Tag: China

Biden wants Poland’s opinion — but he still has the power

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MUNICH — NATO’s eastern flank has found its voice — but Joe Biden’s visit is a reminder that Western capitals still have the weight.
After Russia bombed its way into Ukraine, the military alliance’s eastern members won praise for their prescient warnings (not to mention a few apologies). They garnered respect for quickly emptying their weapons stockpiles for Kyiv and boosting defense spending to new heights. Now, they’re driving the conversation on how to deal with Russia.
In short, eastern countries suddenly have the ear of traditional Western powers — and they are trying to move the needle.

“We draw the red line, then we waste the time, then we cross this red line,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said over the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, describing a now-familiar cycle of debates among Ukraine’s partners as eastern capitals push others to move faster.
The region’s sudden prominence will be on full display as U.S. President Joe Biden travels to Poland this week, where he will sit down with leaders of the so-called Bucharest Nine — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
The choice is both symbolic and practical. Washington is keen to show its eastern partners it wants their input — and to remind Vladimir Putin of the consequences should the Kremlin leader spread his war into NATO territory.
Yet when it comes to allies’ most contentious decisions, like what arms to place where, the eastern leaders ultimately still have to defer to leaders like Biden — and his colleagues in Western powers like Germany. They are the ones holding the largest quantities of modern tanks, fighter jets and long-range missiles, after all.
“My job,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Munich, is “to move the pendulum of imagination of my partners in western Europe.”
“Our region has risen in relevance,” added Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský in an interview. But Western countries are still “much stronger” on the economic and military front, he added. “They are still the backbone.”
They’re listening … now
When Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece entered politics over a decade ago, she recalled the skepticism that greeted her and like-minded countries when they discussed Russia on the global stage.
“They didn’t understand us,” she said in an interview earlier this month. People saw the region as “escalating the picture,” she added.
Latvian Defense Minister Ināra Mūrniece | Gints Ivuskans/AFP via Getty Images
February 24, 2022, changed things. The images of Russia rolling tanks and troops into Ukraine shocked many Westerners — and started changing minds. The Russian atrocities that came shortly after in places like Bucha and Irpin were “another turning point,” Mūrniece said.
Now, the eastern flank plays a key role in defining the alliance’s narrative — and its understanding of Russia.
“Our voice is now louder and more heard,” said Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu.
The Bucharest Nine — an informal format that brings together the region for dialogue with the U.S. and occasionally other partners — is one of the vehicles regional governments are using to showcase their interests.
“It has become an authoritative voice in terms of assessment of the security situation, in terms of assessment of needs,” Aurescu said in an interview in Munich. NATO is listening to the group for a simple reason, he noted: “The security threats are coming from this part of our neighborhood.”
Power shifts … slowly
While the eastern flank has prodded its western partners to send once-unthinkable weapons to Ukraine, the power balance has not completely flipped. Far from it.
Washington officials retain the most sway in the Western alliance. Behind them, several western European capitals take the lead.
“Without the Germans things don’t move — without the Americans things don’t move for sure,” said one senior western European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
And at this stage of the war, as Ukraine pushes for donations of the most modern weapons — fighter jets, advanced tanks, longer-range missile systems — it’s the alliance’s largest economies and populations that are in focus.
“It’s very easy for me to say that, ‘Of course, give fighter jets’ — I don’t have them,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told reporters earlier this month.
Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” | Omar Marques/Getty Images
“So it’s up to those countries to say who have,” she said. “If I would have, I would give — but I don’t.”
And even some eastern countries who have jets don’t want to move without their Western counterparts.
Asked if his country would supply Kyiv with F-16 fighter jets, Morawiecki conceded in Munich, “we have not too many of them.” He did say, however, that Poland could offer older jets — if the allies could pull together a coalition, that is.
Another challenge for advocates of a powerful eastern voice within NATO is that the eastern flank itself is diverse.
Priorities vary even among like-minded countries based on their geographies. And, notably, there are some Russia-friendly outliers.
Hungary, for example, does not provide any weapons assistance to Ukraine and continues to maintain a relationship with the Kremlin. In fact, Budapest has become so isolated in Western policy circles that no Hungarian government officials attended the Munich Security Conference.
“I think the biggest problem in Hungary is the rhetoric of leadership, which sometimes really crosses the red line,” said the Czech Republic’s Lipavský, who was cautious to add that Budapest does fulfill NATO obligations, participating in alliance defense efforts.
Just for now?
There are also questions about whether the east’s moment in the limelight is a permanent fixture or product of the moment. After all, China, not Russia, may be seizing western attention in the future.
“It’s obvious that their voice is becoming louder, but that’s also a consequence of the geopolitical situation we’re in,” said the senior western European diplomat. “I’m not sure if it’s sustainable in the long run.”
A second senior western European diplomat, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal alliance dynamics, said that the eastern flank countries sometimes take a tough tone “because of the fear of the pivot to China.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Asked if the war has changed the balance of influence within the alliance, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said: “Yes and no.”
“We have to defend our territories, it is as simple as that,” she told POLITICO in Munich. “In order to do so we had to reinforce the eastern flank — Russia is on that part of the continent.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has also reiterated that western alliance members play a role in defending the eastern flank.
Asked whether NATO’s center of gravity is shifting east, he said on a panel in Munich that “what has shifted east is NATO’s presence.”
But, he added, “of course many of those troops come from the western part of the alliance — so this demonstrates how NATO is together and how we support each other.”
And in western Europe, there is a sense that the east does deserve attention at the moment.
“They might not have all the might,” said the second senior western European diplomat. “But they deserve solidarity.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
German chancellor vows ‘leadership’ with call to further arm Ukraine

