China’s ambassador soars from White House outcast to CCP powerbroker

What's next in U.S.-China relations.

Nov 03, 2022 View in browser   By Phelim Kine Qin Gang, China's ambassador to the U.S., spent months dealing with only a handful of Biden administration officials. His recent elevation to the CCP's Central Committee now puts him in President Xi Jinping's inner circle. | Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo Hi, China Watchers. This week we unpack the implications of the Biden administration's diplomatic cold shoulder to Chinese ambassador to the U.S., Qin Gang, and parse the latest Covid lab leak theory. And we probe the American origin story of Xi Jinping's ideology czar and profile a book that dishes on the rapidly expanding Chinese surveillance state. Let's get to it. — Phelim   DON'T MISS POLITICO'S 2nd ANNUAL DEFENSE SUMMIT ON 11/16: The United States is facing a defining moment in the future of its defense, national security and democratic ideals. The current conflicts and developments around the world are pushing Washington to reshape its defense strategy and how it cooperates with allies. Join POLITICO for our second annual defense summit, "At a Crossroads: America's Defense Strategy" on November 16 in person at the Schuyler DC or join online to hear keynote interviews and panels discussing the road ahead for America's national security. REGISTER HERE .     When Chinese ambassador QIN GANG arrived to take up his post in Washington, D.C. in July 2021, his claim to fame was his sharp-elbows and wolfish rhetoric . Fifteen months later, China's paramount leader XI JINPING has promoted Qin to one of the ruling Chinese Communist Party's top leadership bodies and he may be on a glide path to replacing WANG YI as foreign minister in the coming months. That's a problem for the Biden administration because the White House has restricted Qin's access to high level U.S. officials for months, according to two people I talked to for a story this week. Rather than targeting Qin with a charm offensive aimed to win his trust — or at least lessen his hostility — the Biden administration has stoked Qin's resentment with the snub. "I think he's going to go back to Beijing with a pretty big chip on the shoulder for not having been treated with the dignity and respect he felt he deserved," said RYAN HASS, former director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia at the National Security Council, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The White House insisted that senior officials have regularly engaged with Qin. "Senior White House officials — along with senior officials from across the administration — continue to engage regularly with Ambassador Qin since his arrival in Washington, as part of our efforts to maintain open lines of communication" with China, said spokesperson ADRIENNE WATSON. Some argue the administration may already be ruing its reluctance to engage. "Somebody got this wrong in our system — either [Qin] was more influential than we appreciated and we should have known that or he somehow snuck onto the Central Committee without us understanding that was possible," said the former administration official. "But either way, if we'd known what we know now, we probably would have operated a bit differently and put in a little bit more energy in trying to build some trust with him." You can read my full story here . Midterm elections face Chinese disinformation threat Chinese state-backed operations to disrupt the Nov. 8 midterm elections are in full swing. Over the past five weeks, social media platforms and cybersecurity firms have warned that Chinese state-backed networks have joined veteran Russian and Iranian operators in spreading online disinformation designed to undermine voter confidence in the U.S. election process. Twitter busted three China-based networks that were "amplifying politically polarizing topics," the Washington Post reported Tuesday . The cybersecurity company Mandiant reported last week that a Chinese government-aligned influence campaign named Dragonbridge was spreading messages designed to "discredit the U.S. democratic process." Those messages aimed to weaponize "narratives regarding racial strife and social injustice," Mandiant said in a statement. Facebook's parent company, Meta, announced last month that it had detected the first midterms-related "Chinese-origin influence operation" on its platforms. The company said it targeted "U.S. domestic politics ahead of the midterms," without elaborating. The cybersecurity firm Recorded Future also noted the uptick in Chinese-origin online election-related disinformation. "This recent activity signifies a shift in tactics from previous US. elections, where China's influencers were less active in attempts to influence U.S. voters," the company said last month . "The most surprising thing is that it's taken this long for China to decide to play in the game [with such intensity]," PAUL ROSENZWEIG, former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security and founder of Red Branch Consulting, told China Watcher. "The Russians got the idea first; they demonstrated a proof of concept and now the Chinese are following along because they see it works and that Russia paid a very low price [for being implicated in disinformation operations]." TRANSLATING WASHINGTON — GOP LAWMAKERS SLAM F-15 SQUADRON WITHDRAWAL: A quartet of GOP lawmakers including Senators MARCO RUBIO (R-Fla.) BILL HAGERTY (R-Tenn.) and Reps. