CHINAwatch

Implications of Nancy Pelosi's Taiwan visit

Exclusive live interview with RT on 2 August, 2022

How the Ukrainian Crisis Impacts on Eurasia Geopolitics and US-China Relations

A PowerPoint presentation to the EGN Founding Chairmen Group in  Hong Kong on 7 April, 2022.

Download How the Ukrainian Crisis Impacts on Eurasia Geopolitics US-China Relations including HK 

 

Building China 3.0 - Final Sprint toward the China Dream

The above named is a full lecture for the Ljubljana Confucius Institute, Slovenia, including Q & A, open to worldwide participation. The lecture (free of charge) was  simultaneously promoted by the World Strategic Insights based in Rome.

The Zoom lecture took place on Thursday, 17 February, 2022 at 0900 hours European time (1600 hours Beijing/Hong Kong time). The lecture attracted 135 applicants with 76 physically present, pandemics and other obstacles notwithstanding. 

Full details of the lecture's contents are here. A copy of the PowerPoint presentation in PDF format is as follows. Download Building China 3.0. A voice-over video recording of the PowerPoint lecture is here. Also re-published on World Strategic Insights based in Rome. 

Owing to time constraints, one question not given time to answer was on China's hukou (household registration) problem, which created a massive underclass of rural migrants. A podcast Caste aside: The future of China's peasants captures the conundrum. 

The ongoing hukou reform remains a huge, moving challenge. You can't flood the big cities with migrant, poorly-educated villagers. You can't leave them in limbo. Covered in the PowerPoint presentation is China's massive high-speed rail network expansion (doubling to 70,000 km), to connect ALL cities with a population of over 500,000 people, with modern motorways connecting ALL towns with population over 200,000 inhabitants, however remote, by 2035. Many fourth-tier cities and towns are in a largely rural region, including millions of villages. A great many are formed into inter-connected "urban clusters".(Slide 109 of 114) Along with the vibrant digital economy, this hopefully will provide many opportunities for the "rural" population. 

Dynamics and Repercussions of China's Rise and the Contest for Global Order

A PowerPoint presentation as talking points (on 22 December. 2021) for The Reorient! Podcast on international issues from an Asian perspective. 

Dynamics and Repercussions of China's Rise and the Contest for Global Order - Download

As mentioned in the Podcast, a feature of China's unexpected dominance is in state-of-the-art 21st century technologies of 5G, quantum computing, and AI (Artificial Intelligence), as flagged up by the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center in a Report The Great Tech Rivalry: China v the U.S. of December, 2021. by Graham Allison et al.

Accompanying the above is a simultaneous Report The Great Military Rivalry: China vs the U.S showing how the era of US military primacy is now over, with every domain —air, land, sea, space, and cyberspace contested by Russia and China. In the case of Taiwan, "China has the capability to deliver a fait accompli ..... before Washington would be able to decide how to respond", thanks to its sophisticated A2/AD (Anti-Access/Area Denial) capabilities. 

According to Ryan Haas, senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based Brookings Institution, in his December 2021 Global Asia article,

"the US and China residing within a single system, both deeply interconnected, neither capable of imposing its will on the other through threat or use of military force, and neither capable of mobilizing a bloc to counter the other — both sides will be pushed to find opportunities to gain relative advantage over the other in long-term competition." 

"the path to global leadership may not run through any attempt to “win” the US-China great power competition, whatever that entails. It may be the result of which power proves most capable of delivering solutions to challenges at home and abroad". 

China: Time of Xi - a 3-part TV documentary introducing President Xi's vision of the China Dream

Produced by Meridian Line Film and invested by Discovery Channel, the 3-part TV documentary was aired in the United States in 2017 before the latest Sinophobic tsunami. 

Suspicions of rose-colored spectacles aside, the documentary offers a useful introduction to what defines President Xi's concept of the China Dream.

The TV documentary is divided into three parts:

Part 1 Poverty alleviation, medical reforms, investment in education, and high-speed train network.      

Part 2 Supply-side reform, technological innovation, and environmental protection. 

Part 3 The Belt and Road Initiative and the concept of "Community of Common Destiny"

China's Sixth Party Plenum, the New Cold War, and the Contest for new Global Order

PowerPoint presentation to the EGN Founding Chairmen’ Group on 9 December, 2021. 

Download Sixth Party Plenum New Cold War and Contest for new Global Order

 

 

To avert mutual destruction with China, President Biden should move from "maximum confrontation" to "constructive re-engagement"

Relations between the United States and China have undergone many twists and turns since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

At first, America did not recognize the communist regime of Chairman Mao, preferring the defeated, self-exiled Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) in Taiwan. At the height of the US-USSR Cold War, President Nixon took advantage of the Sino-Soviet split to woo China to the American camp by recognizing the PRC as the One China in the United Nations, ditching Taiwan.

