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Tag: Chinas

  • Iran, Saudi Arabia agree to resume ties, with China’s help

    Iran, Saudi Arabia agree to resume ties, with China’s help

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    Videos released by Iranian state media showed Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, with Saudi national security adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban and Wang Yi, China’s most senior diplomat.

    The joint statement calls for the reestablishing of ties and the reopening of embassies to happen “within a maximum period of two months.” A meeting of their foreign ministers is also planned.

    In the video, Wang could be heard offering “wholehearted congratulations” on the two countries’ “wisdom.”

    “Both sides have displayed sincerity,” he said. “China fully supports this agreement.”

    China, which last month hosted Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi, is also a top purchaser of Saudi oil. Xi visited Riyadh in December for meetings with oil-rich Gulf Arab nations crucial to China’s energy supplies.

    Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted Shamkhani as calling the talks “clear, transparent, comprehensive and constructive.”

    “Removing misunderstandings and the future-oriented views in relations between Tehran and Riyadh will definitely lead to improving regional stability and security, as well as increasing cooperation among Persian Gulf nations and the world of Islam for managing current challenges,” Shamkhani said.

    Al-Aiban thanked Iraq and Oman for mediating talks between Iran and the kingdom, according to a transcript of his remarks published by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

    “While we value what we have reached, we hope that we will continue to continue the constructive dialogue,” the Saudi official said.

    Tensions long have been high between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The kingdom broke off ties with Iran in 2016 after protesters invaded Saudi diplomatic posts there. Saudi Arabia had executed a prominent Shiite cleric with 46 others days earlier, triggering the demonstrations.

    The execution came as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, then a deputy, began his rise to power. The son of King Salman, Prince Mohammed previously compared Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler, and also threatened to strike Iran.

    In the years since, the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Iran has been blamed for a series of attacks after that, including one targeting the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in 2019, temporarily halving the kingdom’s crude production.

    Though Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels initially claimed the attack, Western nations and experts have blamed it on Tehran. Iran long has denied launching the attack. It has also denied carrying out other assaults later attributed to the Islamic Republic.

    Religion also plays a key role in their relations. Saudi Arabia, home to the cube-shaped Kaaba that Muslims pray toward five times a day, has long portrayed itself as the world’s leading Sunni nation. Iran’s theocracy meanwhile views itself as the protector of the Islam’s Shiite minority.

    The two powerhouses also have competing interests elsewhere, such as in the turmoil now tearing at Lebanon and in the rebuilding of Iraq after decades of war following the U.S.-led 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

    The leader of the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia and political group Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, praised the agreement as “an important development” that could “open new horizons” in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Iraq, Oman and the United Arab Emirates also praised the accord.

    Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute who long has studied the region, said Saudi Arabia reaching the deal with Iran came after the United Arab Emirates reached a similar understanding with Tehran.

    “This dialing down of tensions and deescalation has been underway for three years and this was triggered by Saudi acknowledgement in their view that without unconditional U.S. backing they were unable to project power vis-a-vis Iran and the rest of the region,” he said.

    Prince Mohammed, now focused on massive construction projects in his own country, likely wants to finally pull out of the Yemen war as well, Ulrichsen added.

    “Instability could do a lot of damage to his plans,” he said.

    The Houthis seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in September 2014 and forced the internationally recognized government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition armed with U.S. weaponry and intelligence entered the war on the side of Yemen’s exiled government in March 2015. Years of inconclusive fighting created a humanitarian disaster and pushed the Arab world’s poorest nation to the brink of famine.

    A six-month cease-fire in Yemen’s war, the longest of the conflict, expired in October despite diplomatic efforts to renew it.

    In recent months, negotiations have been ongoing, including in Oman, a longtime interlocutor between Iran and the U.S. Some have hoped for an agreement ahead of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which will begin later in March. Iran and Saudi Arabia have held off-and-on talks in recent years, but it wasn’t immediately clear whether Yemen was the impetus for this new detente.

