcing it had carried out a rocket engine test “of historic significance.”

Axis of Evil

Trump: North Korea is behaving very badly, and China has done little to help
AOL.News

President Donald Trump tweeted Friday morning that North Korea has been "behaving very badly" and that China has done little to contain the threat.
"North Korea is behaving very badly," Trump said in the tweet. 

"They have been 'playing' the United States for years. China has done little to help!"
The tweet comes as Rex Tillerson, Trump's secretary of state, is on a trip to Asia.
While Tillerson was in South Korea on Friday, he said that if North Korea elevates "the threat of their weapons program to a level that we believe requires action," a military response from the US is an option on the table.
Tillerson also urged China, an ally of North Korea, to fully implement sanctions the United Nations imposed on North Korea for its nuclear weapons program and missile tests. 

He heads to Beijing next on his trip.

Chinese Aggressions

The curious timing of US senator Marco Rubio’s South China Sea sanctions bill
By Steve Mollman

South China Sea watcher.

US senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, floated a bill that’s sure to stoke anger in Beijing. The measure would, among other things, sanction Chinese companies that engage in “illegitimate activities” in the South China Sea, such as dredging to expand the militarized islands China has built.
The timing is curious.
This also happens to be the week when Rex Tillerson, US president Donald Trump’s secretary of state, makes his first big trip to Asia on behalf of the government. 

Arguably his most important stop will be in Beijing, where he hopes to persuade Chinese leaders to take a tougher stance against North Korea. 

North Korea, which relies heavily on trade with the big rogue nation for cash, has been rattling the region with its testing of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons. 

The US state department is reportedly considering deeper sanctions against Chinese companies that continue to do business with North Korea.
Tillerson also will have to deal with Beijing’s anger over the THAAD antimissile defense system the US is beginning to set up in South Korea. 

The idea behind the system is to stop sudden North Korean missile attacks, but Beijing fears THAAD’s advanced radar capabilities will also make its weaponry—or at least the threat of it—less potent, and thereby upset the balance of power in the region. (South Korean companies already are facing an economic backlash in China over the system.)
There’s also the issue of trade tensions between the US and China. 

During his campaign, Trump said he would declare China a currency manipulator on the first day of his administration. 

He has yet to do so, but Beijing is nervous enough that Li Keqiang emphasized this week that China does “not want to see any trade war breaking out between the two countries.”
Amid all this, Rubio chose now to introduce his bill, called the “South China Sea and East China Sea Sanctions Act.” 

He was joined by Democratic senator Ben Cardin, showing bipartisan support for the measure.

The timing seems especially curious given that the bill is a revision of an earlier one submitted last December. 

Why is it being resurfaced just as Tillerson prepared to visit Beijing on March 18 and 19? 

Quartz reached out to Rubio’s office about the timing but did not received an immediate reply.

Busy in the South China Sea
China claims as its own nearly the entire South China Sea, despite an international tribunal ruling last July that its sweeping claim had neither a legal nor historical basis. 

Beijing dismissed the ruling and continues to fortify its position, expanding upon artificial militarized islands it’s built atop reefs in recent years.
The bill specifically mentions (pdf, p. 21) a few dozen Chinese companies that should be watched for their involvement in such activities, and sanctioned if necessary. 

Among them are China’s biggest state-owned oil companies, including China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC).
Tillerson has bumped heads with CNOOC in the past, during his reign as the CEO and chairman of ExxonMobil. 

In 2014, CNOOC moved a giant rig into an offshore block near the coast of Vietnam. 

ExxonMobil had received exploration rights for the block from Hanoi, but part of it falls within China’s nine-dash line, which it uses to justify its vast claims to most of the sea. 

Deadly riots against ethnic Chinese and Chinese businesses ensued in Vietnam, and after a military standoff China backed down.
Despite the uneasiness over China’s claims—which has generally scared off exploration by foreign energy giants in the resource-rich South China Sea—Tillerson helped lay the groundwork for a $10 billion natural gas project called Blue Whale off Vietnam’s central coast. 