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MUNICH — Countries able to send battle tanks to Ukraine should “actually do so now,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Friday, trying to rally support for a Europe-wide fleet of tank donations.
Speaking at the opening of the Munich Security Conference, a gathering of global political and security leaders, Scholz said “Germany acknowledges its responsibility for the security of Europe and the NATO alliance area, without ifs and buts.”
This is, he added, “a responsibility that a country of Germany’s size, location and economic strength has to shoulder in times like these.”
Concretely, the chancellor said Germany would “permanently” adhere to the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of its economic output on defense — a target that Berlin is currently set to miss this year and probably also next year, despite a massive €100 billion special fund for military investment.
Germany needs to boost its defense industry and switch to “a permanent production of the most important weapons we are using,” the chancellor added.
Scholz’s remarks came just hours after his defense minister, Boris Pistorius, told reporters in Munich Germany must commit to even higher spending targets to follow through on its security pledges.
“It must be clear to everyone: It will not be possible to fulfill the tasks that lie ahead of us with barely two percent,” Pistorius said.
Western allies are gathering in Munich for a series of high-level talks focused primarily on the war in Ukraine, one year after Russia invaded the Eastern European country.

Scholz said it would be “wise to prepare for a long war” and to send a clear message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that he’s making “a miscalculation” if he is counting on Ukraine’s Western allies eventually growing war-weary and pulling back from their military support.
The German chancellor said Ukraine’s allies with German-made, modern Leopard 2 tanks in their stocks should join Berlin in delivering them to Ukraine, adding that his government would use the three-day Munich conference to “campaign intensively for this.”
The German chancellor himself hesitated for months over whether to send Leopard 2 tanks, only changing course last month, when he vowed to build an international alliance that would give Ukraine 80 of the German-built tanks.
But he is struggling to deliver on that commitment. Some allies like Finland are dragging their feet on tank donations, while others like Portugal are not sending as many as Berlin had hoped.
Other countries like Poland or Spain are only sending an older version of the tank, the Leopard 2 A4. Scholz said he hopes “some more will also join” Germany in sending the more modern Leopard 2 A6.
Scholz also said that Germany “will do everything it can to make this decision easier for our partners,” offering to provide logistical support or training Ukrainian soldiers on the tanks. “I see this as an example of the kind of leadership which everyone is entitled to expect from Germany — and I expressly offer it to our friends and partners.”
Just before Scholz spoke, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that “speed is crucial,” underscoring the German leader’s point.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
NATO chief to Europe: Time to talk China

