Atlantic Council – 27.7.2020
U.S.-China Confrontation Is Unlike Anything We’ve Seen
Fred Kempe
We’ve never been here before.
The escalating confrontation between the United States and China is so perilous because the world’s two largest economies – and the two defining countries of their times – are navigating uncharted terrain.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s landmark speech at the Nixon Library on Thursday marked the most robust call to action yet against the Chinese Communist Party. It came amid tit-for-tat consular shutdowns in Houston and Chengdu, and the Friday arrest by the FBI of an alleged Chinese military operative in San Francisco.
It’s tempting to brand this a hotter phase of a new Cold War, as this column did just last week. However, that language understates the historic novelty of what’s unfolding and its epochal enormity.
It’s a unique moment because the United States, since its rise to global power, has never confronted such a potent peer competitor across so many realms: political, economic, technological, military and even societal.
It’s new as well because no country in modern history has risen as quickly as China, from 2% of global GDP in 1980 to some 20% of global GDP in 2019. That leaves Beijing, for the first time, confronting global challenges without the learning curve of a more gradual evolution.
It is also new because the U.S. and China, after four decades of wishful collaboration, are now locked in a contest that could define our times. It isn’t a struggle, as the hyperbole would have it, over “world domination,” which no country has ever achieved. But it could have significant impact on “world determination,” influencing whether democracy or autocracy, market capitalism or state capitalism, are the flavors of the future.
It is a unique period as well in that this unfolding contest coincides with the Fourth Industrial Revolution and an era of unprecedented technological change driven by big data, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, bioengineering and so much more.
The fact that all this coincides with the worst pandemic in a century deepens and accelerates the drama, with China being both the plague’s source and potentially biggest benefactor as the first major economy to escape its claws.
For some context to understand the dangers of our times, think of what’s coming as an updated version of the period between World War II’s end in 1945 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
It took the United States and the Soviet Union that fraught period and a near-nuclear war over Cuba before the defining relationship of that era settled into the patterns of nuclear agreements, superpower summits and mutual recognition of red lines that prevented catastrophic war.
Today’s Berlin, the deciding point in this new contest, could well be some combination of Taiwan and the South China Sea. Where the United States sees a sovereign democracy in Taiwan and the South China Sea as international waters, China sees territory and waters that are ultimately its property.
That Secretary Pompeo chose the Nixon Library for his historic speech was deft staging. Pompeo noted that next year would mark the 50th anniversary of Henry Kissinger’s secret mission to China, which began Beijing’s opening to the United States and the Western world.
“Taking the long view,” wrote Nixon in Foreign Affairs in 1967, “we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.”
Pompeo focused on this line from the article, linking Nixon’s aims to President Trump’s follow-up. “The world cannot be safe until China changes,” wrote Nixon. “Thus, our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change.”
Said Pompeo: “The kind of engagement we have been pursuing has not brought the kind of change inside of China that President Nixon had hoped to induce.”
He added later, “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity.”
Pompeo’s remarks were the last of a quartet of speeches from National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien on ideology, FBI Director Chris Wray on espionage and Attorney General William Barr on economics. They are intended to be read as a package.
It’s perhaps understandable that the U.S., in these early days, still lacks a comprehensive strategy for our times that has been coordinated with allies. Yet former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley gives the Trump administration credit for sharpening the country’s focus on our new era of major power competition with its National Security Strategy of December 2017.
Hadley sees as a significant next step toward a U.S. strategy this week’s little-noticed introduction of comprehensive legislation by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Risch, and other Republican lawmakers. Weighing in at 160 pages, its aim is no less than “to advance a policy for managed strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China.”
No doubt there is a domestic political element in such a significant electoral year. Expect President Trump and his top officials to remind critics that President Reagan was vilified as he stepped up his campaign against the Soviet Union as “the evil empire.” Yet history now vindicates him. Trump will embrace that Reagan legacy and argue his electoral opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, is too weak to take on China.
Even if Trump loses in November, the architects of this more assertive approach to China hope that they have put in place a policy approach that will endure.
Hadley argues that any effective approach to countering China would have to include domestic investments in technology and infrastructure, the healing of political divisions, rallying friends and allies while refurbishing the U.S. global brand, and engaging with China on issues neither country can address alone.