It’s possible Tillerson might have to confront China over that or similar projects involving US energy companies in the area during his term—somewhat awkward given his Big Oil background.
Tillerson barely got the chance to have his cabinet appointment confirmed by the full US Senate. 

In mid-January, the Senate’s foreign affairs committee was in a 10-10 deadlock, along party lines. 

One Republican lawmaker was still mulling things over and held the tie-breaking committee vote to decide whether the nomination would be put up for a vote in the full Senate, where a victory was assured because of Republican dominance. 

That lawmaker was Rubio, who, despite reservations on Tillerson’s commitment to human rights, eventually cleared the way for the former CEO.
Tough questions on the way.

Critics contended that Rubio’s public skepticism of Tillerson was essentially a form of grandstanding. They might decide that, with the timing of this week’s bill introduction, he is once again seeking attention. 

Perhaps. 

But if so, the move seems less about personal posturing and more about bringing attention to the issue at hand.
Rubio’s resistance to China’s growing assertiveness at sea and authoritarianism at home is genuine. 

Last month he helped reintroduce the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act,” which would “renew the United States’ historical commitment to freedom and democracy in Hong Kong at a time when its autonomy is increasingly under assault.” 

Once again, his criticism (expressed through legislation) was essentially directed at Beijing.

The introduction of the act this week will create an additional awkward moment or two for Tillerson on an already awkward trip. 

Rubio, who received considerable flack for clearing Tillerson for Senate confirmation to his new role after expressing strong reservations about him, probably doesn’t mind that too much.
But more important, it conveys a message that the US hasn’t lost track of Beijing’s overreaching claims in the South China Sea, and is prepared to take action. 

Each year, $5.3 trillion of global trade passes through the vital waterway, including $1.2 trillion of US commerce. 

Last year the Center for Strategic and International Studies warned the sea could become “virtually a Chinese lake” by 2030.

Chinese Aggressions

China plans 1st structure on Scarborough Shoal 
By Christopher Bodeen

BEIJING — China plans to build the first permanent structure on a South China Sea shoal at the heart of a territorial dispute with the Philippines, in a move likely to renew concerns over Beijing’s robust assertions of its claims in the strategically crucial waterbody.
The top official in Sansha City that has administered China’s island claims since 2012 was quoted by the official Hainan Daily newspaper as saying that preparations were underway to build an environmental monitoring station on Scarborough Shoal off the northwestern Philippines.
The preparatory work on the stations and others on five other islands in the strategically vital waterway was among the government’s top priorities for 2017, Sansha Communist Party Secretary Xiao Jie was quoted as saying in an interview published in the paper’s Monday edition seen online Friday in Beijing. 

No other details were.
Beijing seized tiny, uninhabited Scarborough in 2012 after a tense standoff with Philippine vessels.
The other stations mentioned by Xiao would be situated on features in the Paracel island group (Hoàng Sa) that China has controlled since seizing parts of it away from Vietnam in 1974.
China’s construction and land reclamation work in the South China Sea have drawn strong criticism from the U.S. and others, who accuse Beijing of further militarizing the region and altering geography to bolster its claims. 

China says the seven man-made islands in the disputed Spratly group, which it has equipped with airstrips and military installations, are mainly for civilian purposes and to boost safety for fishing and maritime trade.
Prior to the announcement, South China Sea tensions had eased somewhat since Beijing erupted in fury last year after a Hague-based arbitration tribunal ruled on a case filed by the Philippines. 