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MUNICH — Wake up, Europe. We must face the China challenge.
That was NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s message on Saturday for the global security elite gathered at the Munich Security Conference.
The military alliance chief directly linked Russia’s war in Ukraine to China, hinting at concerns about Beijing launching a war on Taiwan, the self-governed island Beijing still claims.
“What is happening in Europe today,” he cautioned, “could happen in east Asia tomorrow.”
Moscow, Stoltenberg underscored, “wants a different Europe” while Beijing “is watching closely to see the price Russia pays — or the reward it receives for its aggression.”
“Even if the war ends tomorrow,” he added, “our security environment is changed for the long term.”
Stoltenberg’s remarks come against the backdrop of a broader conversation among Western allies about how to approach China as it makes revanchist military threats toward Taiwan and pumps up its own industries with government help.
While countries like the U.S. have pushed allies to keep a closer eye on Beijing and distance themselves from China’s economy, others have expressed caution about turning China into such an unequivocal enemy.

The NATO chief warned that Western allies must act united on both the military and economic fronts.
“The war in Ukraine has made clear the danger of over-reliance on authoritarian regimes,” he noted.
“We should not make the same mistake with China and other authoritarian regimes,” he said, calling on the West to eschew its dependence on China for the raw materials powering society. He also warned against exporting key technologies to the country.
And while focusing on external adversaries, Stoltenberg also implored NATO allies to avoid internal squabbling.
“We must not create new barriers between free and open economies,” he said.
“The most important lesson from the war in Ukraine,” he added, “is that North America and Europe must stand together.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
The Senate passed two resolutions unanimously condemning the incursion of a balloon from China into U.S. airspace.

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Congress has managed to stay united in condemning the incident.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 16, 2023
Journalist held without trial in China said to need urgent medical attention

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Advocates for a Chinese journalist and activist who has been held in detention without trial for almost 18 months have said she needs urgent medical attention.
Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing, a labour rights activist, were detained in September 2021 and formally arrested a month later. They have been accused of inciting subversion of state power, and held in Guangzhou without access to family or lawyers.
Advocates and human rights groups have said the pair should never have been arrested. This week they said information had been brought to them that raised concerns about Huang’s health in particular. They said they were told she has lost a lot of weight, stopped menstruating, and is suffering from untreated long-term conditions and deficiencies.
“It is of great concern that these conditions, if not treated promptly and appropriately, have the potential to gradually cause permanent damage to the body,” they said.
The advocates also accused authorities of “trying to exert mental pressure and physical torture” of Huang, through repeatedly waking her at night for interrogation and depriving her of sleep.
“These circumstances are only the tip of the iceberg of what we can learn about Huang Xueqin’s detention situation,” the advocates said. “Due to the inability to learn more about Xueqin’s current appointment of official lawyers, it is difficult for us to obtain information on her physical and mental health and the progress of the case.”
The Guardian contacted the Guangzhou No 2 detention centre, but an employee said he was not aware of the case and declined to comment.
Huang is an independent journalist and was a prominent voice of the #MeToo movement in China. She and Wang were detained at Wang’s house shortly before Huang was scheduled to leave China for the UK to begin a master’s at the University of Sussex. Dozens of their friends and contacts were questioned by public security officials in subsequent weeks, in a manner the US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders organisation described as harassment and interrogation.