“Any U.S. administration is going to need a sustained strategy for dealing with China to set up a set of norms and rules of the road without dividing the world and plunging us into a war nobody wants,” says Hadley. “It will be the work of years before we get this right.”
Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council.
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The Atlantic, Washington DC – 27.7.2020
Pompeo’s Surreal Speech on China
Thomas Wright
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave one of the most surreal speeches of the Donald Trump presidency at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, on Thursday. In his speech, titled “Communist China and the Free World’s Future,” he declared the failure of 50 years of engagement with China and called for free societies to stand up to Beijing.
I am sympathetic to the argument. I wrote a book in 2017 about how Western hopes that China would converge with the liberal international order have failed. I have argued for almost two years that when Trump leaves office, the United States should put the free world at the center of its foreign policy.
Unfortunately, Pompeo, like his targets in Beijing, is engaged in doublespeak whereby he offers win-win outcomes, but his words are at odds with his actions. He says the U.S. will organize the free world, while alienating and undermining the free world; he extols democracy, while aiding and abetting its destruction at home; and he praises the Chinese people, while generalizing about the ill intent of Chinese students who want to come to America.
Pompeo is also ultra-loyal to a president who cares not one whit for democracy, dissidents, freedom, or transparency overseas. Trump’s long track record on this is well documented, and it has defined his personal approach to China.
On June 18, 2019, Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone and told him he would not condemn a crackdown in Hong Kong. On August 1, Trump told the press that the unrest in Hong Kong was between Hong Kong and China “because Hong Kong is a part of China. They’ll have to deal with that themselves. They don’t need advice.”
In his book, the former national security adviser John Bolton wrote that on two separate occasions, Trump told Xi that he “should go ahead with building the [concentration] camps in Xijiang, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.” Pompeo said nothing about these revelations, although he called Bolton a traitor.
And in January and February of this year, Trump infamously praised Xi’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the World Health Organization was privately alarmed by Beijing’s actions and its lack of transparency (it praised China publicly in the hopes of coaxing it into cooperation). The Trump administration would have known this and could have built a coalition to increase pressure on China, but instead it ignored the behavior.
For three and a half years, senior members of the administration have tried to downplay Trump’s words as if they don’t make policy. But they do, especially if consistently expressed. His serial dismissal of the values of the free world has a real impact. Pompeo has some nerve to now claim that what is upside down is right side up.
An ideological struggle is under way between China and free societies, but Trump is on the wrong side. The Chinese Communist Party wants a tributary international system where smaller countries are deferential to larger powers, instead of a rules-based international order where small countries enjoy equal rights. The CCP also sees no place for universal rights or global liberal norms, and wants to ignore the principles of open markets to pursue a predatory mercantilist economic policy. So does Trump. Indeed, Trump never speaks in terms of a competition of systems between democracy and authoritarianism. He rarely criticizes authoritarian governments on their human-rights records. He has done little to press China to free the Canadian hostages. He and Pompeo sought to rehabilitate Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman of Saudi Arabia after the brutal murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He has embraced the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán as he shredded his country’s democratic institutions. The only countries that need to fear a reprimand from Trump on human rights are those led by left-wing Latin American authoritarians—everyone else gets a pass.
Meanwhile, Trump and Pompeo have turned social distancing into a diplomatic doctrine. The subject of Russian election interference has never featured on the agenda of NATO summits. Officials told me they wanted to but worried that Trump would walk out in protest. The administration repeatedly rejected requests from Europe to work together on China until a few weeks ago. The Trump administration also sees its traditional allies—countries that belong in the free world—as economic competitors. If other countries’ economies are doing badly, the U.S. looks better, or so they think. With that type of mindset, there is no incentive to think deeply about how to tackle our shared challenges.
Even discussing the ideological component of the U.S.-China rivalry is a delicate matter. I have lost count of the number of times European diplomats have told me they want to work with the U.S. on China but get nervous and reluctant whenever ideology is broached.