The verdict invalidated China’s sweeping territorial claims and determining that China violated the rights of Filipinos to fish at Scarborough Shoal.
China has since allowed Filipino fishermen to return to the shoal following Rodrigo Duterte’s calls for closer ties between the countries, but it does not recognize the tribunal’s ruling as valid and insists it has historical claims to almost the entire South China Sea, through which an estimated $5 trillion in global trade passes each year.
Scarborough has no proper land mass and any structure on it would likely have to be built on stilts. The shoal forms a triangle-shaped lagoon of rocks and reefs running for 46 kilometers, with its highest point just 1.8 meters (about 6 feet) above water at high tide. 

It lies about 200 kilometers (120 miles) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon, and about 600 kilometers (370 miles) southeast of China.
U.S. diplomats have said privately that reclamation work on the shoal would be seen as crossing a red line because of its proximity to the main Philippine islands and the threat it could pose to U.S. and Filipino military assets.
During his Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson compared China’s island-building and military deployments to Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and suggested China’s access to the islands should not be allowed. 

The U.S. says China has reclaimed more than 1,295 hectares (3,200 acres) of land in the area.
The topic is likely to be high on the agenda when Tillerson visits Beijing for talks with top officials on Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang was visiting the Philippines, just days after Duterte said Monday that he had told the military to assert Philippine ownership of a large ocean region off the country’s northeastern coast where Chinese survey ships were spotted last year, in a discovery that alarmed Philippine defense officials.
China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have long contested ownership of the South China Sea, which straddles one of the world’s busiest sea lanes and is believed to sit atop vast deposits of oil and gas.
Also this week, the commander in chief of China’s navy, Vice Adm. Shen Jinlong, noted improving relations in a meeting with his Vietnamese counterpart, Rear Adm. Pham Hoai Nam, in Beijing.
China and Vietnam have had long-running territorial disputes in the South China Sea. 

Tensions spiked in 2014 after China parked an oil rig near Vietnam’s central coast, sparking mass protests in Vietnam.
The two navies and their countries should “together play a positive role in maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Shen was quoted as saying by China’s defense ministry.

U.S. May Soon Increase Pressure on China to Constrain North Korea

By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL R. GORDON

A Japanese soldier guarding a PAC-3 surface-to-air missile launcher in Tokyo this month.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will warn China’s leaders that the United States is prepared to step up missile defenses and pressure on Chinese financial institutions if they fail to use their influence to restrain North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, according to several officials involved in planning his first mission to Asia.
China has complained vociferously about the Trump administration’s recent decision to speed up the deployment of the Thaad antimissile system in South Korea, charging that it will undermine regional stability.
But the Trump administration’s message is that the United States has run out of time to respond to North Korea’s military advances, and that the party the Chinese needs to complain to is in Pyongyang.
One senior administration official involved in the planning called it “responsible” to increase the defenses of the United States and its allies against growing threats from North Korea. 

The official acknowledged that doing so would displease Beijing, but noted that China has the option of helping constrain and pressure the North.

The official agreed to discuss the internal deliberations of Mr. Tillerson’s trip on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified.
The tough message was shaped in a series of White House meetings before Mr. Tillerson’s departure for Japan on Tuesday. 

It also followed more proposals at both ends of the spectrum — including opening up talks with North Korea and preparing for military action against its key missile and nuclear sites — that were set aside, at least for now.
The result is that Mr. Tillerson is essentially adopting variants of the approaches that the Bush and Obama administrations took, though guided by Mr. Trump’s declarations that, unlike his predecessors, he will stop the North Korean program from developing a new intercontinental missile.
Against the waves of nuclear and missile tests in the past year, and Pyongyang’s declaration that it is in the “final stages” of preparations for the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, the White House recognizes it has little time for debate, the senior administration official said.
This is not the first time that a secretary of state has sought to play the missile defense card. 

Mr. Tillerson’s immediate predecessor in the job, John Kerry, told the Chinese that if China succeeded in constraining Pyongyang’s military ambitions, the United States could limit and perhaps even withdraw some of its antimissile systems in the region.
“The president of the United States deployed some additional missile defense capacity precisely because of the threat of North Korea,” Mr. Kerry said after an April 2013 visit to Beijing. 