“Those interrogated shared afterward that authorities downloaded the contents of their smartphones for investigation and pressured them to sign fabricated testimonies asserting that Huang and Wang had organised gatherings at Wang’s apartment to discuss politically sensitive topics,” the organisation said.
William Nee, a researcher at the organisation, said the latest news of Huang’s health was “alarming”. “She should never have been detained in the first place, but this now adds extra urgency for the Chinese government to release her,” Nee said.
He said Huang was a “victim of incommunicado detention, which is a gross human rights violation”.
Under an increasingly authoritarian environment in Xi Jinping-ruled China, human rights groups, activists, lawyers and protesters are increasingly targeted by authorities, with growing concerns about the number of detentions, arrests, interrogations and convictions.
Li Maizi, a veteran feminist activist in Beijing, said feminists were particularly targeted. “Once you are a feminist, you are a feminist activist. You are going to be stigmatised as a traitor, a Hong Kong movement supporter, [as] are trying to divide our country,” she said.
Li said Guangzhou used to be a “free space” for activism but had become “very hostile” in the last decade, prompting many to leave.
“I think Huang Xueqin’s case is under this background,” Li said.
Additional reporting by Amy Hawkins
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
Putin is staring at defeat in his gas war with Europe

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There’s more bad news for Vladimir Putin. Europe is on course to get through winter with its vital gas storage facilities more than half full, according to a new European Commission assessment seen by POLITICO.
That means despite the Russian leader’s efforts to make Europe freeze by cutting its gas supply, EU economies will survive the coldest months without serious harm — and they look set to start next winter in a strong position to do the same.
A few months ago, there were fears of energy shortages this winter caused by disruptions to Russian pipeline supplies.

But a combination of mild weather, increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a big drop in gas consumption mean that more than 50 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas is projected to remain in storage by the end of March, according to the Commission analysis.
A senior European Commission official attributed Europe’s success in securing its gas supply to a combination of planning and luck.
“A good part of the success is due to unusually mild weather conditions and to China being out of the market [due to COVID restrictions],” the official said. “But demand reduction, storage policy and infrastructure work helped significantly.”
Ending the winter heating season with such healthy reserves — above 50 percent of the EU’s roughly 100bcm total storage capacity — removes any lingering fears of a gas shortage in the short term. It also eases concerns about Europe’s energy security going into next winter.
The positive figures underlie the more optimistic outlook presented by EU leaders in recent days, with Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson saying on Tuesday that Europe had “won the first battle” of the “energy war” with Russia.
EU storage facilities — also vital for winter gas supply in the U.K., where storage options are limited — ended last winter only around 20 percent full. Brussels mandated that they be replenished to 80 percent ahead of this winter, requiring a hugely expensive flurry of LNG purchases by European buyers, to replace volumes of gas lost from Russian pipelines.
The wholesale price of gas rose to record levels during storage filling season — peaking at more than €335 per megawatt hour in August — with dire knock-on effects for household bills, businesses’ energy costs and Europe’s industrial competitiveness.
Gas prices have since fallen to just above €50/Mwh amid easing concerns over supplies. The EU has a new target to fill 90 percent of gas storage again by November 2023 — an effort that will now require less buying of LNG on the international market than it might have done had reserves been more seriously depleted.
“The expected high level of storages at above 50 percent [at] the end of this winter season will be a strong starting point for 2023/24 with less than 40 percent to be filled (against the difficult starting point of around 20 percent in storage at the end of winter season in 2022,” the Commission assessment says.
Analysts at the Independent Commodity Intelligence Services think tank said this week that refilling storages this year could still be “as tough a challenge as last year” but predicted that the EU now had “more than enough import capacity to meet the challenge.”
Across the EU, five new floating LNG terminals have been set up — in the Netherlands, Greece, Finland and two in Germany — providing an extra 30bcm of gas import capacity, with more due to come online this year and next.
However, the EU’s ability to refill storages to the new 90 percent target ahead of next winter will likely depend on continued reduction in gas consumption.
Brussels set member states a voluntary target of cutting gas demand by 15 percent from August last year. Gas demand actually fell by more than 20 percent between August and December, according to the latest Commission data, partly thanks to efficiency measures but also the consequence of consumers responding to much higher prices by using less energy.
The 15 percent target may need to be extended beyond its expiry date of March 31 to avoid gas demand rebounding as prices fall. EU energy ministers are set to discuss the issue at two forthcoming meetings in February and March.

