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By STUART LAU
with PHELIM KINE
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GOOD TUESDAY MORNING. This is Stuart Lau watching China from the EU capital with you. Phelim Kine will be with you from the U.S. on Thursday.
LONDON LATEST
BEIJING’S BUDDY IS BACK: British politics took a dramatic turn on Monday. Former Prime Minister David Cameron was appointed as the new foreign secretary, succeeding James Cleverly. Cameron is no stranger to China watchers: Back in those days when he was PM, from 2010 to 2016, Cameron was the architect-in-chief of the U.K.’s so-called “golden era” with Beijing, a period that has since been declared over by his new boss, current PM Rishi Sunak.
Old wine in an old bottle: It remains unclear what Foreign Secretary Cameron’s view on China might be. (He offered no clue in his introductory tweet.) The track record, however, shows he’s remained a most ardent supporter of deepening U.K.-China ties ever since he stepped down amid the Brexit referendum.
Poster boy for Chinese interests: In 2017, just 15 months after he resigned as PM, Cameron came up with the idea of a $1bn UK-China investment fund, in talks with both Philip Hammond, the finance minister at the time and his close ally, as well as Chinese officials. The fund later came into existence — and Cameron took on the job as vice-president.
And from our own investigation: More recently, POLITICO’s Eleni Courea reported that Cameron was enlisted to drum up foreign investment in the controversial Colombo Port City project in Sri Lanka, which is a major part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, as well as strategic interests in the Indian Ocean.
PARLIAMENT IS SUSPICIOUS: “It is possible” that Cameron’s role in the fund was “in some part engineered by the Chinese state to lend credibility to Chinese investment, as well as to the broader China brand,” a damning report from Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee published in July this year concluded. The government, in response, said it “recognizes that Chinese recruitment schemes have tried to headhunt British and allied nationals in key positions and with sensitive knowledge and experience,” adding: “There is more work to be done.”
XI’S SEEN IT ALL: Perhaps the most memorable moment of Cameron’s China diplomacy as PM was when he hosted President Xi Jinping for a state visit in London. Standing in a pub just a few minutes away from Cameron's countryside residence at Chequers, Cameron got Xi a basket of fish and chips with a pint of Greene King IPA. Best of the Golden Era.
Critics’ corner: “Beijing got their man in King Charles Street,” said Luke de Pulford, of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. “I'm sure they'll be chuffed. But not so sure Cameron will be when he has to declare how much he has been paid to represent CCP interests since leaving Number 10.”
"Cameron will find Parliament has changed a lot when it comes to China," Alicia Kearns, Tory chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, told Bloomberg. "Relations with China are our foremost challenge and he is going to have quite a challenge getting foreign policy into the place where it needs to be going forward."
Solar panel problem: Meanwhile, Tory MPs are increasingly concerned about British dependence on Chinese solar panels. China has a "chokehold" on global supply of solar tech, said Alexander Stafford, a Conservative MP who sits on parliament's energy security and net zero committee. Abby Wallace, Eleni and Esther Webber have this story on POLITICO Pro.
BIDEN-XI MEETING IN CALIFORNIA
XI’S BON VOYAGE: The Chinese leader, Xi, is due to meet U.S. President Joe Biden in San Francisco on Wednesday for the first engagement in a year. Trade and economics, Taiwan and a multitude of geopolitical hotspots are expected to come up.
IRAN LOOMS LARGE: Biden's concerns about the Israel-Hamas war will spill over into his long-awaited face-to-face meeting with Xi on the sidelines of the summit for APEC leaders. When the two leaders meet at an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay area, Biden will urge Xi to use his influence with Tehran to prevent Iran and its proxies from exploiting the Israel-Hamas war to sow a wider regional conflict.
China's ties to Iran will be part of the "tough conversations" between Biden and Xi that will touch on all key aspects of U.S.-China relations, a second senior administration official said. They'll include discussions on climate cooperation, China's role in the U.S. opioid overdose epidemic and Beijing's alignment with Russia's war on Ukraine. Biden's goal is to "ratchet down the temperature" between the two countries, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a CNN interview on Saturday. You can read Phelim's full story here.
AI ON THE AGENDA? Biden and Xi will seal a deal to ban artificial intelligence from autonomous weapon systems, including drones, the South China Morning Post wrote on Saturday. "Think tanks and experts from China and the United States have been conducting discussions on the topic of artificial intelligence and exploring feasible ways to jointly address the security risks and challenges," said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu. The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.
U.S. technology firms have warned that Beijing is outspending the U.S. in a bid to integrate AI into military systems. Coincidentally — or not! —the State Department unveiled its new Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy on Monday. That declaration calls for governments "to commit to a collaborative, multilateral dialogue with diverse perspectives to address the full range of issues related to military uses of AI and autonomy," said a State Department statement. Will Xi sign on to that document while in San Francisco? Stay tuned.
HONG KONG ACTIVIST UNDER FIRE: Activists representing communities and ethnicities at odds with the ruling Chinese Communist Party will take to the streets en masse to protest Xi's presence in San Francisco this week. And self-exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Anna Kwok is facing a torrent of online threats and harassment after revealing she'll be joining those protests. Pro-Beijing accounts on the X platform "are threatening to 'bounty hunt' and are encouraging people to ‘drop her unconscious body at the Chinese consulate,'" the U.S.-based executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, and one of eight exiles that Hong Kong authorities have issued arrest warrants for, posted on X on Sunday. The synchronized timing of those threats suggests "coordination among the keyboard warriors to rile up pro-Beijing nationalism," Kwok told China Watcher.