In his speech, Pompeo painted a picture of a Chinese leader driven by Marxism-Leninism and executing a plan to fulfill his “decades-long desire for global hegemony of Chinese communism.” Ideology is at play in the U.S.-China rivalry, but in a much more complicated and nuanced way than Pompeo suggests. The U.S. and China both offer different social and governance models—one is generally free and open and the other is authoritarian and closed. Each threatens the other, not necessarily because of the foreign-policy choices the leaders make, but because of what the governments are at their core. Beijing believes that the freedom of the press, the internet, social media, NGOs, economic interdependence, and exchange programs all have the potential to undermine their regime. They are not wrong. Indeed, many Americans saw this as a positive side effect of engagement.
Many Americans rightly understand that China’s authoritarian model has negative externalities that threaten U.S. interests and freedoms. Tools of repression domestically find their way overseas. Beijing seeks to censor all criticism of its regime by coercing other governments, companies, and individuals. It sucks up data on foreign citizens. It employs mercantilist techniques to pursue dominance of new technologies. China is actively seeking to eviscerate liberal norms around human rights, anti-corruption, and freedom of speech. The regime interferes in democracies to advance its interests.
Neither side can accommodate the other without compromising the essence of its system.Americans would like China to become less repressive, but there is zero chance of that under Xi. China would like the U.S. to respect what it calls its core interests, but this would mean unpalatable concessions that would compromise our values and interests—such as acquiescing in the suppression of free speech. So we are destined for rivalry. The question is how to inoculate the free world against the negative effects of the authoritarian model while also engaging with China on shared interests.
This clash of systems is actually fairly accurately described in parts of the White House’s official strategy on China, which bears the hallmark approach of Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser. Pottinger is a hawk on China, but he has gained the bipartisan respect of Asia experts and that of U.S. allies, including in Europe, by staying out of the limelight and by making a sophisticated and nuanced version of the case, albeit one that has its own shortcomings and is still inconsistent with Trump’s personal worldview. Pottinger has also engaged in patient, low-key diplomacy on China in Europe from early on in the administration and avoids any hectoring or partisanship.
Pompeo’s account, by contrast, is a Manichean politicized caricature. For instance, consider the difference between Pottinger’s document and Pompeo’s speech on Chinese students. The official strategy says:
“Chinese students represent the largest cohort of foreign students in the United States today. The United States values the contributions of Chinese students and researchers. … The United States strongly supports the principles of open academic discourse and welcomes international students and researchers conducting legitimate academic pursuits; we are improving processes to screen out the small minority of Chinese applicants who attempt to enter the United States under false pretenses or with malign intent.”
At the Nixon Library, the sum total of what Pompeo said about Chinese students was the following:
“We know too, we know too that not all Chinese students and employees are just normal students and workers that are coming here to make a little bit of money and to garner themselves some knowledge. Too many of them come here to steal our intellectual property and to take this back to their country.”
In the first, the U.S. welcomes the Chinese people to its shores and recognizes that a small minority could have ill intent. The second is torn right out of the Trump “I assume some are good people” playbook.
It’s a subtle but important difference that repeats itself again and again. The official strategy talks about China’s hegemonic aspirations in Asia, particularly in the maritime domain, and not “global” domination of “Chinese communism.” It says that “the United States stands ready to welcome China’s positive contributions” and mentions several examples and ways of going about that. Pompeo is utterly dismissive of any cooperation or engagement. Some, he says,
“are insisting that we preserve the model of dialogue for dialogue’s sake. Now, to be clear, we’ll keep on talking. But the conversations are different these days. I traveled to Honolulu now just a few weeks back to meet with Yang Jiechi. It was the same old story—plenty of words, but literally no offer to change any of the behaviors.”
That was as constructive as it got.
Pompeo’s tirade will discredit the case for competition with China among allies, in Asia and Europe, who are petrified of a full-blown Cold War where the U.S. and China have no interest in diplomacy. He couldn’t resist a thinly veiled, and inevitably counterproductive, sideswipe at German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is under pressure to take a tougher stance on China, saying cryptically,
“We have a NATO ally of ours that hasn’t stood up in the way that it needs to with respect to Hong Kong because they fear Beijing will restrict access to China’s market. This is the kind of timidity that will lead to historic failure, and we can’t repeat it.”
By far the biggest problem with Pompeo, or the administration, invoking the free world is that he said nothing about the free world itself. Free societies are in trouble. As the NGO Freedom House has documented, the world has become less free over the past four years, due in large part to illiberal forces within democracies. Many democracies also struggle to cope with fundamental challenges, including inequality, racial injustice, the automation of work, and new technologies such as artificial intelligence. Free societies also face the very real threat of political interference from authoritarian states and networks of corruption.
