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By PHELIM KINE
with STUART LAU
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Hi, China Watchers. Today we unpack how concerns about China's threat to NATO are competing with discussions about Ukraine at the alliance's summit in Washington, dish on Taiwan's concerns about being left off the Republican National Committee's party platform and profile a book that argues that the series of international crises over the past four years has pushed the Biden administration's focus on China to "a competition on autopilot in the background."
Let's get to it. — Phelim.
NATO RALLIES AGAINST CHINA’S ‘SYSTEMIC CHALLENGES’
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As leaders at NATO's 75th anniversary summit in Washington this week talk about supporting Ukraine's struggle against Russia — China's role in supplying the equipment Moscow needs to continue that war is also getting a lot of attention. And those conversations are highlighting the ways Beijing is a growing threat to the alliance — both in Europe and in the Indo-Pacific.
NATO's had enough. The summit communique warned that China poses "systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security" including through alignment with Russia, its growing nuclear weapons stockpile and pervasive cybersecurity threats. The communique urged Beijing to "cease all material and political support to Russia's war effort" and cease its "coercive tactics and efforts to divide the alliance."
Gloves off. That's a sharper message to Beijing than what NATO delivered in its 2023 summit communique. Last year's document held out the hope that China would "play a constructive role" in ending the Ukraine conflict and would "condemn Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine." NATO's message to China in 2024 instead holds Beijing responsible for the war's continuation with goals antithetical to peace in Europe. "The declaration we have agreed today is the strongest message NATO allies ever sent on China’s contributions to Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine… we also make it clear that this will impact China’s interests," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Wednesday.
All in for Kyiv. Summit participants also dismissed Beijing's narrative that it's an honest bystander to Russia's aggression seeking peace rather than geostrategic advantage from the conflict. China's leadership – along with that of Iran, and North Korea — "all support Russia's war — they all want NATO to fail so the outcome of this war would shape global security for decades to come," Stoltenberg said in a speech Tuesday.
Next stop, the Indo-Pacific. Senior U.S. officials echoed the links between Beijing and Russia's war in Ukraine. And the need for NATO solidarity against China exploiting the conflict to its advantage. "We should not expect that the PRC and the DPRK, or Iran for that matter, are supporting Russia for free — we're watching carefully to see what Russia provides these countries in return and what impact that has on the security of the Indo-Pacific and other parts of the world," national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in a speech Tuesday.
Domino effect. NATO countries near the front lines of the Ukraine war also expressed concern about how a Russian victory could strengthen China's geopolitical hand. A defeat for Ukraine "doesn’t only mean that the security in Europe will be worse — it will be much worse globally, because it will also encourage China to be more assertive and aggressive," said Czechia's President Petr Pavel at a NATO Public Forum event on Wednesday. Pavel urged fellow NATO members to support the U.S. "in their competition with China in all areas around the globe."
Destination Tokyo. There are signs that NATO members want to more directly confront those threats with a presence on China's doorstep. Sweden's Foreign Minister Tobias Billström urged the alliance to "move forward with a liaison office in Tokyo" in an interview with Foreign Policy on Tuesday. That's an idea first raised last year but which died after France reportedly opposed the expansion of NATO operations to the Indo-Pacific as being outside of the alliance's charter that limits it to Europe.
Beijing wants NATO to back off. The alliance is "inserting itself into the Asia-Pacific to incite confrontation and rivalry," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said Wednesday.
NATO isn't waiting. The presence of Indo-Pacific NATO partners Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand at the summit allowed the alliance to get a head start on tightening links necessary to push back a possibly expansionist Beijing in the years to come. The leaders of those four countries will go home with NATO commitments to deepen cooperation in areas including cyber defense, countering disinformation and the use of artificial intelligence.
**As NATO leaders gather in Washington for a tumultuous three-day meeting, POLITICO's reporters will blanket the summit, and will come back with details on the public declarations as well as gossip from the corridors. Join us online on July 12 at 4 p.m. CEST, register here.**
TRANSLATING WASHINGTON
— TAIWAN TICKED OFF OVER RNC SNUB: For the first time since 1980, Taiwan didn't rate a mention in the Republican National Committee's party platform released this week. Compare that with the platform in 2016 (the GOP didn't produce one in 2020) that described the island as a "loyal friend" and pledged to "help Taiwan defend itself." The RNC's exclusion of Taiwan in the platform came despite intensive outreach by Taiwan's diplomatic outpost in Washington, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, to persuade GOP allies to get Taiwan into the platform, two people familiar with that effort told China Watcher. China Watcher granted the two anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss U.S.-Tawan issues on-record.
