Top officials from the United States and China sit down for their first face-to-face meeting since President Joe Biden took office, testing the two countries' increasingly troubled relations. (March 18)
Top U.S. and Chinese officials offered sharply different views of each other and the world on Thursday as the two sides met face-to-face for the first time since President Joe Biden took office. In unusually pointed public remarks for a staid diplomatic meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Chinese Communist Party foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi took aim at each other’s country's policies at the start of two days of talks in Alaska. The meetings in Anchorage were a new test in increasingly troubled relations between the two countries, which are at odds over a range of issues from trade to human rights in Tibet, Hong Kong and China’s western Xinjiang region, as well as over Taiwan, China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea and the coronavirus pandemic.
U.S. and China hold high-level talks in Alaska. Yahoo Finance's Jessica Smith breaks down the details.
Sparring in a highly unusual extended back-and-forth in front of cameras, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan opened their meeting with China's top diplomat Yang Jiechi and State Councilor Wang Yi in Anchorage, fresh off of Blinken's visits to allies Japan and South Korea."We will ... discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies," Blinken said in blunt public remarks at the top of the first meeting."Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability," he said.Yang responded with a 15-minute speech in Chinese while the U.S. side awaited translation, lashing out about what he said was the United States' struggling democracy, poor treatment of minorities and criticizing its foreign and trade policies.
Taiwan will form its first travel bubble during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, the government said on Wednesday. Taiwan has kept the pandemic well under control thanks to early and effective prevention, but has kept its borders largely shut, and the bubble marks a small return to normality. Taiwan currently has only 29 active cases being treated in hospitals.
On March 11, an annual confab of functionaries rubber-stamped a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plan to gut most of what is left of Hong Kong’s democratic processes. At the “Two Sessions” meeting, or Lianghui, over 5,000 members of the CCP elite — members of both the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and the National People’s Conference — adopted the “Decision on the Improvement of the Electoral System of the HKSAR” by a vote of 2895–0, with one abstention. Party officials hailed the emergence of “a new democratic system with Hong Kong characteristics,” a facile denial of Hong Kong’s proud tradition of limited but vivid democracy. Indeed, what is coming is an electoral system in Hong Kong with Chinese Communist Party characteristics. The changes approved at the “Two Sessions” will restructure Hong Kong’s Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) in ways that will strengthen the CCP’s control over electoral processes. In addition to electing the chief executive, the EAC will now elect a larger proportion of the Legislative Council members and participate directly in the nomination of all candidates to the body. The most potent change is to introduce a pro-Beijing litmus test for candidates: Henceforth, their “patriotism” will now need to be established. Lo Kin-hei, chair of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, called this “the biggest regression of the system since the handover.” Xi Jinping’s motives behind the idea of “patriots ruling Hong Kong” are obvious. He and other CCP leaders believe that Hong Kong authorities have been overly tolerant of the democratic opposition for the past 20 years, giving Hong Kongers the impression they could arm-wrestle with the central government, which they imagine would not dare to turn the tables on them because of the interests of the so-called foreign powers in Hong Kong. The central government had been trying to make Hong Kong a positive example of “one country, two systems” to appeal to Taiwan. But while the model found no acceptance in Taiwan, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen used it to make waves in Hong Kong itself. Since Taiwan has made it clear that peaceful reunification is not possible, the role of Hong Kong as a model has become meaningless, and the Chinese central government has begun to gradually clean up the problems left behind by policy blunders when reformulating a new program for Taiwan. With a new American administration showing little inclination to soften the stiffer stance toward China established by President Trump, the relationship between China and the United States has deteriorated to the worst level since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. So patience has lost its rationale. Given this, it’s not surprising that the U.S. has condemned the CPP’s changes to Hong Kong’s internal governance. But other Western governments have joined the U.S. in its condemnations. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken tweeted that the changes “run counter to PRC international commitments,” and that “we stand with allies and partners speaking out for the rights and freedoms of the people in Hong Kong.” In a review of political conditions in Hong Kong, the European Union described an ”alarming political deterioration” and a “severe erosion of autonomy, democracy, and fundamental freedoms,” promising undisclosed “further steps” in response. The Group of Seven (G7) nations expressed “grave concerns” about the plan, predicting boldly that it would “stifle political pluralism.” A statement from the foreign secretary’s office said that the United Kingdom would now consider China to be in a state of ongoing non-compliance with the Sino-British Joint Declaration that was supposed to guarantee Hong’s Kong’s autonomy and rule of law until 2047. “China must act in accordance with its legal obligations and respect fundamental rights and freedoms in Hong Kong,” U.K. foreign secretary Dominic Raab said. But Beijing simply shrugged off this command, saying that Hong Kong’s electoral system was China’s internal affair. To the extent that the CCP addresses critics of its changes to Hong Kong’s governance, it does so in a manner consistent with its preference for defensive victim-narratives, claiming that these changes were forced upon the regime by external and internal threats. At the meeting of the National People’s Congress, Wang Chen, vice president of the body, explained that since the “anti-extradition legislation movement” in Hong Kong in 2019, anti-China forces and local radical separatist forces have openly advocated for “Hong Kong independence” and other anti-CCP ideas using election platforms, at both the Legislative Council and District Councils levels. Wang warned that democrats sought (gasp!) to take control of the Legislative Council through elections and to seize the right to govern Hong Kong. He claimed that “foreign forces” had openly interfered in Hong Kong affairs through consular offices, nongovernmental organizations, and other channels, and that the U.S. had even imposed brutal “sanctions” on Chinese officials, blatantly supporting and providing protection for “anti-China forces” in Hong Kong. In further delegitimizing democratic political actors and casting them as threats, the amendments suggest that additional mass arrests of pro-democracy and independence activists who are supposedly “anti-China and anti-Hong Kong” are coming. After the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law last July, there was debate among CCP elites over whether Beijing would immediately settle scores with the Hong Kong democratic opposition or deploy a tactical delay. Some believed that, in view of the potentially strong backlash against the law and widespread opposition from Western countries, Beijing should assess the law’s effectiveness over a period of time before deciding on the next step to take, as long as the opposition in Hong Kong did not cause trouble and boycott the Hong Kong government and the central government. These relative moderates thought the majority of opposition figures should be spared, except for a handful of black hands and ringleaders as a warning to others. But others believed that the “anti-extradition legislation” protests in Hong Kong had shocked Beijing too much, and since Xi Jinping had already introduced the national-security law against Hong Kong, he should liquidate democracy activists one by one. Now it is clear that Xi Jinping chose the second option. Soon after the promulgation of the National Security Law, Beijing launched a strike-hard “counter-offensive” against the democratic opposition in Hong Kong. Those who were active in the protests were invariably sought by the Hong Kong government (unless they had fled to Taiwan or the West). On the eve of the Two Sessions, Hong Kong courts have brought charges and arraigned 47 people in what Beijing has dubbed the “anti-China-and-ruin–Hong Kong 47 people China’s rebellion” case, the largest trial in the eight months since the implementation of the National Security Law. After enacting that law, Xi’s next move toward finally checkmating democracy in Hong Kong was revamping Hong Kong’s electoral mechanism. State-oriented Chinese scholars have publicly claimed that executive power will be firmly in the hands of “patriots,” effectively excluding “anti-China” forces from entering the governance structure. Space for “street politics — demonstrating and campaigning” to enter the political stage will be limited or even eliminated. Xi’s step-by-step approach to the subjugation of Hong Kong suggests that efforts to further cleanse the so-called Hong Kong independence factor and impose “patriotic” cadres in the education, media, and local community sectors will be next. His final step will be to require this newly “patriotic” Hong Kong government to build — that is, buy — political support by reducing wealth disparities and engineering employment and housing opportunities for the younger generation. Beijing is unlikely to publicly announce the abolition of the hollowed-out “one country, two systems” model, and it will even keep it after the 50-year transition period expires. However, the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong and the electoral-system revamp have rendered it a nullity. Economic integration with the mainland and the full political implementation of “patriots ruling Hong Kong” means there is no difference between Hong Kong and its counterparts in Shenzhen or Shanghai. Beijing does not care whether Hong Kong is a special trade zone or not. Immune to verbal assaults from the West, the CCP is confident of its power to deal with foreign capitalists and influence policy-makers in the West. Its leaders think they have done it successfully in the three decades following the 1989 Tiananmen incident, not only getting out of an unprecedented political crisis, domestically and internationally, but also emerging as a global economic leader. It is unclear how international capital will react to Beijing’s Hong Kong economic policy, and how capital will influence the West’s Hong Kong politics. What is clear is that the central government will never stop until the British and American legacy in Hong Kong is eradicated. The grim situation poses an unprecedented challenge to the democratic movement in Hong Kong as well as to those members of the international community who believe that all people deserve political freedom. Jianli Yang is the founder and president of Citizen Power Initiatives for China. Aaron Rhodes is the human-rights editor of Dissident magazine and the president of the Forum for Religious Freedom Europe.