Getting serious about defending the free world has to start with restoring the rule of law and democracy at home and seriously examining what it will take to remain free and democratic in the decades to come. Instead of tackling this problem, the Trump administration has thrown more fuel on the fire raging inside the free world. Trump has said he may not accept the results of the forthcoming election. He has claimed that mail-in voting, a staple of American democracy, is fraudulent. He has sent troops into American cities against the wishes of their mayors. And he has called for Russia and China to interfere in the election process.
America is a work in progress. The U.S. is entitled to carry the banner of freedom, as it did in the Cold War, even as it wages the struggle for freedom at home. But it is quite another matter for an administration that is actively undermining American democracy to claim the mantle of the free world.
A different administration has an opportunity to put the free world at the heart of its strategy. It would involve working with other free societies to modernize our systems of governance so they are collectively resilient to shocks—whether they are financial, environmental, political, or public-health-related. This will, by necessity, involve major changes domestically. It means tackling international networks of oligarchs and corruption that exploit a country’s openness in order to penetrate their systems and distort their democracy. It also allows for a robust national and international conversation about what a free society means in the modern world—one that should include voices from across the political spectrum.
Competing with China is an important component of the free-world strategy but only one part, and the competition is not an end in itself. Some critics will still worry that talking about the free world will bring about a Cold War with China, dividing the world in two. But this fear is misplaced. Kelly Magsamen of the Center for American Progress recently put it succinctly. “Rather than organizing U.S. foreign policy purely around competition with China,” she told me, “we should be organizing it around our democratic allies with the goal of strengthening and catalyzing the free world. That’s a far more affirmative theory of the case that would better reflect American values, play to our comparative advantages, and frankly get better collective results.” That strategy is the way to get allies and Americans on board with a competition between governance systems because it recognizes that the challenge comes from within and is something the U.S. should do even if there were no competition with China.
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South China Morning Post, Hong Kong – 30.7.2020
China, EU hold ‘candid’ talks on economic and trade ties, including post-pandemic recovery
Wendy Wu
Beijing and Brussels are seeking to strengthen economic and trade ties despite their conflicts, and amid China’s deepening feud with the United States.
China and the European Union had “deep, candid, pragmatic and effective” discussions on post-pandemic economic recovery and cooperation during a meeting held via video link on Tuesday, according to a statement from the Chinese commerce ministry.
Chaired by Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He and European Commission Executive Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis, the annual economic dialogue was not held last year because Beijing was focused on negotiations for a trade deal with Washington.
This year, the two sides agreed to “increase mutual understanding, to create certainties amid uncertainties and cement market confidence” during the talks, the statement said.
Also on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian in a separate phone call that China and the EU should be the world’s “stabilisers” and oppose “unilateral bullies”.
Wang said the two countries should be open to each other rather than imposing restrictions, and that Beijing was willing to work more closely with France to push forward China-EU investment treaty talks as well as climate change cooperation, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.
Beijing is hoping to reach a landmark investment deal with Brussels this year, but progress has been slow.
The talks come as EU health officials have sounded the alarm over a second wave of coronavirus infections as countries loosen restrictions and resume international flights. European leaders have agreed to a massive recovery fund of €1.82 trillion (US$2.1 trillion), with the bloc’s economy forecast to contract by 8.3 per cent this year.
China, meanwhile, has avoided a recession after its economy expanded by 3.2 per cent in the second quarter, as it tries to find growth potential in the domestic market after the coronavirus pandemic hit external demand.
Tuesday’s talks covered a wide range of issues, including prevention and control of the pandemic, industrial and supply chain security, the investment treaty negotiations, market access and reform of the World Trade Organisation.
The two sides agreed to offer a fair and non-discriminatory trade and investment environment and expand agricultural trade, a separate statement posted on the Chinese commerce ministry website said.
Officials and observers in the EU have criticised the “managed trade” in a
US-China trade deal signed in January, which they say could exclude or restrict European firms’ access to the Chinese market.