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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )

February 16, 2023
China claims US balloons flew over Tibet and Xinjiang as spying row rumbles on

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Diplomatic friction has worsened between the United States and China after Beijing claimed, without evidence, that US high-altitude balloons flew over its Xinjiang and Tibet regions, and threatened unspecified measures against US entities for undermining Chinese sovereignty.
Washington and Beijing are locked in a tussle over flying objects after the US military this month shot down what it called a Chinese spy balloon over the coast of South Carolina. Beijing said it was a civilian research vehicle mistakenly blown off course, and that Washington overreacted.
This week, China has claimed US balloons have flown over its airspace without permission more than 10 times on round-the-world flights since May 2022. The White House has disputed this. Beijing has not produced any evidence or specifics of its claims, but on Wednesday claimed US balloons were spotted over the highly securitised regions of Tibet and Xinjiang where Beijing is accused of extensive human rights abuses against the non-Han population.
“Without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities, it has illegally flown at least 10 times over China’s territorial airspace, including over Xinjiang, Tibet and other provinces,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin told a regular daily briefing on Wednesday.
The US deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, reiterated that China’s claims about US balloons were false.
“They have now said that there have been a gazillion balloons by the US over China. That is absolutely not true. There are no US government balloons over China,” she told an event at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Wang also accused Japan’s government of making “unfounded allegations” after the saga prompted the defence ministry in Tokyo to reanalyse sightings of unidentified aerial objects since November 2019.
The ministry announced late on Tuesday that new analysis “strongly” suggested they were Chinese spy balloons and it had “strongly demanded China’s government confirm the facts”.

Wang accused Japan of “smearing” China “without any solid evidence … China has repeatedly shared information on the unintended entry of a Chinese civilian unmanned airship into US airspace. Japan should adopt an objective and just position, view this unexpected incident caused by force majeure in the right way, and stop following the US’s suit in dramatising it.”
Washington has added six Chinese entities to an export blacklist over connections to Beijing’s suspected surveillance balloon programme. Wang called the sanctions illegal. “China is firmly opposed to this and will take countermeasures against relevant US entities that undermine China’s sovereignty and security in accordance with the law,” Wang said, without specifying the measures.
The balloon dispute has delayed efforts by both sides to try to patch up frayed relations, although Joe Biden, the US president, has said he does not believe ties between the two countries have been weakened.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who postponed a planned trip to Beijing over the balloon, is considering meeting China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, in Munich this week, sources have said.
His deputy, Wendy Sherman, said on Wednesday that communication with China had not stopped but gave no details about any future high-level meetings.
“We hope when conditions make sense that we will be seeing each other face-to-face again. No announcements today,” she said.
With Reuters
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
Divided government threatens to clip wings of Congress’ China hawks