The United States’ Cold War with China will determine the course of the next century. To sweep Chinese Communism into the ash heap of history, we must wage an economic long war through targeted decoupling and rigorous economic competition. Last month, I released a report detailing exactly how to achieve this objective. For three decades, Washington and Wall Street integrated our economy with China’s. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party perpetrated a devastating trade war against our nation. Through systemic cheating, theft, and espionage, China destroyed millions of American jobs and gained a dominant position in the manufacture of advanced technology and essential supplies. Our economies are now dangerously entwined, and the United States continues to fuel the growth of our greatest adversary. This must end. The United States must decouple our economy from China’s where we are vulnerable, retaliate against Chinese abuses, and rebuild America’s economic might, especially in essential supplies and high-tech manufacturing. The CCP uses America’s preferential trade treatment to wage a campaign of economic aggression. To confront this threat, the United States should rescind Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China. Ending PNTR would require Congress and the president to review China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) status annually. This would allow the U.S. government to restrict China’s access to the U.S. market on an annual basis, should it continue its assault on our companies and workers. A criminal regime that steals hundreds of billions of dollars of intellectual property a year, manipulates its currency, and dumps subsidized products worldwide does not deserve the certainty of preferential trade treatment. Next, we ought to sever China’s information pipeline for stolen intellectual property from American colleges and universities. China commits up to 80 percent of international intellectual-property theft and is the subject of nearly half of all FBI counterintelligence cases for economic espionage. Much of this malign activity occurs on American campuses and in American labs and research institutions. Yet in 2018–19, approximately 370,000 Chinese students were allowed to study in the United States — half of whom were enrolled in STEM courses. Chinese citizens still study at prestigious research institutions, American researchers participate in Chinese talent-recruitment programs, and CCP-aligned firms bankroll colleges, universities, and professors. This open access is unwise and ought to be restricted. The U.S. government should bar Chinese nationals from studying in STEM fields at the graduate or post-graduate level, prohibit Chinese funding of U.S. universities and research institutions, and end America’s satellite university system in China. This will minimize further theft and end the ridiculous and dangerous practice of welcoming Chinese military researchers into our nation’s most advanced laboratories. We must also terminate our reliance on China for essential supplies such as rare-earth elements, pharmaceuticals, and personal-protective equipment (PPE). China supplies 80 percent of America’s rare-earth imports — which are essential for high-tech manufacturing — and processes 85 percent of the world’s supply of rare-earth elements. China has used its leverage on rare-earth elements to extort concessions out of Japan and is now looking to curb rare-earth exports required for U.S. manufacturing of the F-35. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, China placed similar export curbs on pharmaceutical products and PPE. This strategic weakness must be quickly eliminated, and the production of essential products ought to be re-shored through Buy American requirements, tax incentives, and large-scale stockpiling. U.S. investment has subsidized the rise of China for 30 years. While we currently screen inbound investment from China, we lack a similar process for outbound U.S. capital. We should implement a strenuous review process to prevent U.S. investment in Chinese strategic industries and should prevent U.S. companies from using third parties to funnel money into China. Similarly, expansive export controls should be placed on advanced U.S. artificial intelligence, 5G telecommunications technology, and semi-conductors bound for China. Export controls would prevent China from pioneering and dominating these critical technologies of the future. The technology of tomorrow cannot be stamped with the words “Made in China.” These actions and others, detailed in my report, would successfully decouple the U.S. and Chinese economies in a targeted fashion. China is not like the Soviet Union — its power primarily emanates from its economic might and financial exploitation, not the extent of its nuclear arsenal or size of its tank divisions. This Evil Empire relies on our generosity, openness, and naïveté — and may crumble without it.