Messages shared with China Watcher between a former U.S. government official perceived as friendly toward Taiwan and a senior TECRO official included that official's (unsuccessful) pleas that the platform reference Taiwan's importance to Indo-Pacific security. That omission has prompted deep concern among officials at Taiwan's outpost in Washington, the same two people said. Those officials fear domestic political reprisals back home from opposition politicians who may seek to "assign blame on someone at TECRO for having lost momentum in D.C." with a GOP heading for potential victory in the November presidential election, said one of the sources.
The RNC didn't respond to requests for comment. TECRO denied any such communications. "We do not concur with your unverified presumption regarding TECRO's engagement with the Republican National Committee or our attitudes toward its draft platform," TECRO spokesperson Sabina Chang said in a statement Wednesday. The diplomatic outpost's "long standing practice is that we do not comment on the draft comment that is pending to be approved at the RNC next week," Chang said.
— TREASURY TOUTS 'DEFENSIVE ACTIONS' AGAINST CHINA: The Treasury Department is mulling a new raft of "defensive actions" to protect U.S. industries from a potential glut of low-cost Chinese imports fueled by the country's industrial overcapacity. "The traditional toolkit of trade actions may not be sufficient — more creative approaches may be necessary to mitigate the impacts of China’s overcapacity," Treasury's Under Secretary for International Relations Jay Shambaugh said at a Council on Foreign Relations event Wednesday. The Biden administration has relied on tariffs to curb the flow of lower-cost Chinese imports in recent years and wants to "incentivize China to change those policies" behind that trade, Shambaugh said. Beijing won't budge. "We urge the US side to respect the international economic and trade order and rules, stop politicizing economic and trade issues, abusing various procedures and tools such as the 301 tariff review, suppressing Chinese products and shifting blame," said Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu.
TRANSLATING EUROPE
NEW DUTCH GOVERNMENT WILL STAY TOUGH ON CHINA: The new Dutch government intends to continue with the established policy to be forward-leaning in handling the China challenge.
Speaking to Stuart at the NATO summit, the Netherlands' new Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said Europe acted too late to face the reality from Beijing's threats. "It’s good that we now have put sanctions on some of the Chinese entities … that are helping to circumvent sanctions, and … providing dual-use goods. I think we should have done it earlier. But now at least we have done it," he said. "Russia has changed its tactic from a three-day war to now a three-year war, but it might become a three-decade war, because they know that the support of China is endless."
The Netherlands played a key part in teaming up with the U.S. and Japan last year to impose restrictions on Dutch semiconductor giant ASML exporting high-tech machines to China, out of fear of Chinese production of dual-use items.
CHINA SEEKS TO CONFRONT EU TARIFFS: Beijing’s Ministry of Commerce said Wednesday it is launching a probe into EU investigations, an apparent retaliation for recent EU probes of Chinese companies.
“The Ministry of Commerce will conduct a trade and investment barrier investigation into the relevant practices adopted by the EU in its investigation of Chinese enterprises,” the ministry said on its website. AFP has more.
AROUND THE NATO SUMMIT
CHINA'S TROUBLING TECH EDGE. The possibility of Beijing gaining a geostrategic edge over NATO through its investments and advances in areas including AI is troubling some alliance members. "I’m not afraid if the U.S. is going to win the [technology] race, but if China is going to win this race, then I am afraid," Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the NATO Public Forum on Wednesday. Competing with China on tech requires the alliance to build "much stronger partnerships outside NATO" including with "our friends and partners from Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand," Frederiksen said.
A GENERATIONAL CHALLENGE: Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned senior NATO officials on Wednesday that China's rivalry with NATO will persist for decades. "What’s going on with Russia is a warm up for the rest of this century…[competition] with China is going to go on for the rest of this century, and the United States and Europe will be able to compete with China if we join together," Risch told NATO officials from Denmark, Estonia and Czechia at the NATO Public Forum event on Wednesday.
HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE
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— WHAT STABBINGS? BEIJING'S SAFE TOURISM CAMPAIGN: The Chinese government has responded to a recent pair of knife attacks on foreign citizens with a campaign that stresses the safety and convenience of China travel. That includes a video featuring an unidentified Western commentator posted to X by China's ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, that asserts the biggest risk to foreign visitors is weight gain due to Chinese food consumption. Lin at the Chinese Foreign Ministry followed that up on Tuesday by touting a "China travel boom" linked to "an open and inclusive Chinese society, and the warm and hospitable Chinese people." That rhetoric follows growing concern that Chinese state-sanctioned online anti-foreigner content may have fueled the recent attacks.
TRANSLATING CHINA
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— CHINA'S THIRD PLENUM ECONOMIC POLICY: Senior Chinese policymakers will convene in Beijing to consider Chinese leader Xi Jinping's economic policy plans at the four-day Third Plenum meeting starting Monday. Xi's challenge: Emerge from the long-delayed meeting with a viable plan to reboot the country's ailing economy. Victor Shih, an expert in Chinese elite politics at UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy, told China Watcher what's at stake.
Clamor for change. Xi is wrestling with a sputtering economy hobbled by a growing array of tariffs on Chinese exports and export restrictions on items including high-tech semiconductors. Government stimulus measures haven't reversed that economic slide. "There is increasingly a chorus of people within the government, and also outside experts and industry folks saying that some reorientation of economic policy is necessary," Shih said.
No silver bullet. Xi has limited tools to address systemic economic problems including low domestic consumption, massive local government debt levels and a collapse of the real estate sector, which was a pillar of economic growth for decades. Bold initiatives carry risk. "The question is whether it’s going to be just putting on a few more bandages on the very serious problem of local government debt or whether it’s going to be a big reorientation of policy," said Shih.
Xi's policy options include government spending cuts, which would cut into Beijing's military expansion efforts and support for state industries, or raising corporate and personal income taxes. "But if you tax businesses a lot more, are they still going to want to be in China? And if you tax personal income tax more, then the wealthy people who are already leaving China will leave in droves," Shih added.
Spillover risk. A significant economic policy shift could "affect the flow of money into and out of China and affect the price of export goods made in China," Shih said. The Biden administration is watching closely to see if Xi maintains the industrial policies that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says are fueling overcapacity and therefore threatening U.S. manufacturers. Doubling down on those policies "is going to mean that [Chinese] electrical vehicles are going to be even cheaper than they are today and that could elicit an even bigger response from the rest of the world," in terms of tariffs, Shih said.
HEADLINES
NPR: 5 years ago they protested for freedom in Hong Kong. They want us to remember them
Wall Street Journal: China reopened to foreign students. Americans are staying away.
Taipei Times: Taiwan in Time: A soldier's homecoming, 34 years late
ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS
| Portfolio |
The Book: The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump
The Author: Alexander Ward is a national security reporter at POLITICO
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
What were the key components of the Biden team's efforts to retool the U.S. China policy in line with administration members' self-declared mission to "save the world"?
Biden and the people in his orbit felt that the U.S. had fallen behind in the competition with China, especially diplomatically and technologically. So, as part of the broad competition, they devised two separate but interlaced plans: get allies on board with countering China and leverage partnerships to secure America's centrality to global business and supply chains. The U.S. could do a lot against China alone, but it could do more with allies and partners.
How fair are criticisms that Biden's China policy is mostly an extension of President Trump's?
It's fair to a point: Trump paved the way for Biden to compete against China robustly, securing bipartisan support for the long road ahead. But there's a key difference, and that — again — is allies. Trump for most of his presidency had the U.S. take on China alone. Biden's innovation — if we can call it that — was having more backup in the all-encompassing battle. That said, there are far more similarities than differences in both men's China policies.
How has the series of foreign policy crises and their fallout over the past four years — Afghanistan, Ukraine, Gaza — affected Biden's ability to adequately focus on China?
The Biden administration, like any administration before it, can handle multiple crises at once. But what so many at once do is sap attention away from the Big Bad — China — making it harder for Team Biden to build up political momentum and space for long-term moves.
While China remains the top U.S. foreign policy priority, it is now mostly a competition on autopilot in the background, no longer the front-and-center marquee fight that it was at the start of 2021.
Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at pkine@politico.com.
Thanks to: Heidi Vogt and digital producers Emma Cordover and Dean Southwell. 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 slau@politico.com
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