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“The worst mistake we could make is for our China positioning to be dictated by the House of Representatives. There aren’t a lot of thoughtful policy makers over there. We should make our own policy,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Biden administration officials are set to give a broad China briefing to senators Wednesday afternoon, after holding two straight classified briefings on the Chinese spy balloon and three unrelated aerial craft shot down by the military. Those meetings have shined a bright light on bipartisan concern over China’s surveillance capabilities, putting Beijing front and center as the 118th Congress gets off to a slow start.
Yet there are already signs that translating bipartisan worry into legislation would be a struggle. Even senators who are cheerleading further action to hold Beijing accountable — such as re-upping provisions to boost competition with China that Democratic leaders scrapped from last year’s semiconductor bill — talk about their priorities with at least some doubt.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a brief interview Tuesday that “there’s desire to do some of it, if we could,” but observed: “we’ll see where the House is.” A Schumer spokesperson later added that last year’s legislation “was a major step forward to improving American competitiveness, but we need to do more.”
Lawmakers originally had high hopes for that legislation, known as the CHIPS Act, as a way to stand up to China. But the final version did little more than subsidize microchips, with leadership taking out more China-specific provisions in order to ease passage through both chambers after more than a year of bicameral debate.
Now, senators are eager to take up those scrapped measures, despite the added problem of partisan gridlock. Senators say even provisions that won bipartisan support last year, such as a trade compromise meant to cut costs for American manufacturers, are unlikely to go anywhere this term.
“The very strong vote we saw on the [trade provisions] is hard to remove from support that was behind” the broader bill, said Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.). “That was offered as an amendment, and as a standalone, it would be difficult this Congress to get that through, but I think we should try.”
And the prognosis isn’t looking better elsewhere. The Foreign Relations Committee’s top two senators are planning to introduce an updated version of a bill that would challenge China’s economy by strengthening U.S. competitiveness. But senators were clear there’s still a lot of details they’re ironing out.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), chair of the foreign relations panel, said that Democratic and Republican panel staff are meeting to draft the legislation. He added that he plans to meet with House Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) “on a broad range of issues.”
“I would like to think from my conversations that there is bipartisan, bicameral interest” in addressing China, he said.
Suzanne Wrasse, a spokesperson for Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the top Republican on the panel, called bipartisan efforts to boost competition with China a “work in progress” but said the “hope is that this Congress we can avoid another badly broken legislative process on the Senate floor.”
On the other side of the Capitol, a spokesperson for McCaul said he is part of the discussion on the potential legislation but had no further details to share about the negotiations. A spokesperson for the Ways and Means Committee, the counterpart to the Senate Finance Committee that worked out the trade compromise last year, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Meanwhile, the House is on recess until the end of the month, and the Senate is set to be out next week.
Not everyone is so pessimistic about the chances of moving legislation. Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and ranking member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) both said on Tuesday they’re hopeful at least some of the provisions — like removing tariffs on imports from developing nations and goods used by American manufacturers — could be revived this year.
And Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, was optimistic that a substantial bipartisan committee vote on China competition legislation could lead to movement on the Senate floor.
As for the prospects of passage in the House, Kaine said “this may be one of the bills where it actually helps for the Senate to go first.”
On the national security side, Democrats and Republicans on both sides of Capitol Hill have sought to nudge the Pentagon to better posture U.S. forces in the Pacific in order to deter Beijing. Leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services panels have sounded the alarm over China’s military modernization and nuclear expansion, and they’ve made the country a priority as they craft annual defense legislation.
Emerging from a classified briefing on Tuesday, some senators also argued Congress should fund improvements in “domain awareness” so the military can better track slow-moving or low-flying objects.
“I think all of this is gonna provide a wake-up call and hopefully motivation to authorize and appropriate money to get on it,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who had an unidentified object shot down off the coast of his state last week.
“I think it’s a revealing moment for the American people who haven’t been tracking this that this country, their leadership, has no problem looking at the whole world, including the American people, and lying their ass off,” Sullivan added of the spy balloon. “And that’s dangerous.”
There’s also been bipartisan consensus on arming Taiwan as concerns grow that China could be rapidly building its military capability to invade the self-governing island in the coming years.
Defense policy legislation enacted in December incorporated a swath of provisions proposed by Menendez and Risch aimed at beefing up Taiwan’s defense. Lawmakers notably voted to step up arms sales to Taiwan, greenlighting $10 billion in security assistance over the next five years.
“If there’s one thing that seems to unify Republicans and Democrats today it’s addressing the China threat, and the spy balloon probably got everybody’s attention like nothing else,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
Yet he underscored the huge scope of “the challenges we face” on the issue beyond the balloon episode: “an aggressive China, not only economically, but also building a huge military and nuclear arms threat to not only Taiwan … but also to the region and the rest of the world.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 16, 2023
Parliament says China is committing a genocide. Why were officials planning to meet one of the perpetrators? | James McMurray