The World Health Organization gave China veto power over who would join the team investigating the origins of the novel coronavirus, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. That veto power was extended to any American scientists who applied to join the team. The Department of Health and Human Services recommended three scientists, including a virologist who is an expert on viruses that require high-security labs for study. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told the Journal that none of the Americans recommended for the team were accepted. However, one American who applied separately was accepted: Peter Daszak, president of the non profit EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak had spent years studying bat coronaviruses and has worked with Shi Zhengli, director of the Center for Emerging Diseases at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, one of two laboratories in the city of Wuhan researching bat coronaviruses. The EcoHealth Alliance, Daszak’s organization, diverted $600,000 in grants from U.S. National Institutes of Health to the WIV between 2014 and 2019 to study bat coronaviruses. U.S. officials and scientists were concerned about Daszak’s potential conflict of interest, amid speculation that the novel coronavirus may have escaped from a lab in Wuhan. Daszak provided the WHO with a conflict-of-interest statement, and the agency accepted him. Daszak also organized a public statement, published in the medical journal The Lancet and signed by a group of scientists, which ruled out the lab-leak hypothesis. The team of scientists who traveled to Wuhan included WHO researchers and was established as an independent body that would report its findings to the agency. China has not publicly identified most of its representatives on the team. The WHO shelved a planned report on the team’s findings in Wuhan earlier this month, following scientists’ calls for greater transparency. While in Wuhan, the team leader Peter Ben Embarek concluded that it was unlikely that the coronavirus first leaked from a lab, and that the WHO would probably not continue investigating the possibility. However, after leaving China, Ben Embarek said that the possibility of a lab lead was “definitely not off the table.”
The United States will take an uncompromising stance in talks with China on Thursday in Alaska, officials have said, in the first face-to-face meetings between senior officials from the two rivals since U.S. President Joe Biden took office. Beijing has called for a reset to ties, now at their lowest in decades, but Washington has said the Alaska talks will be a one-off, and any future engagement depends on China improving its behavior.
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The Biden administration began its first high-level in-person talks with rival China on Thursday, saying that Chinese actions threaten a global order based on rules and vowing that Washington would also stand up for its friends. "We do not seek conflict, but we welcome stiff competition, and we will always stand up for our principles, for our people, and for our friends," the U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said at the start of talks with Chinese counterparts in Alaska. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and State Councilor Wang Yi in Anchorage that the U.S. side would discuss its "deep concerns" about Chinese actions in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as cyber attacks on the United States and economic coercion of allies.
The head of a World Health Organization team working with Chinese colleagues to finish a long-awaited report into the origins of the coronavirus acknowledged its authors could face “pressures” but insisted the final product will have a unanimous green light from all of the team's science-minded members. Peter Ben Embarek, an expert on food safety and diseases that jump from animals to humans, said in interviews on Wednesday and Thursday that the team hopes the report -- now totaling some 280 pages and complete with graphs, dates and annexes -- will be ready for release next week. The report is a first-phase study that is expected to be followed by a more in-depth look as part of guidelines set by Chinese officials and the WHO team.
Russia will react if Bosnia takes steps towards joining NATO because Moscow would perceive this as a hostile act, the Russian embassy in Bosnia said in a statement on Thursday. Bosnia has long proclaimed integration with NATO and the European Union as strategic goals.
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Goldman is competing against Barclays PLC, which is the current issuer of JetBlue's credit cards and is in talks with the low-cost airline to hold on to the deal, the report said. JetBlue's contract with Barclays does not end for roughly another three years, and the airline may decide to stick with the British bank, according to the report.
Officials close to India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi are huddling with senior bureaucrats and foreign advisers to draw up a possible 2050 deadline for transitioning to net zero emissions, a Bloomberg News report says.
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