“And it is logical that if the threat of North Korea disappears because the peninsula denuclearizes, then obviously that threat no longer mandates that kind of posture.”
But there is no evidence that China ever applied the sort of pressure that would have prompted North Korea to shelve its military programs.
It is not clear how explicitly Mr. Tillerson, a diplomatic novice with no past experience in proliferation issues, will deliver the message to the Chinese at a moment that he will also be trying to set up the first meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping, at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida early next month.
During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he was willing to sit down with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and negotiate with him directly, perhaps over a hamburger. 

Since then, Mr. Trump has taken an increasingly hard line, and suggested that he would link China’s use of its influence over the North to other issues, including trade relations.
Last week, the Chinese repeated a proposal they knew the United States would reject, calling for a freeze in North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in return for a cessation of American and South Korean annual military exercises, which are just now beginning. 

The Trump administration immediately rejected that call, saying that it would reward the North if it complied with United Nations resolutions it had long ignored, and would make the United States’ defense arrangements with South Korea a subject of bargaining.
Reinforcing military ties, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conducted a 30-minute phone call on Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart, Gen. Lee Sun-jin. A Pentagon statement said the generals discussed the possibility that North Korea could carry out “provocative actions” during the joint American and South Korean exercises now underway, or in April when North Korean authorities commemorate the birthday of Kim Il-sung, the founder and first leader of the country.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that in addition to bolstering traditional missile defenses, former President Barack Obama had ordered stepped-up cyber and electronic warfare attacks on the North’s intermediate-range missiles. 

In some of the tests, those missiles have had a remarkably high failure rate, though it is impossible to say how much those problems are rooted in American sabotage. 

More recently, however, North Korea has achieved some notable advances, including the test of a solid fueled intermediate-range missile and the recent launch of four medium range missiles into the Sea of Japan.
During the administration’s deliberations, there has also been discussion of putting more pressure on Chinese banks, perhaps through “secondary sanctions,” that would make it difficult for any bank that did business with North Korea to also deal in American dollars. 

The technique worked effectively against Iran before it reached a nuclear agreement in the summer of 2015.
But Daniel Glaser, a former Treasury official who constructed many of the sanctions, and now a partner in the Financial Integrity Network, said in an interview that the largest Chinese banks often shun dealings with North Korea and that some of the smaller ones have little exposure to the American banking system.
“It’s not easy to execute,” he said. 

“The North Koreans have hidden these relationships, and directed them, with care.”

The Just War

Steve Bannon: 'We're going to war in the South China Sea ... no doubt' 
By Benjamin Haas In Hong Kong
Steve Bannon: ‘We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years. There’s no doubt about that.’

The United States and China will fight a war within the next 10 years over islands in the South China Sea, and “there’s no doubt about that”.
At the same time, the US will be in another “major” war in the Middle East.
Those are the views of one of the most powerful men in Donald Trump’s administration, Steve Bannon, the former head of news website Breitbart who is now chief strategist at the White House.
In the first weeks of Trump’s presidency, Bannon has emerged as a central figure.
He was appointed to the “principals committee” of the National Security Council in an unusual move and was influential in the recent travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, overruling Department of Homeland Security officials who felt the order did not apply to green card holders.
While many in Trump’s team are outspoken critics of China, in radio shows Bannon hosted for Breitbart he makes plain the two largest threats to America: China and Islam.
“We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years,” he said in March 2016.
“There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face – and you understand how important face is – and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”
China says the entire South China Sea falls within its territory, with half a dozen other countries maintaining partially overlapping claims.
China has built a series of artificial islands on reefs and rocks in attempt to bolster its position, complete with military-length airstrips and anti-aircraft weapons.
Bannon’s sentiments and his position in Trump’s inner circle insure a military confrontation with China, after secretary of state Rex Tillerson said that the US would deny China access to the seven artificial islands. 
Bannon is clearly wary of China’s growing clout in Asia and beyond, framing the relationship as entirely adversarial, predicting a global culture clash in the coming years.
“You have an expansionist Islam and you have an expansionist China. Right? They are motivated. They’re arrogant. They’re on the march. And they think the Judeo-Christian west is on the retreat,” Bannon said during a February 2016 radio show.
On the day Trump was inaugurated, China’s military warned that war between the two countries was a real possibility.
“A ‘war within the president’s term’ or ‘war breaking out tonight’ are not just slogans, they are becoming a practical reality,” an official wrote on the website of the People’s Liberation Army.
Aside from conflict between armies, Bannon focused on his perception that Christianity around the world is under threat.
In one radio show, Bannon focused heavily on China’s oppression of Christian groups.
“The one thing the Chinese fear more than America … they fear Christianity more than anything,” he said.