As China had been opening up under Deng Xiaoping, the United States helped bring the PRC into the World Trade Organization (WTO), in the hope that in due course, China could become a "Responsible Stakeholder" of the US-led global liberal order. US-China relations during his period is commonly regarded as "Engagement". 

As China continued to grow much stronger and more confident as the "Factory of the World", threatening America's dominance in some quarters, President Obama's administration launched the "Pivot to Asia', vaulting to redeploy some 60% of US military assets to the Asia-Pacific, with a view to America's Pacific Century  This represented a period of doubling down on an earlier "anti-Communism" strategy of "Containment", which took the form of encircling China militarily with a "First Island Chain" anchored in Okinawa and a "Second Island Chain" anchored in Guam. 

China overtook the United States as the world's largest economy in "purchasing power parity" (PPP) terms in 2017. Since then, not only has China not become more liberal, it is perceived to have turned more authoritarian under President Xi. Moreover, no longer a Factory of the World for cheap consumer goods, China is perceived to be eating America's lunch in e-commerce and high technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence. Its massive Belt and Road Initiative smacks of ambitions challenging America's global primacy. 

Fanned by such tomes as Michael Pillsbury's The Hundred Year Marathon - China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as The Global Superpower, a bipartisan consensus of a "China Threat" has festered, framing a rising China as "a dangerous juggernaut" of "illicit trade practices", bent on imposing its authoritarian ideology on the rest of the world and trying to usurp America's role as world leader. This has resulted in an era of Great Power competition without boundaries, a period of Maximum Confrontation and Maximum Competition, dramatized by President Trump but in some ways intensified under President Biden. 

The Biden-Xi virtual summit did not bridge the abyss between the two rivalling Great Powers. The vast chasm is calibrated in the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission's 539-page Report to Congress on 17 November . See Executive Summary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is depicted throughout as "deepening its embrace of aggression and coercion" in realizing its global ambitions. These include alleged "problematic" trade practices, "assertiveness" in the South China Sea, "military threats" over Taiwan, "human rights violations" in Xinjiang, "rolling back freedoms" in Hong Kong (a whole stand-alone chapter in the Report) , "state control" of private businesses, China's "military-industrial complex", and its growing nuclear arsenal. 

The Review flags up ten out of 32 recommendations, including prohibition or vigorous screening of China's Variable Interest Entities (VIEs) and affiliates, beefing up the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), reinforcing anti-ship and ballistic missile deterrence over Taiwan, creating a Technology Transfer Review Group (TTRG) to screen out harmful Chinese investments or technology transfers, measures to better protect key supply chains, tightened reporting of US companies in China, and strengthening the whole panoply of anti-China sanctions, including on Xinjiang products. 

Imbued with the "China Threat, the Review seems reminiscent of the Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington's 1996 grand thesis of post-Cold War conflict. The Review intones: "At stake in this clash of identities and sovereignty is the safety and security of the United States and its partners, friends, and allies. The CCP is a long-term, consequential, menacing adversary determined to end the economic and political freedoms that have served as the foundation for security and prosperity for billions of people."

The Review sees nothing less than a global combat between "democracy" and "authoritarianism". To "China hawks", the threat is more pressing as China would grow to become the world's largest economy by the early 2030s, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. 

With mid-term Elections looming next year, Biden cannot afford being seen to be weak on China. Softer rhetoric and limited cooperation on Climate Change aside, he looked anxious to find out how a "mortal combat" against China on all fronts could carry on without spiraling into a hot war. The three-and-a-half-hour Washington late-night team meeting, the room setting, and Biden's body language were tale-telling.

Meanwhile, a US-led virtual Summit for Democracy taking place in December signals a thinly-disguised US-led global anti-China coalition, as 100 democratic leaders and other "democratic wannabes" are being invited, excluding some democracies deemed friendly towards China.  Along with the United Kingdom and Canada, a diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics appears on the cards. To counter China's Belt and Road Initiative, on 1st December, a politically-regrouped European Union announced a 300-billion-Euro Global Gateway package of infrastructural projects for the developing world (quickly dismissed as "bullshit" in The Economist ).  

Amidst the West's heated contest with China, the obvious flash point is Taiwan, Beijing's top-most "redline". 

At the just-concluded Sixth Plenum of the CCP's Central Committee, President Xi reiterated the national goal of becoming a "strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country" by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the PRC. He made it plain that the China Dream would not be complete without Taiwan's unification, by peaceful means if at all possible. 

