China Got “The Rest” Wrong

Beijing is wrong to think other countries will roll over when confronted.

by Huong Le Thu

There is an argument that the West got China wrong. 

It argues that the assumption that China’s economic opening would lead to its political liberalization and transformation into a “ responsible stakeholder ” was incorrect. 

In fact, American policy advisors even concluded that basing Washington’s policy towards China on these assumptions has been a failure . 

China is a country that not only has taken advantage of the rules-based world order but also one that got away with it abusing it.

China has grown into a monstrous economic power that is not constrained by the global rules, but instead is a “ ruthless stakeholder .”
Indeed, China is providing more and more evidence that it is not willing to abide by international law and does not hesitate to act unilaterally in matters it considers critical for its interests—such as in the South China Sea. 

Beijing’s four-no’s strategy to ignore the Arbitral Tribunal ruling from 2016—no participation, no acceptance, no recognition and no enforcement—remains one of most striking examples of open disregard for the rules-based international order. 

China's ability to shake the current order is hard to deny, but it has not necessarily reached its desired position and still is at risk of a stronger push-back from other countries.
China’s military activities in the South China Sea are not only a concern for its direct neighbors and claimants in the disputed waters; they present high risks and unwelcomed tensions to an already unstable region. 

Despite earlier assurances from China that it is not militarizing the artificial islands built in the South China Sea, the continued show of force undermines Beijing’s credibility and peaceful intentions. Military build-ups and actions have also become more prominent in the Taiwan Strait, where recently Beijing conducted war games . 

The question is why is Beijing risking its reputation, and potentially even confrontation, instead of asserting its global position peacefully?
Xi Jinping’s China is ambitious not only in laying out its strategic vision of a new order, but also in racing against time to implement that vision. 

That dream has many facets well beyond militarising artificial islands in the South China Sea. 

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) involves building ports in places ranging from Africa’s Djibouti to wharves in Vanuatu in the Pacific. 

China’s BRI also includes securing access to sea and land-routes globally—from the Arctic to Latin America—as well as proposing new global institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). 

These are all elements of a unified plan for the extension of China’s global reach . 

Finally, all of these massive and potentially game-changing projects are seen as Xi Jinping’s flagship initiatives.
Beijing's strategy to attain dominance has been primarily based on two key components. 

The first is incrementally asserting its territorial claims, even if doing so often includes open disregard for the rule of law. 

The second is offering economic inducements for states to play ball while forging close relationships with key political and business leaders, often with financial incentives.
By many accounts, China's aggressive tactics in the South China Sea seem to have been successful, by both effectively undermining the rules-based order while continuing to expand the range of its Beijing's operations. 

Whether the international community will respond stronger to China's growing arrogance remains a question, but one thing is sure—while the international community keeps pondering, Beijing has managed to gain the time necessary to further its military plans.
Another issue that concerns more actors globally is China's economic statecraft. 

Initially, the BRI projects have been hailed as both the most significant change in global history and China’s gift to the world. 

In fact, many enjoyed the excitement of the new economic and transportation infrastructure opportunities that Chinese initiatives offered. 

Beijing's generosity has been well received, but not without varying levels of reservations about the political implications of Chinese money. 

Furthermore, the global context has helped to strengthen this perception. 

For example, the U.S. protectionist agenda, the Europian Union's self-absorption, and Japan's low-profile economy have only boosted the view that China is filling a void in global leadership. 

After all, China's global projects of the BRI and the AIIB gained the support of even those who had ongoing territorial disputes with China, including India, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
Yet, the Belt and Road Initiative—perhaps the most anticipated project among the developing economies—has become a subject of skepticism and scrutiny. 

For instance, debt traps and compromised national strategic assets have become the most feared outcomes of the BRI. 

Furthermore, Sri Lanka's case of its ill-fated Hambantota Port remains the poster-warning for many. Sri Lanka's $1 billion in Chinese loans were used as leverage to give Bejing a controlling interest in, and ninety-nine-year lease over, the Hambantota Port. 

As a result, the perception that Chinese aid and loans are a trap is spreading around the South Pacific islands.
Also, something has changed over the past months, and there is a growing wave of push-back from around the globe led by "natural rivals," too-close-to-comfort neighbors, and even more distant countries. 

Concerns have also been voiced by countries who have no geographical security concerns vis-à-vis China, like New Zealand or the Czech Republic . 

While the scale and intensity of push-back vary, one concern is universal—that Chinese economic initiatives translate too directly into the capacity to extort political influence over the recipient country. 