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The oppression of the Uyghurs and other Turkic and Islamic minority people in China’s Xinjiang region has come into stark focus over the past five years.
First, minorities were interned in “re-education facilities” for indeterminate periods. Then came evidence of Chinese “minders” being sent to live with Uyghur families and report on their behaviour, of checkpoints on pedestrian streets, face-scanning cameras, the enforced installation of state spyware on personal phones, forced controls on fertility and the closing or demolition of mosques and other religious sites. Throughout all this, a man named Erkin Tuniyaz has been a leading official in Xinjiang’s regional government, and an enthusiastic defender of this “Sinicisation” of Islam. Since 2021, he has been the formal leader of the entire region.
Yet none of this stopped British Foreign Office officials from planning to meet with Tuniyaz during a visit to London – a visit that has now been cancelled, after hurriedly arranged protests, condemnation by prominent politicians from the Labour and Conservative parties, and calls for his arrest under torture laws. News of the cancellation came not in an official announcement, but rather from the Inter-parliamentary Alliance on China, which tweeted that it had heard the news from government sources. This is characteristic of the whole affair: Tuniyaz’s visit was initially announced only in an email to activist groups , and his schedule was never published.
The furtiveness of the planned visit implies that the Foreign Office was fully cognisant of how unwholesome it was. Tuniyaz is not a peripheral figure in the mistreatment of Xinjiang’s minority peoples. Indeed, he has been a vocal defender of the mass internment camps there. The British government was aware of this: it has previously condemned the mistreatment of Xinjiang’s minorities and sanctioned other Xinjiang officials – including Tuniyaz’s deputy, Chen Mingguo – for their roles in the outrages that parliament has recognised as a genocide. In return, China has sanctioned many of our politicians, activists and academics for speaking out about the situation in Xinjiang.
That Tuniyaz is himself Uyghur is no irony. Rather, his role as chairman is a product of the Chinese state’s cynical use of complicit members of minority groups to provide a veneer of equality and representation to Beijing’s rule of Xinjiang. As elsewhere in China, the government is subordinate to the party. While Xinjiang’s chairmen have always been Uyghurs, the party secretaries to whom they are subordinate have – with a single exception in the 1970s – always been Han, China’s dominant ethnic group. Chairmen like Tuniyaz are simply the face of policies decided on by party secretaries.
It is likely that it was intended that Tuniyaz play a similar role in his visit to London, which was only one of his intended stops in Europe to “discuss this situation in Xinjiang”. In the face of the backlash, these trips have also been cancelled. However, the fact that they were planned at all suggests that Beijing was hopeful that the attention of the world had moved elsewhere, and it could begin to put behind it the scrutiny it has faced over the treatment of the Uyghurs. Given the willingness of British officials to meet Tuniyaz, such hopes may not have seemed farfetched.
Erkin Tuniyaz has been a vocal defender of Xinjiang’s mass internment camps. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP
The British government was slow to act on the abuses in Xinjiang from the start, imposing sanctions only after years of campaigning from brave Uyghur exiles and other human rights activists. Among those who attended a protest against Tuniyaz’s visit outside the Foreign Office on Monday was Rahima Mahmut, a longtime Uyghur activist, singer and translator. As with other vocal Uyghurs living in the west, her decision to speak out over the years has had terrible consequences – she can neither return home, for fear of arrest; nor contact her family there without putting them at further risk. Many Uyghurs living in the UK simply will not discuss Tuniyaz’s visit with journalists, fearful of drawing the attention of Beijing which, in its well-documented efforts to silence criticism from abroad, is fiercely engaged in efforts to control the discourse around Xinjiang. Tuniyaz’s planned visit can only be seen as a part of those efforts.
The cancellation of Tuniyaz’s visit is testament to the bravery and commitment of those who fought against it. But it also attests to the inconsistency of Britain’s approach. There should have been no meeting to cancel in the first place – Tuniyaz, as a defender and an overseer of the abusive policies in Xinjiang, should not be allowed to walk the streets of London. As the protesters argued on Monday, the British government should be listening to their experiences rather than to the state propaganda pushed by representatives of Beijing. Had it done so, Tuniyaz would already be on the sanctions list, as he is in the United States.