During the dialogue, Beijing said it welcomed European financial institutions to set up securities trading subsidiaries and encouraged EU firms to list in China’s securities market. The EU said it was willing to loosen regulatory requirements on Chinese banks, and both sides committed to promote the international role of the euro and the yuan.
They also had a “candid exchange of views” on a number of areas of disagreement – the 5G market, the EU’s policies on subsidies, foreign investment scrutiny, trade defence, government procurement, and competition policies, according to the Chinese statement.
EU ‘deplores’ China’s decision to enact national security law for Hong Kong
Despite Beijing’s upbeat tone on the economic talks, tensions have been rising between China and the EU over issues including human rights and Hong Kong. Brussels on Monday said it would limit the export of “sensitive” technological products that could be used for surveillance in Hong Kong as part of its response to Beijing imposing a national security law on the city.
The EU was less positive in its statement on the dialogue and focused on market access and reciprocity. It reiterated requests for more access in the telecoms, computer, health, biotech and new energy vehicle markets in China – all sticking points in the investment treaty talks.
The bloc also outlined concerns about a new and “unjustified” inspections and “EU-China bilateral and trade relations must be based on the key principles of reciprocity and level playing field based on clear and predictable rules,” EU Trade Commissioner Phil Hogan was quoted as saying in the statement.
“I have called upon China to engage in serious reform of the multilateral system and its rule book and to remove the existing barriers impeding access to the Chinese market of EU exporters of goods and services as well as of European investors,” he said.
Dombrovskis said issues such as reciprocity for EU companies in the Chinese market should be addressed “ahead of the next leaders’ summit in the autumn”.
China and the EU are discussing the possibility of holding a leaders’ meeting by video link in September, while an in-person meeting of leaders and heads of state could be pushed back to November, the South China Morning Post
reported earlier.
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Geopolitical Futures, Austin (Texas) – 25.7.2020
The EU Opens the Door to More China Trade
Antonia Colibasanu
After 10 years of negotiation, the European Council earlier this week authorized the EU to sign a trade agreement with China. The deal will protect geographical indications, a type of intellectual property for products like Camembert cheese from Lower Normandy and Prosecco from Veneto that possess certain qualities unique to their place of origin. The agreement will prevent these kinds of products from being produced elsewhere and sold using expressions such as “kind,” “type,” “style” and “imitation.” The deal may not sound like much; it covers just 100 products from each side, and some EU members are more represented than others on the list of products. (French goods, for example, represent a quarter of the protected products.) But it is notable that the EU, at this critical time, is laying the groundwork for a broader trade agreement with China.
Indeed, the timing of the deal is interesting. It had been under negotiation for a decade, a long time even by EU standards, and it still needs approval from the European Parliament (which is mostly a formality at this point) before it can take effect. Moreover, the European Commission called China a “strategic competitor” as recently as 2019, and opinion polls indicate an increase in unfavorable views of the country among the European public.
The COVID-19 pandemic only added to these negative perceptions. Beijing made several efforts to control the narrative about the pandemic in the early days of the European outbreak, including by offering medical assistance to Italy, one of the countries most affected. But it seems these efforts didn’t help. According to the European Council on Foreign Relations, perceptions of China have worsened since the beginning of the outbreak. So, why did EU member states decide that now – during a European Council meeting in which the long-awaited coronavirus recovery plan was also being negotiated – was the right time to reach consensus on an agreement with China considering the economic challenges ahead?
The answer lies in what China has to offer the EU, economically but also strategically, during a critical moment for the bloc. In 2019, China was among the EU’s largest export destinations, second only to the U.S., and top source of imports. In the past decade, European exports to China have more than doubled – from 77 billion euros ($88 billion) in 2009 to 198 billion euros in 2019 – and imports from China have also increased. China’s top trade partner in the EU is Germany, followed by the Netherlands and France. These three countries’ trade with China accounted for more than half (58 percent) of the EU’s total.
Germany alone accounts for a third of EU-China trade and is the only country out of the top three that has a positive trade balance in goods with China. This is not by chance; it’s part of Germany’s long-standing strategy toward China. After the Cold War ended, and especially after the 1997 Asian crisis, Germany realized the value not just of the Chinese market but also of low-cost Chinese manufacturing products that would make the German supply chain more efficient. Although France too saw Beijing as a potential strategic partner at the time, it was Germany that managed to establish itself as China’s top European ally, holding the spot as its largest trade partner since 1998. The two countries also shared common views on certain global affairs, notably both opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and NATO’s military intervention in the Libyan civil war.