    Yemeni rebel spokesperson Mohamed Abdulsalam appeared to welcome the deal in a statement that also slammed the U.S. and Israel. “The region needs the return of normal relations between its countries, through which the Islamic society can regain its lost security as a result of the foreign interventions, led by the Zionists and Americans,″ he wrote online.

    For Israel, which has wanted to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia despite the Palestinians remaining without a state of their own, Riyadh easing tensions with Iran could complicate its own calculations in the region.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure politically at home, has threatened to take military action against Iran’s nuclear program as it enriches closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. Riyadh seeking peace with Tehran takes one potential ally for a strike off the table. Netanyahu’s government offered no immediate comment Friday to the news.

    It remains unclear, however, what this means for America. Though long viewed as guaranteeing Middle East energy security, regional leaders have grown increasingly wary of Washington’s intentions after its chaotic 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the announced deal.

    However, the White House bristled at the notion that a Saudi-Iran agreement in Beijing suggests a rise of Chinese influence in the Mideast.

    “I would stridently push back on this idea that we’re stepping back in the Middle East — far from it,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

    He added: “It really does remain to be seen whether the Iranians are going to honor their side of the deal. This is not a regime that typically honors its word.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • China’s new foreign minister slams U.S. ‘malicious confrontation’

    China’s new foreign minister slams U.S. ‘malicious confrontation’

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    “If the United States does not hit the brake, but continues to speed down the wrong path … there will surely be conflict and confrontation and who will bear the catastrophic consequences?” Qin said.

    Qin hinted at the potential for nuclear conflict between the two countries by saying that those policies could risk “the future of humanity.” And he implicitly referenced Biden’s comments in his State of the Union speech last month that the United States seeks “competition, not conflict” with China by accusing the U.S. of “not fair competition, but malicious confrontation.”

    Qin’s uncompromising tone echoes that of his patron, Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping.

    On Monday, Xi accused the U.S. and other Western countries of “all-round containment, encirclement and suppression against us, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to our country’s development,” the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing Chinese state media. That rhetoric also casts doubt on the sustainability of Xi and President Joe Biden’s agreement in their meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in November to try to stem the slide in U.S.-China ties.

    Bilateral ties have been battered by the discovery and subsequent destruction of a Chinese spy balloon over the continental U.S. in February. Biden administration warnings last month that the Chinese government is considering providing lethal weaponry to Russia in its war against Ukraine have further roiled relations. And the conclusion of a Department of Energy report published last week that concluded (albeit with low confidence) that a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China, sparked the Covid-19 pandemic has renewed congressional anger toward China’s role in a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans.

    Qin insisted the balloon was a civilian air ship that an “unexpected accident” blew over the continental United States. Biden’s move to destroy the balloon “abused force and dramatized the accident, creating a diplomatic crisis that could have been avoided,” Qin said.

    The perennial hot button issue of U.S. support for Taiwan also was front and center in Qin’s press conference.

    Qin warned that Beijing will take “all necessary measures” to enforce its claim of sovereignty over the self-governing island. And he floated a bizarre conspiracy theory for the Biden administration’s policy of continuing to provide defense weaponry to the island. “Why does the U.S. keep on professing the maintenance of regional peace and stability while covertly formulating a plan for the destruction of Taiwan?” Qin said, without elaborating.

    Qin also touted Beijing’s Ukraine peace proposal unveiled last month as a vehicle “to promote talks for peace.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan have both dismissed the proposal as a distraction that fails to challenge Russia’s aggression. Qin likewise avoided mention of that and instead implicitly blamed the U.S. for the conflict.

    “There seems to be an invisible hand, pushing for the protraction and escalation of the conflict and using the Ukraine crisis to serve certain geopolitical agenda,” Qin said, without providing any additional details.