The claim, from the prime minister’s office, that the meeting was agreed to with the intention of making clear the UK’s “abhorrence over the treatment of the Uyghur people” makes little sense. The official British position is already clear, but it will remain unconvincing until those responsible for the mistreatment of Xinjiang’s Turkic and Muslim minorities know that they are not welcome here.

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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 15, 2023
Harris on China balloon episode: I don’t think it impacts our relations

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Harris noted that she said as much to Chinese President Xi Jinping when they met briefly in November at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok. “Everything that has happened in the last week and a half is, we believe, very consistent with our stated approach,” she said.
The intrusion into U.S. airspace caused immediate anger and outrage throughout Washington, D.C., with members of both parties criticizing the Biden administration for failing to shoot down the balloon earlier. The White House says they waited until the balloon was safely away from civilians, though it has since taken aggressive action to shoot down other objects floating above U.S. territory. At this point, the administration isn’t tying those additional objects to the Chinese government.
Harris conducted the interview roughly 24 hours before she was scheduled to depart Washington to lead the U.S. delegation at the Munich Security Conference. China’s top diplomat will be in attendance but Harris said there was nothing scheduled between her and Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Reuters reported Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who will also be attending the conference, is considering a meeting with his counterpart.
This will be Harris’ second time attending the confab of global leaders and allies on behalf of the administration and her fourth trip to Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine. Her first visit last year came just days before the war began. In her meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Harris promised full support from the United States and encouraged him to prepare for a full-scale invasion.
Nearly a year later, Harris returns aiming to push the western alliance to sustain its stance against Russia despite the impact the invasion has had on the world economy and energy security in Europe.
“There is an enduring commitment on behalf of the alliance, but it’s not without sacrifice that each country is doing that,” Harris said. “And that’s to be applauded, which is a nation standing in defense of certain foundational principles when the going gets tough.”
A White House official said Harris’ tentative schedule in Munich includes meetings with leaders of the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Sweden, and that “more engagements are possible.” Harris also is scheduled to address the conference in a speech Saturday.
The vice president said she will be reassuring both the alliance and Ukraine of the U.S. commitment as the war enters its second year. Her stop in Munich will be followed by a visit from President Joe Biden to nearby Poland.

But there are questions about whether the White House’s hands will be tied back home. Congressional Republicans have demanded that any future aid to Ukraine be accompanied by stringent new layers of oversight, if passed at all.
Harris said she believed the GOP posture was overstated if not bluster.
“One thing is rhetoric at the press conference,” she said. “But the other thing is how they’ve been voting and they’ve been voting to support the assistance that we have been as a nation giving the Ukrainian people.”
A myriad of other international issues will be occurring in the backdrop of the Munich conference. Among the thorniest for the White House is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned overhaul of his country’s judicial system to shift power away from its supreme court.
The move has been criticized by members of the Israeli government, including President Isaac Herzog, who in recent televised remarks said a “powder keg is about to explode” as thousands of Netanyahu’s opponents have taken to the streets in protest.
Harris offered a measured critique of the judicial reform as well, placing it in the context of democratic backsliding.
“As the president has said, an independent judiciary is foundational for a democracy,” she said. “And I think that there is no question that we need to make sure that that is supported in terms of what we talk about [and] in terms of our values.”
In the brief phone interview, Harris also addressed domestic matters, including concerns from members of her own party over the prospect of another Biden-Harris ticket. Biden is expected to announce his decision on a reelection bid in the coming weeks, amid polls that show most Democrats have doubts about the two taking on whomever the Republican nominee will be.
“We were in Philadelphia recently and hundreds of people were shouting their support of the work that our administration has had and the success that our administration has accomplished and their desire to see it keep going,” Harris said. “So I have seen just in terms of, in real life, real people being very supportive of the work that is happening. When I look at the midterms and how people voted, that gives me further objective and empirical evidence of this point.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 15, 2023