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THREE MINUTES WITH …
MARGUS TSAHKNA, Estonia’s foreign minister was in Brussels on Monday to join a regular EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting. He sat down with Stuart to go through Beijing’s latest furor over Tallinn.
Background: China stepped up diplomatic pressure on Estonia last week, warning the Baltic nation and EU member not to let Taiwan open a new office in the country. The Chinese ambassador to Estonia warned at a meeting with chairman of the Estonia-China parliamentary group that she might leave the country once the office is opened.
That’s not all: Estonia also suspects a ship flying the Hong Kong flag of possible involvement in the man-made damage to undersea infrastructures between Estonia and Finland, two NATO countries.
Here’s what he told China Watcher, trimmed for clarity and space:
ON CHINA/TAIWAN: “Estonia has not changed China policy — it’s the one China policy as it has been,” he said. “We just gave allowance if anybody would like to establish the representation — economical representation — of Taipei, not Taiwan.”
— Nothing to see here, Beijing: “We have already in 20 different European Union countries, this kind of representation. So I think there is no change from our side, about our relations with China,” he said. “I see that we have this kind of relations — economic relations, cultural relations — between Europe and Taiwan, so it’s nothing extraordinary. And one of my priorities as foreign minister in the [current] government is to have a more active foreign economic policy. So let’s see what’s going to happen.”
— Is Estonia in favor of a Taipei office there? “We are not against that. But the Estonian government is not going to open that,” he said, stressing it would be the Taipei authorities’ decision. “If anybody wants to open that, then we’re not against it.”
— What about the ambassador’s threat? “I wasn’t there [in the meeting]. I have not met the Chinese ambassador about that,” Tsahkna said. “I don’t know what the ambassador really has said.”
OVER TO THE UNDERSEA DAMAGE: “Just a couple of days ago, we, together with Finland, handed over a note of legal cooperation to China. We do hope that China will be cooperative and we can get the opportunity to make more investigations.”
— How long will that take? “It depends of course on China — how cooperative China is,” he said. “We have to investigate as well [on] the question [about] the ship and the crew or the captain and so on.”
TACKLING CIRCUMVENTION OF SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA: “We’re working hard now about the [EU’s] 12th sanction package. Circumvention is to be more precise … so we have to follow all the different sanctions, mainly the transit through Russia to third countries, and there are many things we can do.”
EU-CHINA THIS WEEK
VON DER LEYEN SPEECH: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is set to make a speech on EU-China relations on Thursday. This comes just three weeks or so before she’s expected to visit Beijing, together with European Council President Charles Michel, to attend the EU-China Summit.
Last time she did it: She unveiled the EU’s strategy of “de-risking, not decoupling,” shortly before she traveled to Beijing for a trip with French President Emmanuel Macron to meet Xi. That concept went on to be embraced by the whole of the G-7 within just a few months, despite Chinese officials’ strong protest of the policy, which they view as merely a cover-up for decoupling.
CLIMATE CHIEF VISIT: The new EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra will start a visit to China on Wednesday. In Beijing, he will meet China’s outgoing climate envoy Xie Zhenhua and environment minister Huang Runqiu, and will also speak at an event explaining the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, more commonly known as CBAM, which Chinese policymakers routinely criticize as a tax on polluting Chinese industries. It will be Hoekstra’s first trip as the EU’s climate chief though he’s not new to the country: he last visited just half a year ago as the Dutch foreign minister, when the Netherlands was giving Beijing the heads-up for export restrictions on advanced Dutch semiconductor-making machines.
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
YELLEN, HE LIFENG TALK 'GLOBAL CHALLENGES': Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen concluded two days of talks on Friday with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, Beijing's new economic czar. The meetings focused on cooperation on issues including "climate change related economic" matters and debt restructuring for countries struggling under massive Chinese loan burdens, said a Treasury Department statement published on Friday. He "demanded earnest actions" from Yellen on issues including "sanctions on and suppression of Chinese enterprises, export controls against China, and extra tariffs," Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday.
The meeting was a follow-up to Yellen's Beijing trip in July to reestablish bilateral communications ruptured by heightened U.S.-China tensions. "It’s critical to be able to pick up the phone and know that you will have a good response on the other end and that we can trust one another to work together and cooperate," Yellen said in a post-meeting press conference on Friday. He invited Yellen to Beijing to continue that dialogue in 2024.
STATE SLAMS BEIJING'S 'HARASSMENT' OF PHILIPPINES: The State Department has criticized the Chinese Coast Guard’s "repeated harassment" of Philippine vessels in Manila's territorial waters in the South China Sea. Chinese Coast Guard interceptions of Philippine Coast Guard resupply missions to a Philippine outpost on the Second Thomas Shoal are "inconsistent with international law and follow a pattern of dangerous operational behavior in the South China Sea," said a State Department statement published on Friday. Manila accused Beijing of a pattern of “extremely reckless and dangerous harassment at close proximity” of its resupply missions, per the Philippine News Agency on Friday. Beijing is defiant. "The China Coast Guard took necessary enforcement measures against the Philippine ships in accordance with law," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Friday.
MANY THANKS: To editor Christian Oliver and producer Seb Starcevic.
This email was sent to rouf@idiot.cloudns.cc
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