Taking note of China's expanded nuclear arsenal and hypersonic missile capabilities, the Review is apprehensive of Beijing's possible precipitous actions to recover Taiwan, notwithstanding Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley's recent Congressional testimony that China lacks full capability (or absolute confidence) to prevail over Taiwan by force before 2027. 

The overarching "China Threat", while understandable, needs more balanced assessment. . 

First, as the Review recaptures, China faces "a set of structural problems, including growing debt, income inequality, demographic decline, and technological dependence on the United States and other advanced democracies" as well as an increasingly hostile international environment. China's eventual advancement is by no means assured. 

Second, Beijing would be up against almost impossible odds if it tries to recover Taiwan by force. In a 2018 Cornell University book, "Unrivalled, Why America Will Remain the World's Sole Superpower", Michael Beckley, Fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard University, points out that only 10% of Taiwan's coastline is suitable for an amphibious invasion, which, of itself, remains the most difficult mission type in warfare history. Thanks to separation of waters, Taiwan's armies with missile and air defenses could easily degrade, outnumber, and overcome landing invaders, let alone US superior naval, submarine, air, and ballistic missile interventions.

This assessment may have emboldened both the Trump and Biden administrations to continue pushing the envelop, using "salami-slicing" tactics, to push Taiwan towards de facto full independence, while paying lip service to the "One China Policy". In this calculation, Taiwan is an unsinkable anti-Beijing aircraft carrier. 

However, now with the world's largest navy, much-enhanced "anti-access, area-denial" (A2/AD) capabilities, and state-of-the-art hypersonic weaponry, China's current military capabilities are a far cry from 2018. Moreover, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) won battles before against overwhelming odds, as in the case of its Anti-American Korean War. So the Review's apprehension is in order. Nevertheless, President Xi has repeatedly emphasized that China has strategic patience. Beijing is unlikely to invade unprovoked, let alone risking a nuclear conflict derailing the China Dream. 

Third, as Beckley argues, America has unsurpassed wealth, including high GDP per capita, unique geography, abundance of natural resources, positive demographics, advanced productivity, global military supremacy and the privileged dollar.  Albeit no longer able to call all the shots, the United States would remain pre-eminent and much richer than China for the next 50 years or more. Click here 

Fourth, the CCP's pervasive role is part and parcel of China's state-led model. It may be anathema to the West's "democratic" DNA, but it has proven its legitimacy by miraculously transforming the lives of the Chinese people, a fifth of humanity. Its support by the people is over 95%, amongst the world's highest, according to a July 2020 Harvard Kennedy School Study. As a regime, it deserves to be treated at least on an equal footing. 

Fifth, in many ways, China's perceived assertiveness in the South China Sea is to protect sea lanes of communication against US encirclement by the First and Second Island Chains. Perceived transgressions over Xinjiang are compelled responses to rampant ethnic terrorism and separatism; recent measures over Hong Kong were to avert rising subversive separatism; and those over Taiwan against deliberate attempts to test Beijing's "red lines". The Review Commission chair Carolyn Bartholomew seems not entirely fair in blaming China for putting the onus of improving relationships on the other side. Click here

The recent CCP's Sixth Plenum unveiled the blueprint for a new PRC 3.0. with President Xi as its architect. A "modern socialist nation" is being realized by 2035, a nation that is more innovative, self-reliant, fairer, greener, and more open to the world, supported by the New Development Concept, the Dual Circulation Strategy, Common Prosperity and the 14th Five Year Plan.

To find the right way for both countries to get along, President Xi suggested to President Biden a three-pronged approach: mutual respect, co-existence, and seeking a win-win outcome. 

With diametrically-opposed ideologies, the deep chasm between a rising China and the West implies a grave lack of mutual understanding and mutual trust. Each side seems unable to put itself in the other's shoes before resorting to precipitous action or rhetoric. To cross the divide, more bridges need to be built rather than destroyed by a maximalist confrontational mindset. After all, at the cost of moving both sides closer to the brink, maximum confrontation hasn't yielded any meaningful outcome. 

Examples of trust-building could include pandemic vaccine development, research, testing, production and distribution; renewal-energy smart grids, embracing The Future of Hydrogen, deployment of American technologies to exploit China's vast but geologically-challenged shale gas reserves; joint naval patrols in uncontested waters of the South China Sea; partnership in selected Belt and Road Initiative projects with US inputs in technologies, financing and corporate social responsibility; cooperative space missions with the nascent Tiangong Space Station, similar to space cooperation with the former USSR; academic, scientific, cultural and archeological exchanges; and more joint China-Hollywood film co-productions and distribution. 

I call these cooperative overtures "Constructive Re-engagement", as they could subtly help shape China's behavior for the better, while maintaining America's maximum competition in key areas. 