    Beijing’s concerns about the Biden’s ability to rally allies and partners to counter what Blinken calls China’s threat to the rules-based international order also emerged in Qin’s remarks. Qin slammed the Indo-Pacific Strategy as a plot “to encircle China.” And he denounced Japan — which announced a dramatic expansion of its military forces in December — of taking part in “a new Cold War to contain China.”

    And Qin flexed his familiarity with U.S. political fault lines with comments that appeared to target Donald Trump’s tough language on China at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.

    “If the United States has the ambition to make itself great again … containment and suppression will not make America great, and it will not stop the rejuvenation of China,” Qin said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • China’s premier bows out as Xi loyalists take reins

    China’s premier bows out as Xi loyalists take reins

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    Li “was a premier largely kept out of the limelight by order of the boss,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies and a longtime observer of Chinese politics.

    In an era where personal loyalty trumps all, the fact that Li wasn’t seen purely as a Xi loyalist may end up being “the main reason why he will be remembered fondly,” Tsang said.

    For most of his career, Li was known as a cautious, capable and highly intelligent bureaucrat who rose through, and was bound by, a consensus-oriented Communist Party that reflexively stifles dissent.

    As governor and then party secretary of the densely populated agricultural province of Henan in the 1990s, Li squelched reporting on an AIDS outbreak tied to illegal blood-buying rings that pooled plasma and reinjected it into donors after removing the blood products, allegedly with the collusion of local officials.

    While Li was not in office when the scandal broke, his administration worked to quiet it up, prevented victims from seeking redress and harassed private citizens working on behalf of orphans and others affected.

    But Li also cut a modestly different profile, an English speaker from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas. Introduced to politics during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, he made it into prestigious Peking University, where he studied law and economics, on his own merits rather than through political connections.

    After graduation, Li went to work at the Communist Youth League, an organization that grooms university students for party roles, then headed by future president and party leader Hu Jintao. Higher office soon followed.

    Among the largely faceless ranks of Chinese bureaucrats, Li managed to show an unusually candid streak. In a U.S. State Department cable released by WikiLeaks, Li is quoted telling diplomats that Chinese economic growth statistics were “man-made,” and saying he looked instead to electricity demand, rail cargo traffic, and lending as more accurate indicators.

    Though no populist, in his speeches and public appearances, Li was practically typhonic compared to the typically languorous Xi.

    Yet, he largely failed to make effective use of the platforms he was given, unlike his immediate predecessors. At his sole annual news conference on the closing day of each congressional annual session, Li used up most of his time repeating talks points and reciting statistics. Throughout the upheavals of China’s three-year battle against Covid-19, Li was practically invisible.

    Li, who hailed from humble backgrounds, had been seen as Hu’s preferred successor as president. But the need to balance party factions prompted the leadership to choose Xi, the son of a former vice premier and party elder, as the consensus candidate.

    The two never formed anything like the partnership that characterized Hu’s relationship with his premier, Wen Jiabao — or Mao Zedong’s with the redoubtable Zhou Enlai — although Li and Xi never openly disagreed over fundamentals.

    “Xi is not the first among equals, but rather is way above equal,” said Cheng Li, an expert on the Chinese leadership at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C. Ultimately, Li was a “team player” who put party unity foremost, he said.

    Meanwhile, Li’s authority was being gradually shrunk, beginning with a reorganization of offices in 2018. While some may have wished Li had been more “influential or decisive,” the ground was crumbling under his feet as Xi shifted more of the powers of the State Council, China’s Cabinet, to party institutions, Cheng Li said. That shift to expanded party control is expected to continue at the current congress meeting on an even greater scale.

    At the same time, Xi appeared to favor trusted long-time brothers-in-arms such as economic adviser Liu He and head of the legislature Li Zhanshu, over Li, leaving him with little visibility or influence

    His departure leaves major questions about the future of the private sector that Xi has been reining in, along with wider economic reforms championed by Li and his cohort. His expected replacement, Li Qiang, is a crony of Xi’s from his days in provincial government, best known for his ruthless implementation of last spring’s monthslong Covid-19 lockdown in Shanghai.