Chinese aggressions in South China Sea: What's at stake

• China has been fortifying disputed islands in the South China Sea
• Secretary of state Rex Tillerson has said China's island-building must stop

By Katie Hunt

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson: "China's island-building must stop"

Rex Tillerson, who was sworn in as US Secretary of State Wednesday, takes responsibility for US policy in one of the world's biggest flashpoints: the South China Sea.
President Donald Trump says the former Exxon CEO will bring "a clear-eyed focus to foreign affairs."
He'll need it.
The contested waters are a crucial shipping route and home a messy territorial dispute that pits multiple countries against each other.
Tensions have ratcheted up since 2014 as China has turned sandbars into islands, equipping them with airfields, ports and weapons systems and warned US warships and aircraft to stay away from them.
The Trump administration looks set to take a much more confrontational stance toward China than its predecessor.
During his confirmation hearing, Tillerson said China should be blocked from accessing the artificial islands it's built, setting the stage for a potential showdown.
Here's what's at stake:

Who claims what?

China bases its claims on the fictitious "nine-dash line" -- its claimed territorial waters that extend hundreds of miles to the south and east of its island province of Hainan, abut its neighbors' claims and, in some cases, encroach upon them.
The Paracel Islands (Hoàng Sa) have been controlled by China since 1974, but they are also claimed by Vietnam.

Tensions flared in 2014 when China installed exploratory oil rigs in the vicinity.

The situation is more complicated in the Spratlys (Truong Sa).
The archipelago consists of 100 smalls islands and reefs of which 45 are occupied by China, Malaysia, Vietnam or the Philippines.
All of the islands are claimed by China and Vietnam, while some of them (or nearby waters) are claimed by the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

What's China been building?
In early 2014, China quietly began massive dredging operations centering on the six reefs it controls in the Spratly Islands -- Fiery Cross Reef, Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Cuarteron Reef, Gaven Reef and Hughes Reef.
According to the US, China has reclaimed more than 3,000 acres since the beginning of 2014.
On his 2015 trip to Washington, Xi Jinping said China wouldn't militarize the islands, but a December report from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) said China had installed comprehensive weapons systems on seven reefs that include anti-aircraft guns.
Some have called the islands China's "unsinkable aircraft carriers."
Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have also reclaimed land in the South China Sea, but their land grab -- the US says approximately 100 acres over 45 years -- is dwarfed by China's massive, recent buildup.

This composite image shows Chinese weapon installation on Gaven reef.
What's the US view?
It could be changing.
The US has traditionally taken no position on the territorial disputes in the South China Sea but has repeatedly asserted its right to freedom of navigation in the disputed waters, with the US military flying and sailing its assets close to the islands China controls.
Tillerson and Trump have not minced their words on the issue, suggesting that the State Department could take a more muscular approach.
"Building islands and then putting military assets on those islands is akin to Russia's taking of Crimea. Its taking of territory that others lay claim to," Tillerson said in his confirmation hearing.
"We're going to have to send China a clear signal that first, the island-building stops, and second, your access to those islands also not going to be allowed."
Blocking Chinese naval vessels from accessing South China Sea reefs would almost certainly trigger a US-China clash, says Ashley Townshend, a research fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

What could China do?
As China stretches its muscles as a growing superpower, the South China Sea, rich in oil and gas reserves, has become a testing ground for whether the country will rise as part of the existing international order or outside it.
China says both the Paracels and the Spratlys are an "integral part" of its territory, offering up maps that date back to 1947.
It has repeatedly defended its right to build both civil and defensive facilities on the islands it controls. 