For example, to some degree, most Chinese preferences have been incrementally met over the years through international support for Beijing and silence on its taboo topics such as Taiwan, Tibet and human rights. 

But China's political influence now exceeds many other countries' levels of tolerance—particularly given Bejing's influence includes meddling with economic partners' domestic politics.
In Australia, for example, there is an ongoing debate over Chinese influence. 

This includes Four Corners, a report released in June 2017, which exposed the personal connections of Chinese-born business people, not only with Australian politicians but also with high ranking UN officials. 

In America, concerns are stronger over Russian meddling into U.S. domestic politics, but the Chinese presence at universities is also a matter of a widespread discomfort. 

Reports show that the Chinese Community Party has been setting up ‘cells’ at the University of Illinois, while the Chinese Students Scholars Associations (CSSAs) across the country have been distributing money for activities and engagement praising the Chinese government. 

Elsewhere, in Central Europe, the concern about Chinese state influence is not a distant concept either. 

A website, called Chinfluence, collects the cases of Chinese political and economic influence in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
China's fast-lane to global influence has been pursued through the exploitation of that most common of human weaknesses—greed and fear. 

Aiming at the top leadership and by-passing lengthy processes through corruption has proved effective for Bejing. 

But only for short-term and in certain countries.
Seeking to influence politicians is rather costly and can be only useful in the short term. 

In democratic countries, the political mandate is comparatively short, although former politicians can remain influential and high profile public voices. 

In the case of Australia, former Labour Senator Sam Dastyari demonstrates China’s attempts to cultivate influence and how it could backfire. 

Financial donations from an Australian-Chinese businessman, combined with public statements that seemed to echo the Chinese state’s line on the South China Sea, brought about the end of Dastyari’s political career. 

It also fuelled an ongoing debate over legislative changes relating to foreign interference and foreign donations.
Malaysia’s May general election, which overthrew Najib Razak and over sixty years of his party’s rule also shows the risks for China in building relationships with selected individuals. 

China’s top-down mindset dictates its strategy of forging relationships with targeted individuals, which is effective and fast in the short-term, but which fails to build a foundation for long-term. 

In other words, China fails to institutionalize relationships that stretch beyond personal connections with those leaders should they fall or leave office.
Najib Razak of Malaysia, Hun Sen of Cambodia, and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines all fit into this template. 

So far, only Hun Sen—who has dissolved his opposition party heading to the July elections—has proved the strategy useful. 

In addition, Duterte has proven to be a game-changer in the lawfare in the South China Sea by disregarding the legal victory from the Tribunal Arbitral ruling for the sake of improving relations with Beijing. 

But, as a populist leader, he is also subject to his nation’s swinging mood.
In contrast, China’s relationship with Vietnam is an example of a relationship which does involve a few long-standing and close affinities extending beyond personal benefits. 

Based on a party-to-party relationship, Hanoi and Beijing have developed a history of close ties dating back a couple of decades. 

Yet, instead of nurturing that relationship, Beijing’s rush to assert its position in the South China Sea has pushed its fellow communist regime away. 

In fact, that rift has been to the degree that even though Hanoi is traditionally suspicious of America, Vietnam has invited an American aircraft carrier to visit and is working on strategic partnerships with Washington and its allies. 

Given the size and importance of Vietnam, the costs to the Chinese state in its relationship with Hanoi might seem insignificant in comparison to Beijing’s perceived value of the South China Sea claims. 

But souring the relationship with Vietnam—including recently preventing it from conducting oil and gas explorations or China’s dispatching of long-range bombers to the Paracels—is hurting its relationships by stirring up the otherwise relatively pacified periphery.
Trump’s erratic leadership in global affairs does provide a strategic opportunity for China to fill that gap. 

Xi Jinping is astute in seizing this opportunity. 

In fact, China would be welcome to fill in the global leadership void on many critical issues, such as climate change, trade and infrastructure development. 

But while Xi’s vision of a “community of common destiny” is attractive in various ways for many economies around the world, China's execution of the vision invokes increasing unease, including among those who do not have strategic connections with Beijing. 

China's grand plans to achieve national rejuvenation by 2049 sounds impressive, but the tactics it applies are creating tensions. 

Xi Jinping's ambitious and impatient strategy of assertion is insensitive to fellow "common community" members' values, interests and needs. 

Additionally, it is a missed opportunity for global leadership and contradicts the rhetoric of international harmony and ‘win-win' behavior. 

Leaders supporting Beijing are also driven by the pursuit of immediate gains, seeking economic benefits rather than long-term common beliefs and solidarity. 

China is doubling down on a costly strategy of buying "followers" rather than winning the hearts and minds of friends and partners. 