As Germany grew into an export powerhouse, finding and growing new markets for trade was key. Between 1998 and 2005, the volume of trade between Germany and China tripled, and since 2005, German exports to China have increased fivefold to just under 100 billion euros last year. The benefits of this relationship were most apparent following the 2008 financial crisis, when U.S. demand for German goods collapsed. To offset the losses, Germany relied on China, which was largely unharmed by the economic turmoil at the time. While most of its exports still went to the rest of the EU, Germany increased its trade share with China, while also continuing to export to the United States. In 2019, exports to the U.S. accounted for 18.9 percent of total German exports, while exports to China accounted for 15.3 percent.
Over time, there has also been increasing convergence between the two countries’ economies. In the early 2000s, most of the manufactured goods that China exported to Europe were information and communication technology products, which include anything from personal computers to audio-video equipment, and industrial components.As China grew, it needed expertise in producing industrial technology, and Germany seemed to fit the bill. Now, China also exports machinery, in addition to ICT products, to the EU, and Germany in particular. As for German exports to China, they are similar in both quantity and quality to those destined for the U.S. and include automobiles, industrial equipment and machinery, as well as pharmaceuticals.
In 2009, China overtook the U.S. to become the largest buyer of new cars in the world, making it a critical market for the all-important German auto industry. Between 2005 and 2011, the Chinese auto sector grew by 24 percent annually. And since 2010, economic ties between Germany and China have strengthened. In fact, while Chinese spending in Central and Eastern Europe has grabbed the most headlines, it is in Germany and France that Chinese investments have really grown over the past decade. And Germany has, in turn, invested in China, with more than 500 German firms taking advantage of China’s low-cost production over the past five years.
This is why China plays such an important role in ensuring that the German economy doesn’t collapse during the current global downturn. While China is no replacement for the EU market, it can certainly mitigate the effects of shrinking U.S. demand. As the U.S. struggles to get the coronavirus outbreak under control, China seems to be gradually returning to business as usual. In June, for example, car sales grew by 11 percent, the third consecutive monthly increase, after months of decline. And unlike the U.S., which is becoming increasingly protectionist, China has actually been encouraging bilateral and multilateral partnerships.
In the long run, developing stronger ties with Beijing may get complicated, particularly because of human rights and security concerns, which are often high on the list of topics discussed during EU-China talks. In addition, while Germany and France, along with other Western countries, benefit from increasing economic links with China, Eastern European member states can’t say the same. Not only do they see limited economic advantages, but they also have an imperative to maintain a close strategic relationship with the U.S., on which they depend for their defense needs. And considering Beijing and Washington are currently embroiled in a trade war, it is unlikely that countries like Romania and Poland on Europe’s eastern frontier will accept a Brussels-backed shift to China that could put their relationship with the U.S. in danger.
But for the EU, reaching an agreement on geographical indications is a sign that it may be closer to signing a larger trade deal with China than with the United States. After all, Washington and Brussels failed to reach a similar agreement during talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Either way, the GI agreement seems relatively harmless. It secures the strategic German export relationship with China, promises more French sales in China and has gone virtually unnoticed by the Eastern Europeans. Along with hoping that the EU recovery plan works, it is the best Germany can do, for now.
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The Japan Times , Tóquio – 30.7.2020
China hawks gain ground among Japan's conservatives, long divided on Beijing
In March, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was forced to postpone plans to greet Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a state guest. Months later , the topic is still making waves.
Satoshi Sugiyama
In March, due to the spread of the novel coronavirus, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was forced to postpone plans to roll out the red carpet for Chinese leader Xi Jinping as a state guest. Four months later, the topic is still making waves within his party.
Earlier this month, a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers pushed for a resolution demanding the state visit be called off — a highly unusual moment that pitted the prime minister against his fellow party members at the Diet.
The clash between them speaks to a history of mixed views on the world’s second-largest economy among Japanese conservatives, who have been torn for years between longing to preserve a solid economic partnership and caution over its swelling diplomatic and military influence.