In December, a Chinese warship unlawfully seized an underwater drone from a US oceanographic vessel.
One new strategy could be to declare an air defense zone in the South China Sea, which would require all aircraft to file flight plans even if they don't enter Chinese airspace.
Beijing has also ignored a landmark ruling last year by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which said there was no legal basis for China's maritime claims.
Even though they now have international law on their side, other claimants have done little to challenge Beijing. 

The Philippines, which originally brought the case, has pivoted towards Beijing under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Beijing's response to Tillerson and Trump's comments to date has been fairly muted, but some analysts think Beijing could soon test the new US commander in chief.

Sina Delenda Est: Standing Up to China Is Smart Foreign Policy

China's fifth column is making the argument to do nothing to antagonize China, even if it means forfeiting American interests and ideals. That would be a historic mistake.
By James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara

The Japan Times must be having a hard time finding copy to fill its op-ed pages. 

Exhibit A: a screed from an “adjunct senior scholar” at the Chinese Communist Party–affiliated National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, China, concerning U.S. strategy toward China in the age of Trump. 

In "Mark Valencia"’s telling, Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency has liberated “U.S. China-bashers” to have a “field day” at China’s expense. 

“Extremism” rules the day in Washington and academic precincts.
Zounds!
Wicked times are afoot, you’d think. 

But bear in mind that a lot of things look like extremism to someone who’s fronting for an extremist regime. 

To build his case "Valencia" refers obliquely to “two academics from the Naval War College.” 

The nameless academics, he says, suggest that “America should revive its past ‘daring-do’ [we think you mean derring-do, "Mark"] and ‘recognize that close quarters encounters, cat and mouse games between submarines and opposing fleets, and even deliberate collisions’ could become routine elements of the U.S.-China rivalry.”
We confess to being the scurrilous duo. 

The passages "Valencia" quotes come from an article we wrote for Orbis, a journal published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Foreign Policy Research Institute. (Look for the article here since "he" doesn’t bother furnishing a link.)
We compiled the article long before the election, and aimed it at whichever candidate might prevail. Our bottom line: China is already competing with America in the China seas and Western Pacific. Close-quarters encounters between Chinese and American ships and planes are already routine elements of the U.S.-China rivalry—just as they were between Soviet and American ships and planes during the Cold War. 

And Chinese seamen and airmen initiate these encounters.
Washington can either wrest the initiative away from Beijing, or it can remain passive and continue losing ground in the strategic competition. 

Better to seize the initiative. 

To do so the new U.S. administration must relearn the art of deterrence, and to deter Chinese aggression the administration must accept that hazards come with the territory. 

That’s Strategy 101—basic stuff for anyone fluent in statecraft.
"Valencia" is a lumper. 

He lumps our analysis with other commentators’ views, many quite different from our own, before attempting the equivalent of an op-ed drive-by shooting. 

All of our views are equivalent for him; all are expressions of “extremism.” 

The others—Gordon Chang and James Kraska, to name two—can doubtless speak up for themselves should they choose. 

We’ll stick to speaking up for ourselves.
And anyone who takes the trouble to read our item—download early, download often—will realize "Valencia" excerpts a couple of quotations out of context and retrofits them to a predetermined storyline. 

First write conclusion, then fit facts to it!
Let’s go through this point by point. 

First, Valencia implies that Trump’s victory initiated our analysis. 