This is neither an effective nor an efficient strategy.

Mattis accuses China of intimidation and coercion in South China Sea

Mattis takes hard line on China in Singapore speech

By Joshua Berlinger

Singapore -- US Defense Secretary James Mattis accused China of "intimidation and coercion" in the Indo-Pacific and declared that the United States does not plan to abandon its role in the region during a speech Saturday in Singapore.
"Make no mistake: America is in the Indo-Pacific to stay. This is our priority theater," Mattis said.
Mattis specifically called out Beijing's militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea, home to some of the world's busiest sea lanes.
"We are aware China will face an array of challenges and opportunities in coming years, we are prepared to support China's choices if they promote long-term peace and prosperity for all in this dynamic region," Mattis said.
"Yet China's policy in the South China Sea stands in stark contrast to the openness our strategy promotes. It calls into question China's broader goals," he said.
Mattis and some of his counterparts from the Asia Pacific region are in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, an annual gathering of security officials, contractors and academics in the Asian city-state.
The South China Sea has been a hot topic of discussion during the summit's opening, amid ongoing attempts by China to assert its dominance in the region.
China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Brunei all have competing claims to the territory. 

But while other countries have built military features and artificial islands, none come close to matching Beijing's in scale or ambition, which stretch hundreds of miles south and east from its most southerly province of Hainan.
In May, the Chinese military landed nuclear-capable bombers on its artificial islands for the first time.
Weeks earlier, US intelligence announced there was a high possibility Beijing had deployed anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as part of ongoing military exercises.
"China's militarization of artificial features in the South China Sea includes the deployment of anti-ship missiles, surface-to-air missiles, electronic jammers and, more recently, the landing of bomber aircraft at woody island," said Mattis, confirming previous intelligence reports.
"Despite China's claims to the contrary, the placement of these weapon systems is tied directly to military use for the purposes of intimidation and coercion," he said.
On Sunday, two US Navy warships sailed close to a handful of disputed islands claimed by China in the Paracel island chain, east of Vietnam, in a move that drew the ire of Beijing.
"I think it goes to a fundamental disconnect between the way the international tribunals have looked at these waters -- these waters look to us as free and open waters," said Mattis, addressing last week's freedom of navigation operation directly.
"We do not do freedom of navigation for America alone, we do freedom of navigation for all nations... we do not see it as a militarization by going through what has traditionally been international water space. We see it as affirmation of the rules-based international order."
Though Mattis appeared to draw a firm line between the actions of the US and China, he insisted the US is not asking other countries in the region to choose sides.
"China should and does have a voice in shaping the international system, and all of China's neighbors have a voice in shaping China's role," said Mattis, adding that he would travel to Beijing soon "at China's invitation."
China claims its actions in the South China Sea are entirely peaceful and meant to protect its citizens and trading interests.

Korean summit
Mattis only briefly mentioned the status of the Korean Peninsula in his formal remarks, which come just hours after Donald Trump announced that he will hold a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore on June 12, just days after Mattis departs.
The Defense Secretary stuck to fairly common talking points from Washington: highlighting the importance of US alliances and the ultimate goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Much of the speech was focused on longer-term challenges in the region known as the Indo-Pacific, a phrase used throughout India and Southeast Asia and recently embraced by the Trump administration.
He also mentioned the importance of upholding US alliances and partnerships in the region, specifically highlighting Australia, New Zealand and India. 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the keynote opening speech this year, also emphasizing the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Mattis also touched upon the status of Taiwan, an issue bound to ruffle feathers in Beijing. 

China views the island as a renegade province and seeks its eventual reunification with the mainland.
Beijing has been accused of ramping up the pressure on Taipei in recent weeks, with Taiwan accusing using its diplomatic and economic weight to isolate the island from the international community. 

It has also punished business for recognizing Taiwan as independent country.
"We oppose all unilateral efforts to alter the status quo and will continue to insist any resolution of differences accord with the will of the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait," he said.
Mattis delivered the keynote address at the event last year.

Rogue Nation

France, Australia call on China to observe rules
By Trevor Marshallsea 

French President Emmanuel Macron, right, presents the Legion d’Honneur award to Australian war veteran William Mackay in Sydney, Wednesday, May 2, 2018. Macron is on a three-day visit to Australia. 

SYDNEY — French President Emmanuel Macron and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Wednesday issued a reminder to China to respect a rules-based order in the South Pacific amid concerns about Beijing’s growing influence in the region.
Macron’s comments came during a three-day visit to Australia, during which the two nations signed a range of agreements, including a pact to strengthen defense ties.
The two leaders were also expected to discuss China’s growing influence in the South Pacific. Australia has become concerned about increasing Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in the area, especially reports — denied by Beijing — that it wants establish a permanent military base in Vanuatu. 