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-Texas) and MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.) want the Pentagon to rethink a plan to withdraw a squadron of F-15 fighter aircraft from its current base in Okinawa, Japan. "This move undermines efforts to deter a potential attack on Taiwan by the Chinese Communist Party's People's Liberation Army and may be perceived by Beijing as a sign of weakness," the lawmakers said in a letter sent Tuesday to Defense Secretary LLOYD AUSTIN. — WANG YI BARKS AT BLINKEN: Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN got an earful from Chinese Foreign Minister WANG YI in a phone call on Sunday. Blinken focused on the need to "maintain open lines of communication," said a State Department statement . In the Chinese Foreign Ministry's readout of the call Wang accused the U.S. of "containment and suppression against China," vented about the Biden administration's new export restrictions on semiconductors and demanded the U.S. "not create new obstacles" to bilateral ties. Wang Yi's assertiveness likely reflects a new sense of empowerment after his appointment to the CCP Politburo in last month's 20th Party Congress. — BEIJING: LAB LEAK THEORY A 'SMEAR': Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson ZHAO LIJIAN on Monday called a Senate report supporting the Chinese lab leak theory on Covid-19's origins a "smear." The report , produced by the GOP minority on the Senate Committee on Health Education, Labor and Pensions, concluded "The Covid-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident." A Vanity Fair-ProPublica collaboration story based on data in the Senate report reaped ridicule on Twitter for alleged inaccuracies including mistranslations of Chinese phrases drawn from postings by staff at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. "We are continuing to report on questions raised online about how the committee characterized those postings and will update our story as needed," ALEXIS STEPHENS, a ProPublica spokesperson, told China Watcher in an email. — PENTAGON FLAGS CHINA'S MILITARY THREAT: China remains America's largest military competitor, the Pentagon announced in a trio of highly anticipated strategy papers released in one fell swoop, POLITICO's PAUL MCLEARY and BRYAN BENDER reported last week . The National Defense Strategy, Nuclear Posture Review and Missile Defense Review were for the first time being combined into one sprawling document that reiterated the Pentagon's assessment of China as the "pacing threat" to the U.S. and its allies. That compared to an appraisal of Russia as an "acute threat," and a Iran, North Korea, terrorism and climate change as urgent security concerns. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson WANG WENBIN said the U.S. assessment of a China threat " smacks heavily of Cold War & zero-sum mentality ." Hot from the China Watchersphere A policeman and a policewoman guard after the opening ceremony of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Tiananmen Square on March 3, 2012 in Beijing, China. | Feng Li/Getty Images — NETHERLANDS TARGETS ILLEGAL CHINESE 'POLICE STATIONS': The Dutch government has ordered the closure of two facilities in Amsterdam and Rotterdam respectively allegedly operating as illegal operation centers for Chinese security forces. Dutch authorities have launched a probe of the locations "to find out their exact activities," Dutch Foreign Minister WOPKE HOEKSTRA tweeted on Tuesday. Zhao at China's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that they were dedicated merely to assisting Chinese citizens in the Netherlands "to get their driving licenses renewed and receive physical check-ups." — CANADA FRETS CHINESE STATE INFLUENCE OPERATIONS: A senior Canadian Security Intelligence Service official has warned that Chinese government influence operations are targeting Canadian elected officials and ethnic Chinese communities. "We are concerned about the activities regarding threats against the security of Canada, including foreign interference by the Chinese Communist Party," MICHELLE TESSIER, CSIS' deputy director of operations, told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday . TRANSLATING CHINA             Phelim Kine/POLITICO — THE WORLD ACCORDING TO WANG HUNING: One of the Xi loyalists promoted last month to the Politburo Standing Committee was the political theorist WANG HUNING. Wang serves as the CCP senior leadership's ideological " brains behind the throne ." He played a central role in developing Xi's signature " China Dream " propaganda campaign which promises " to build China into a great modern socialist country ." Wang now sits at the CCP's apex of political power. Wang may tap for inspiration the lessons of his 1988 academic visit to the