“This deluge,” he opines, “was stimulated by statements by Trump and his nominees for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson and secretary of defense, James Mattis.” 

He goes on to assert that such “statements by incoming government leaders and influence peddlers provided an opportunity for America’s China hawks to promote their views.”
Wrong.
"Valencia" has it precisely backward. 

And a simple internet search would have revealed the blunder before he committed it. 

Explains Orbis editor-in-chief Mackubin Owens helpfully: “This special issue of Orbis features articles by FPRI associates offering ‘advice to the next president.’ 

Written before the election [our italics], these essays offer recommendations for national security affairs in general, as well as for regional issues.”
And so it was. 

We drafted the article in August—months ahead of the election, and when Hillary Clinton remained the odds-on favorite to win the White House. 

We assumed a Clinton administration would be the primary audience, but wrote it to advise whoever might prevail in November. 

In short, this was a nonpartisan venture, compiled in the spirit of our running counsel to the Obama administration.
And it should have bipartisan appeal.

As secretary of state, it’s worth recalling, Clinton was also the architect of America’s “pivot,” a.k.a. “rebalance,” to Asia—an undertaking aimed at counterbalancing China. 

Considering China’s record of bellicosity in maritime Asia, and considering Clinton’s diplomatic past, we had good reason to believe that she and her lieutenants would prove as receptive to our message as Trump.
More so, maybe. 

In any event: it’s misleading and false for "Valencia" to accuse us of devising “U.S. tactics in the Trump era.” 

We are devising strategy to deter a domineering China—no matter who occupies the Oval Office. 

That our article appeared after Trump prevailed represents mere happenstance.
Second, "Valencia" insinuates that we hold extremist views. 

Well, we guess so... insofar as anyone who wants to deter an aggressor from further aggression entertains extremist views. 

Deterrence involves putting an antagonist on notice that it will suffer unacceptable consequences should it take some action we wish to proscribe. 

It involves fielding military power sufficient to make good on the threat, whether the requisite capabilities be nuclear or conventional. 

And it involves convincing the antagonist we’re resolute about making good on our threats.
We’re glad to keep company with such hardnosed practitioners of deterrence as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy—extremists all, no doubt. 

Statesmen of yore made Moscow a believer in American power and resolve—and largely held the line against communism.
Except in that trivial sense, though, there’s nothing extreme about our argument. 

We maintain that China and the United States are pursuing irreconcilable goals in maritime Asia. 

The United States wants to preserve freedom of the sea, China wants anything but. 

Both contenders prize their goals, and both are presumably prepared to mount open-ended efforts of significant proportions to obtain those goals. 

If Beijing and Washington want nonnegotiable things a lot, then the Trump administration must gird itself for a long standoff.
Simple as that.
We also point out that China embarked on a massive buildup of maritime power over a decade ago. Excluding the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Beijing already boasts the largest naval and coast-guard fleets in Asia, not to mention a seagoing militia to augment its navy and coast guard. 

And these forces continue growing. 

China’s navy may number over 500 vessels by 2030. 

By contrast, the U.S. Navy espouses an eventual fleet of 355 vessels, up from 274 today. 

President Trump is on record favoring a 350-ship force. 

Defense budgets may—or may not—support a U.S. Navy that large.
These are objective facts about which the Chinese media regularly brag. 

Based on these material trends, we postulate that maritime Asia is becoming increasingly competitive, that China is a formidable competitor, and that the trendlines are running in its favor. How’s that for extreme?
We thus urge U.S. policymakers to acknowledge that the forward U.S. presence in Asia will come under mounting danger in the coming years. 

Washington may have to gamble from time to time to shore it up. 

It may have to hold things that Beijing treasures—things like the Chinese navy’s surface fleet—at risk. 

We encourage decision-makers to embrace risk as an implement of statecraft rather than shy away from it. 