This follows China’s contentious claiming of islands in recent years in the South China Sea.
Macron was scheduled to depart on Thursday for New Caledonia, a French-controlled island near Vanuatu, which will hold a referendum in November on breaking away from France’s protection and becoming a republic.
While Macron and Turnbull did not specifically confirm they discussed China during their Sydney meetings. 

But when asked about Beijing’s South Pacific push at a joint news conference, the two leaders were eager to stress the need for lawful development in the area.
“China’s rise is very good news for everybody. It’s good for China itself, its middle classes, and it’s good for global growth, and regional growth,” Macron said. 

“What’s important is to preserve a rules-based development in the region, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, and to preserve the necessary balances in the region.”
“And it’s important not to have any hegemony in the region,” he said.
Turnbull said the economic rise of China was made possible “by a ruled-based order in our region”.
“We welcome further Chinese investment in our region. We welcome the benefits of the growth of China. But of course we are committed to the maintenance of the rules-based international order, to good governance, strong standards, that will enable us all to continue this remarkable arc of prosperity that has been enabled by that rule of law,” Turnbull said.
Turnbull cited an oft-used quote from former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew in pushing for mutual respect among nations in Asia, saying “big fish cannot eat little fish, and little fish cannot eat shrimps.” 

Macron added: “And especially New Caledonian shrimps.”
France is the only European nation with direct territorial links to Pacific region countries, which play a role in its defense building. 

It has more than 1.5 million citizens and 8,000 military personnel spread across several territories in the Pacific and Indian oceans.
Macron said he was keen for France to build a broader strategic relationship with Australia. 

Already, a French company Naval Group is building Australia’s new fleet of 12 submarines at a facility in Adelaide, under a deal worth $36.3 billion.
Also as part of Macron’s visit, France and Australia signed pacts to strengthen military ties, both through cooperation in maritime activities and the establishment of an annual Franco-Australian defense industry symposium.
Macron also expressed a desire for France to be “at the heart” of the Indo-Pacific region.
“I believe we have one shared goal, that is to turn our two countries to place them at the heart of a new axis, an Indo-Pacific axis,” Macron said.
Asked about growing tensions about Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities, Macron said that regardless of Trump’s May 12 decision a new agreement should be negotiated with Teheran.
Macron, who told the United Nations last September that the current deal was not sufficient, said it should be broadened to address three new main areas — Iran’s nuclear activity after the current deal expires in 2025; improvements in the monitoring and controlling of Iran’s domestic nuclear activity, and to have better containment of Iranian activity in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Macron, who visited Washington last week, said Trump responded “positively” to his recent suggestion for a new agreement while he had also “exchanged about that” in the past few days with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Macron said whatever Trump’s coming decision, a broader deal was needed because “nobody wants a war in the region and nobody wants an escalation in terms of tension in the region.”
With trade talks also a key part of the visit, Macron said France would support formal talks on a free trade deal between Australia and the European Union after it found solutions to concerns it had on agriculture.
The countries also signed agreements to counter cyberwarfare and on committing to strategies addressing climate change, including working to make coral reefs in the Pacific more resilient.
Macron also used a ceremony commemorating Australia’s wartime cooperation with France to highlight a global worldview as a counter to nationalism.
A week after criticizing Trump’s “America first” policies on his trip to Washington, and hours after a May Day gathering of European anti-immigration populist leaders and violent right-wing protests in his home country, Macron said the Australia’s wartime sacrifice in Europe should serve as “a powerful message at a time when nationalism is looming, entrenched behind its borders and its hostility to the rest of the world.”
“No great nation has ever been built by turning its back on the world,” he said.