But with recent provocative moves by the communist neighbor in Hong Kong and the East China Sea, conservatives within the LDP are facing a reckoning moment, with moderates losing ground to hard-liners pushing the central government to step up its pressure on Beijing.
Abe extended the invitation to Xi at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Osaka last year, with the visit scheduled to be held sometime in April.
Even before the plan was derailed by the novel coronavirus pandemic, conservative hard-liners were adamantly opposed to it due to arrests of Japanese citizens on murky charges and repeated breaches of the territorial waters around the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. In March, the government announced the visit would be postponed for an indefinite period.
“We aren’t opposed to (Xi’s) state visit to Japan necessarily, but rather I think the current timing is not appropriate for the state visit given the circumstances,” said Yasuhide Nakayama, a Lower House lawmaker and director of the party’s foreign affairs division.
Mentioning that the Chinese government had sent government vessels to waters near the Senkaku Islands for over 100 straight days, he said, “I believe there are many Japanese citizens who feel intuitively that what’s happening in reality is incongruent with the noble goal of cultivating friendly relations between Japan and China.”
The state visit had been thought of as an opportunity for Abe to showcase improved Japan-China relations, and a milestone following the 2008 state visit by China’s then-leader Hu Jintao, but Nakayama compiled a resolution demanding for it to be canned altogether. His division had already filed two motions seeking condemnation of Chinese involvement in the crackdowns in Hong Kong.
The resolution came a week after China had passed a new security law for Hong Kong that would essentially strip its autonomy, and give Beijing greater power to suppress dissidents. It criticized the legislation’s passage, and pressed the Japanese government to issue work visas for Hong Kong citizens looking to relocate.
More importantly, it was the first time the party committee had asked the government to cancel the state visit in a resolution.
“Given the current situation in which the international community expresses grave concerns on the principles of liberty, human rights and democracy … the party’s foreign affairs division and research commission on foreign affairs have no choice but to request President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Japan be canceled,” the resolution stated.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Japan rebuked the resolution, describing it as “violent interference in (China’s) internal affairs.”
In fact, not even everyone from within the party was on board with it.
Several lawmakers, including the LDP’s Secretary-General Toshihiro Nikai, known for his pro-China disposition, were hesitant to use the phrase “request to cancel” explicitly with regard to the state visit in the resolution, and pushed for a milder phrase such as “to be reconsidered.”
The foreign affairs division spent two hours on July 6 debating the wording, but only five out of about 30 attendees sympathized with Nikai’s view and urged redaction or rephrasing of the term “request to cancel.”
Ryuji Koizumi, a Lower House member and director-general of the party’s international bureau, was among the lawmakers cautious about axing the state visit. While he understood the intention to adopt a resolution on the issue, and appeal to the Prime Minister’s Office, he feared doing so would damage Japan-China relations.
“There’s a possibility that communication with China would be cut off from now on, if we demand the government rescind the invitation to someone who represents China, as the head of the state, even though we are the ones who invited him,” he recalled having said at the meeting, in an interview with The Japan Times this week.
“If you want the Chinese to change their behavior, you need to communicate with them on a high level and deliver stern messages. (Demanding a cancellation) would abandon or reject the option (of changing China’s behavior) so I pressed (the division leaders) to modify the phrase.”
The division did partially dial back the phrasing, from “request the state visit be canceled” to “have no choice but to request the state visit be canceled.” The resolution was eventually passed by the division and was adopted at the party’s highest-ranking decision-making board on July 7.
But during a news conference the same day, Nikai sounded disgruntled. He scolded lawmakers calling for tough measures, noting that their predecessors had worked “tirelessly” to bring the two countries together and that they should be careful about their remarks and deeds.
Nakayama submitted the resolution and directly appealed to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga the following day. Suga said he would graciously accept it. The top government spokesman had said the government was prioritizing its response to the virus, and was not at the point of arranging the state visit.
Mixed views
Historically, views on China among Japanese conservatives — sometimes stereotypically associated with hard-line, right-wing activists who use inflammatory anti-China rhetoric — are not unified.
There are scores of lawmakers, including hard-line conservatives, who are vigilant of China’s expanding political, social, economical and military power. And there is also a group of conservative lawmakers who value economic cooperation, and push Japan to align with China.