Manipulating and imposing risk is a universal strategy that practitioners in Beijing routinely employ. Washington should reply in kind.
And as "Valencia" well knows—or should know—risk-taking constitutes part of the art of strategy. 

The approach we recommend is well-grounded in theory, as articulated by the late Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling and many others.
There is nothing novel about risk, then. U.S. leaders must rediscover this elemental fact. 

For too long Washington recoiled from taking risk, treating it as a liability while conflating it with recklessness. 

But a risk-averse nation has a hard time deterring: who believes a diffident statesman’s deterrent threats? 

We simply implore civilian and military leaders to realign their attitude toward risk to match the changing strategic landscape in Asia. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Our argument, then, is a far cry from the extremism "Valencia" deplores in his hit piece. 

A casual reader of his commentary can be pardoned for concluding that we advocate reckless action on the U.S. Navy’s part. 

But it’s "Valencia" who failed his audience.
Third, "Valencia" claims that because of recent statements from U.S. policy-makers—and by implication because of our writing, which he falsely depicts as a product of those statements—“the damage to the U.S.-China relationship and the stability of the region has already been done.” 

But what damage is he referring to? 

As of this writing, the Trump administration has been in office less than a week. 

The White House has issued no official policy touching the South China Sea. 

As far as we know, our fleets in the Western Pacific have done nothing unusual.
"Valencia", it appears, is objecting to a few China-related tweets from Trump following the November elections. 

"Valencia" is indulging in hype.
China, by contrast, has inflicted colossal damage on regional concord. 

Beijing has repeatedly intimidated the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan in offshore areas. 

It has built islands occupying thousands of acres of land in the heart of the South China Sea. 

It has fortified these manufactured islets, breaking Xi Jinping’s pledge not to militarize them. 

It has rattled its saber through successive military drills, and issued stark warnings about war through various media mouthpieces.
And lastly, "Valencia" suggests that the United States should relinquish vital interests—including those of its Asian allies—to mollify Chinese sensibilities. 

He cites, for example, a Chinese scholar voicing concern that “The theme of clash of civilizations [is] becoming increasingly popular in Chinese circles.” 

"Valencia" also frets about “a possible Thucydian trap [we think you mean Thucydides trap, "Mark"],” a “supposedly ‘inevitable’ conflict between a status-quo power and a rising power.”
His implication, presumably, is that Washington, the guardian of the status quo, should acquiesce in Beijing’s bullying to escape the Thucydides trap. 

That would square with China’s party line. 

And indeed, aggressors do love to win peacefully.
"Valencia" further objects that the timing of a U.S. policy turnabout is inconvenient for the Chinese. 

He observes that the 19th Party Congress will convene this fall to determine China’s leadership transition. 

Xi Jinping might take a hard line in advance of the congress to placate nationalist audiences. 

A U.S. policy shift might box him in.
That may be true, but Chinese Communist Party politics cannot form the basis of U.S. foreign policy. 

Nor, it bears mentioning, do the Chinese consult or respect American political timelines as they pursue foreign-policy aims. 

Just the opposite: they regard the last months of a departing administration and early months of an incoming administration as opportune times to make mischief.
"Valencia"’s message to America is plain: do nothing to antagonize China, even if it means forfeiting American interests and ideals. 

He falls squarely into the don’t provoke China school we take to task at Orbis. 

It is precisely this camp’s thinking that begat paralysis in U.S. maritime strategy in Asia. 

Inaction is no longer tolerable as the strategic circumstances change around us.
As for the Japan Times and its readership: Japanese leaders and rank-and-file citizens should pray the Trump administration rejects "Mark Valencia"’s words. 

If the administration heeded them, it would loosen or abandon the alliance that underwrites Japan’s security and prosperity. 

That would constitute Beijing’s price for U.S.-China amity. 

And if America paid that price, surrendering the Senkaku Islands to China would represent the least of Japan’s worries. 

Dark days would lie ahead.
Let’s make China worry instead.