Sina Delenda Est

China and the Binary Choice
by JIM TALENT

Late last week, President Trump met with Xi Jinping, the Chinese head of state and (more importantly) the head of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. 
The two men no doubt discussed many issues, but the elephants in the room were the conflict in strategic visions between China and the United States, and the military facts on the ground that are empowering China’s regional strategy. 
China’s leaders want their country to reassume its historical role as the Middle Kingdom in Asia — as the hegemon of, at minimum, East Asia and its near seas. 
They want this for powerful strategic, economic, and nationalistic reasons, and also in order to ensure the stability of the Communist regime. 
There are of course no democratic institutions in China, and there aren’t going to be under the current regime. 
The Party is not going to give up power, but at the same time it knows that to support its legitimacy, it must deliver not only a better quality of life, but also the “China dream”: the idea of a resurgent China that once again is master of its strategic environment — the big dog that gets the benefits, to which other countries must defer, regardless of the nominal rules of international engagement. 
To that end, China has in the last six years asserted the rights of a sovereign throughout the region. 
It has declared an Air Defense Identification Zone in the East China Sea; flooded the Senkaku Islands, which Japan controls, with ships and planes; used its maritime militia and Coast Guard (which includes several well-armed ships, some of which are painted-over former naval frigates) to harass and attack the fishing vessels of other nations; deployed an oil rig in disputed waters; wrested control of Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines; and built military installations on several of its claimed artificial islands in the South China Sea — after having specifically promising not to militarize the islands. 
The United States wants what it has always wanted: a rules-based international order where countries relate to each other according to agreed-upon laws and norms rather than size and strength, and where everyone is free to move and trade on the same basis. 
The Trump administration has added certain elements to this mix — a more protectionist approach to trade negotiations, and somewhat greater insistence on enhanced allied contribution to defense — but it has not and will not change the broader strategic objectives of the United States. 
So the first elephant in the room is that the vital interests of the United States and China are fundamentally incompatible. 
Xi Jinping understands that; he knows that China cannot have what it wants unless it succeeds in disrupting America’s alliance relationships, detaching China’s neighbors from the United States, and reducing American influence and the effectiveness of its forces in the region. 
The regime he leads has been pursuing those goals over the last six years through systematically coercive tactics, relying on the enormous power that China has built over the last two decades. President Trump has only two choices. 
He can gradually surrender American interests and rights, or he can resolve to defend them. 
Beijing will not leave him any other option. 
And if he makes the latter choice, he must deal with the second elephant in the room: China’s fast-modernizing military, and the impact it is having on the strategic balance of power in the region. 
I have written before about the growth of China’s military power and the decline of American strength because of the defense cuts in recent years. 
Here is a graphic illustration, compiled from open sources, of how that shift in power is affecting the Pacific theater: 

China has become, at least regionally, a peer military competitor of the United States. 
It may or may not be the greatest global threat to America’s global interests, but it is beyond question the “pacing” threat: the primary factor against which the Pentagon must plan as it sizes and shapes American forces for the future. 
But no matter how much the Pentagon plans and maneuvers, it cannot restore the balance of power in the Pacific without a major increase in the defense budget — something on the order of $150 billion over the next two years. 
That cannot happen unless Congress removes the caps on defense spending that the Budget Control Act imposed five years ago; it is extremely unlikely that the Senate at least can be induced to do so unless the caps are also removed on non-defense discretionary spending. 
So we have reached an inflection point. 
The United States can either continue to suppress both defense and non-defense discretionary spending, or it can remove the caps, increase the short term deficit, and build up its military enough to defend its interests, not just in Asia, but in Europe and the Middle East, and against Islamic jihadism globally. 
Many choices in public policy are not binary. 
But this one is. 
President Trump has repeatedly said that his maxim for foreign policy is “peace through strength.” 
It was Reagan’s maxim too. 
But peace through strength only works if a nation actually is strong, and the first and most important index of national power is military power, particularly in the minds of authoritarians like Xi Jinping. Joseph Stalin was once warned that the pope did not approve of his oppression of Catholics in Russia. 
Stalin responded: “The pope? How many divisions has he got?” 
For my part, I believe the spending caps must come off. 
The major fiscal challenge facing the federal government isn’t the discretionary budget anyway; it’s the cost of the entitlement programs, which consume most of the federal budget. 
The Budget Control Act didn’t even address those programs. 
I liken America’s current situation to that of a family that is in a budget crisis because it is spending 60 percent of its income on shelter, and that decides to relieve the pressure by reducing the food budget — even though the children are already malnourished. 
A family in that situation urgently needs either to reduce its housing budget or get another job to increase the family’s income. 
But while it decides what to do, the children have to eat, even if the only way to feed them is to borrow money. 
It is time for Washington, on both sides of the aisle, to prioritize the defense of the United States, whatever the cost. 
The weaker America becomes, the greater the risk that it will face a choice even more unpalatable than the one it faces now: the choice between surrendering its rights, or making a stand against a purposeful adversary under circumstances where the United States is outnumbered, outgunned, and outranged. 
President Trump won’t have to make that choice immediately, but unless the facts on the ground change quickly, he may well have to make it before the end of his term. 
The net is closing now, on him and on us, and the man he hosted last week at Mar-a-Lago knows it.