In 1972, then-Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, a conservative heavyweight, normalized diplomatic relations with China.
By providing more than ¥3 trillion as foreign aid over 40 years, Japan embedded itself in the country’s sweeping economic boom and benefited greatly from it. China is the largest Japanese trading partner, has the largest number of overseas branches of Japanese firms in the world and contributes the highest number of tourists to Japan, totaling 9.59 million in 2019, according to the foreign ministry.
Although Tanaka died in 1993, his sympathetic view on China has been passed down through generations of LDP lawmakers, perhaps most notably Nikai, the LDP’s secretary-general.
A long-time advocate for foreign aid to China who has close relationships with high-ranking leaders in the Communist Party of China, Nikai is sympathetic to the country.
A recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies described his powerful faction as “the LDP’s pro-China group.” It further noted his experience serving as the prime minister’s special envoy to China to meet Xi in April 2019, two months before Abe extended the state visit invite, and support for the Belt and Road initiative, Beijing’s global infrastructure program that critics slam as a tool for its expansionist policy.
Masaya Inoue, professor of Japanese political and diplomatic history at Seikei University in Tokyo, said the resolution gave a glimpse into the power struggle inside the LDP: China-skeptic hawks have an advantage, and the conservative split within the party is not as evident as in the past.
A more accurate portrayal, Inoue added, would be that the party is in general skeptical of China, while small factions are resisting that view and urging for Japan-China relations not to be undermined.
In contrast with Tanaka’s pro-China force, former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda was opposed to the normalization of diplomatic relations with China.
In 2001, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, whose thinking aligned with the Fukuda faction, visited Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are among those honored, upsetting the Chinese.
Since that time, pro-China lawmakers in the LDP have been eclipsed. Abe and Nakayama, the foreign affairs division chief, align themselves with Fukuda’s viewpoints.
But speaking with The Japan Times last week, Nakayama disputed any suggestion that Nikai was complacent toward China. He shared an anecdote from his time as deputy secretary-general, a few years ago, when constituents confronted him for working under Nikai.
When he spoke with Nikai, seeking guidance on how he should respond to such an encounter, the secretary-general revealed why he had worked hard on a friendly approach toward China.
“He told me, ‘Hey Nakayama, I am often accused of being pro-China or fawning upon China, but can someone inside a wall hear what folks outside the wall are saying? You gotta go inside the wall and deal directly with someone who has authority like Xi Jinping. I’m working hard to get inside the wall,’” Nakayama said.
When he accompanied Nikai on two trips to China, he saw that his superior didn’t shy away from confronting Xi, top diplomat Yang Jiechi or Foreign Minister Wang Yi over issues such as the Senkaku Islands. Thinking about Nikai’s position now, Nakayama said he felt as if the former envoy had been stabbed in the back.
Turning point?
Despite his well-known hawkish views on national security, Abe has avoided hard confrontations with China.
Wedged between China and the United States, Abe has so far maneuvered Japan beneath the radar, avoiding antagonizing either global superpower.
After the national security law was passed, the government issued a statement calling the move “regrettable” and saying that it “undermines the credibility of the ‘one-country, two-systems’ principle.”
Abe’s close inner circle seems to influence his decision-making on China. The CSIS study noted that Abe’s senior adviser and former Ministry of Trade, Economy and Industry bureaucrat Takaya Imai was an individual who had “persuaded the prime minister to take a softer approach toward China and its infrastructure projects on business grounds.”
Considering Hong Kong, and worsening relations with the U.S. and Europe, Japan is unlikely to pursue advancing its relations with China as it had been eager to do through the state visit in April, said Inoue, the Seikei University professor.
China’s clampdown in Hong Kong would directly contradict Abe’s preference for “value-oriented diplomacy” emphasizing human rights and democracy, he said, suggesting the prime minister would therefore see little or no merit in pursuing the path.
At the same time, he said Abe was also unlikely to change his course of action toward China, as the U.S. has been doing.
“Regarding Japan’s foreign policy toward China, it has coincidently sought engagement during the containment,” Inoue said.
“As hard-liners within the party are applying pressure on the government (to take a tough stance), it’s going to take a realistic approach. Abe isn’t necessarily pro-China, so I believe he will be strategic and cautious about it.”
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