At the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore on 17 November, in a video conversation Dr. Henry Kissinger warned that while the Biden -Xi virtual summit was a good start, US-China relations have moved from "foothills of a Cold War"" to "a precipice from which it depends which direction is chosen." Both sides need to seek coexistence, which is not only desirable, but essential.

It is instructive that during the Cold War, the Johnson administration embraced Khrushchev's post-Stalin plan of peaceful coexistence in a joint campaign to successfully eradicate small pox, as Fareed Zakaria highlights in his 2021 book Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World (p.241) 

Right after the 1989 Tiananmen Square upheaval, I was invited to visit the United States in the summer of 1990 to share my thoughts about China's future as a US State Department sponsored "International Visitor". I was privileged to talk to Fortune 50 top corporate leaders including a one-on-one with Steve Forbes. I was reasonably optimistic about China's future then. I am much more optimistic about China's future now, including its ability to manage its Great Power rivalry with the United States. I am, however, conscious of a provoked traumatic transition with potentially-disastrous black swans.

A more benign outcome is possible if the United States is able to shift from "Maximum Confrontation" to "Constructive Re-engagement". 

CPC's Central Committee Sixth Plenum - What does it signify?

Backchat on Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) on 15 November, 2021 (The program is embedded in the top bar. My three interventions start from time counters 10:51, 24:54, and 34:45 respectively). 

Xi's Plan to build PRC 3.0 - November Party Plenum

Multiple headwinds are emerging across the globe against a rapidly rising and resurgent China. Many of its perceived pitfalls are flagged up by some of the world's renowned China specialists and thinkers in the July/August 2021 edition of Foreign Policy, headlined Can China Keep Rising?  Beijing appears to be rising to the challenge. 

At a YouTube webcast seminar of Washington D.C.-based CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) on 28 October, Freeman Chair Jude Blanchette and Andrew Polk, the co-founder and head of economic research at Trivium China, dissected President Xi's new policy framework for turning China into a "modern socialist nation" by 2035, including the New Development Concept, the Dual Circulation Strategy, Common Prosperity, and the 14th Five Year Plan. 

This is turning out to be a granular, and insightful take on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s 19th Central Committee Plenum from 8-11 November.

On the Plenum's likely focus on the Party's history, The Economist 's 4 November leader rightly intones that "To learn from the past, one must study it dispassionately", although its content busies itself with blackening President Xi as trying to "falsify history".

Fixating on party politics risks missing the big picture on the other side of the coin. According to the South China Morning Post of 7 November, "Xi may avoid altering or questioning past views of the party’s history and instead emphasize its achievements.". The Plenum is as much about the CCP's past as its future under his stewardship.  

The CSIS takeaways are that President Xi is NOT Mao 2.0 but the architect for PRC 3.0.(Mao/Deng/Xi), realizing the China Dream and the two Centenary Goals - (a) to become a moderately well-off (xiaokang) society by 2021, the centenary of the founding of the CCP; and (b) to become a "strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist country" by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the PRC.

All signs show that Xi is firmly in charge, rumors about local opposition aside. His Third Term seems assured. 

Already game-changing policies are emerging, including real estate deleveraging, a looming property tax , growth targets de-emphasized, and capital being steered away from monopolistic ''platform" behemoths.

On the cards are tax and fiscal reform, new data governance architecture, more aggressive policies to meet environmental challenges, possible opening of more sectors, or even some "nationalization".

Chances are that China would be able to overcome the Middle Income Trap through across-the-board technology and innovation. 

In face of herculean challenges, both domestic and external, China's trajectory is not straightforward and the final outcome not cast in stone. Partial success, or a mixture, cannot be ruled out. 

For example, the intense competition and demands of a "996" work culture (9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days a week) have spawned a 'tang ping" ("lying flat") "passive" attitude amongst China's Generation Z.

However, the term is somewhat misleading. The vast majority of China's youth are positive-minded, wanting to strive for a better future for themselves, their families and their country. Many just want to take better charge of their own lives, to pursue what they are good at, and to chase their personal dreams, including volunteering, as manifest in this video. This augurs well for a more diversified and inclusive society. 

One final take is that to overcome challenges ahead, unless provoked and backed into a corner, China is unlikely to invade Taiwan, as such a drastic move could easily mean all bets are off for China's developmental trajectory.

During his Congress testimony of 3 November, 2021, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley repeated his June 2021 testimony that China lacks full capability (or absolute confidence) to prevail over Taiwan by force before 2027. He thinks that the People's Liberation Amy (PLA) harbors no near-term intent to invade the Island, adding a caveat, however, that the unexpected could always happen! 

China calls U.S. intelligence review into origins of COVID-19 'political & false'

Live TV interview with Press TV on 31 October, 2021