U.S., which took him to more than 30 cities in six months. Wang penned an exhaustive account of his trip – citing everyone from Karl Marx, Alexis de Tocqueville and Samuel P. Huntington – in an English-language book titled "America Against America." The book is part time capsule, part unedited doctoral thesis gone awry, but it renders insights into Wang's perception of a country that he declared "constitutes a special phenomenon of humanity in the twentieth century." Here are some snapshots: America the rich: China's GDP totaled only $312 billion in 1988 compared with $17 trillion in 2021, and Wang marveled over America's abundance of cars, telephones, computers and credit cards, declaring them a "driving force and a channel for political socialization and political communication." America the innovative: "Americans are also the most innovative people in the world. This society has more inventions, bolder and more courageous visions than any other society." America the arrogant: "Technological superiority has gradually developed into national superiority, and they cannot imagine that any nation can surpass them." America the decadent: "I'm afraid that American 'sexual liberation' has reached its peak. There is nothing left for future generations to discover. Pornographic magazines have exposed everything about men and women." America the weak: "The shadow of the Empire of the Sun is looming over the United States. The Japanese now have control over the U.S. economy. The American system, which is generally based on individualism, hedonism and democracy, is clearly losing out to a system of collectivism, self-[sacrifice] and authoritarianism." HEADLINES Semafor: " A former employee's complaint prompts Republican calls to investigate The China Project, an American news company " National Review: " Chinese Diplomat Cornered and Berated Congressional Aide at Other Embassies' Events " Asia Times: " Thinking through the China hype " HEADS UP  BIDEN-XI G-20 SIDELINE MEETING CLIFFHANGER: Will they or won't they? Neither side is confirming any plans for a long-anticipated face-to-face meeting between Biden and Xi on the sidelines of the G-20 in Bali next month. And as of just two weeks ago, Beijing was stonewalling U.S. efforts to solidify that rendezvous by refusing to discuss a possible agenda. There may not be clarity until hours before the actual meeting. One Book, Three Questions St. Martin's Press The Book: Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of  Social Control The Authors: Wall Street Journal reporters Josh Chin and Liza Lin.  Chin is the paper's deputy bureau chief in China; Lin is a China correspondent based in Singapore. What is the most important takeaway from your book? That state surveillance is more seductive than you probably think. If you're a Chinese dissident or a Uyghur living in Xinjiang, the systems the Communist Party have built are as dystopian as anything Orwell wrote about – more so, arguably. But if you're a well behaved, middle-class Han Chinese person living in a wealthy coastal city, the system works for you. It optimizes transportation, automates bill payments, and keeps undesirables from loitering on the sidewalks. It makes your life smoother, safer, more predictable. At least until you find yourself opposed to something the government is doing – or get stuck in a Covid lockdown — then you get a taste of the dystopian side of things. What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching and writing this book? One discovery that really struck us is how surveillance technology doesn't need to actually work to be effective. It turns out China's surveillance state is a propaganda exercise as much as it is a technological undertaking. So many of the amazing surveillance stories we read in Chinese state media turned out to be exaggerations, even fabrications, once we dug into them. But if you're the government, it doesn't ultimately matter whether all 400 million of your cameras can really recognize faces, or whether you have an actual system for scoring behavior. If you can make people believe you're all-seeing, then they'll act as if you are. What does your book tell us about the trajectory and future of U.S.-China relations?   The Chinese Communist Party's exploitation of surveillance technologies to crush dissent, particularly in Xinjiang, has helped elevate the influence of human rights in U.S.-China relations in a way we haven't seen since the Tiananmen Square massacre. Meanwhile, China's model of high-tech authoritarianism is gaining appeal in the Global South as an alternative to democracy. Both developments add an immense amount of pressure on Washington to find new ways to contend with Beijing. Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com. Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Matt Kaminski, Paul McCleary, Bryan Bender, and digital producer Andrew Howard. Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Would you like to contribute to China Watcher or comment on this week's items? Email us at pkine@politico.com or chinawatcher@politico.com.   Follow us

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