    “Li Keqiang has been associated with a more economics-focused take on governance, which contrasts strongly with the ideological tone that Xi has brought to politics,” said Rana Mitter of Oxford University.

    “Li may be the last premier of his type, at least for a while,” Mitter said.

    Li may be remembered less for what he achieved than for the fact that he was the last of the technocrats to serve at the top of the Chinese Communist Party, said Carl Minzner, an expert on Chinese law and governance at New York’s Fordham University and the Council on Foreign Relations.

    Politically, Xi’s authoritarian tendencies risk a return to Mao-era practices where elite politics become “yet more byzantine, vicious, and unstable,” Minzner said.

    Li’s departure “marks the end of an era in which expertise and performance, rather than political loyalty to Xi himself, was the primary career criterion for ambitious officials seeking to rise up to higher office,” he said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • China’s structural reforms mean more power to Xi Jinping

    China’s structural reforms mean more power to Xi Jinping

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    New Delhi: Structural reforms by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership could bring government security and intelligence branches under the direct control of the ruling party, rather than the country’s cabinet, according to a media report.

    They suggest a further bid to consolidate political power in the hands of leader Xi Jinping as well as a possible preparation for war, analysts said, RFA reported.

    President Xi Jinping told a high-level political meeting in Beijing on Tuesday that the upcoming session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, would see the party strengthen “unified leadership” over scientific and technological institutions, as well as over the country’s financial institutions and over “government responsibility”.

    The announcement suggests further internal crackdowns to come within the government and party.

    A draft institutional reform plan is currently under discussion that will “be more relevant, more intensive, have a broader reach and touch on deeper interests” than previous structures, state broadcaster CCTV quoted Xi as telling the meeting, RFA reported.

    While officials have yet to make public the exact details of the restructuring, Japan-based China commentator Hong Xiangnan said the plans will likely include bringing the ministry for public security, which governs the police system, and the ministry for state security, which governs the state security apparatus and overseas intelligence operations, under the aegis of the party.

    “The only way this will go is the strengthening of the party at the expense of the state,” Hong said. “It will turn government departments into administrative offices, tasked with running errands and doing the gruntwork.”

    “They will carry out the basic administrative work, but the core of policy-making will be taken away, and go to strengthen the leadership of the party. We’re not talking about a merger of party and state here,” he said, RFA reported.

    He said the reforms will likely include the setting up of a powerful internal affairs committee under the central leadership of the Communist Party in Beijing.

    If the reforms do implement such a plan, the internal affairs committee could look fairly similar to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs under the former Soviet Union, which was responsible for ensuring internal revolutionary order and the security of the state, as well as the internal safeguarding of state property, the guarding of national borders, and the registration of births, deaths, marriages and divorces, according to a July 11, 1934 report in the Soviet newspaper Izvestia.

    Such a plan, if implemented, comes at a time of unprecedented official control over people’s personal and political lives, with the transfer of law enforcement powers to to local neighborhood committees and the setting up of local militias to boost “stability maintenance,” a system of law enforcement aimed at forestalling dissent and nipping protest in the bud, RFA reported.

    Hong said it was significant that Xi was only now mentioning these plans, on the eve of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, and that they hadn’t gotten an airing at the 20th party congress in October.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Peskov spoke about China’s peace plan for Ukraine

    Peskov spoke about China’s peace plan for Ukraine

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    Peskov: China’s plan to resolve the conflict in Ukraine is consistent with Moscow’s approach

    Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov commented on the peace plan proposed by China to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His words convey RIA News.

    Peskov said that in terms of ensuring security, he correlates with Moscow’s approach.

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    ( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )

  • Biden doubts there’s any merit in China’s Russia-Ukraine plan

    Biden doubts there’s any merit in China’s Russia-Ukraine plan

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    Muir noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had responded positively to the Chinese proposal.

    “Putin is applauding it, so how could it be any good? I’m not being facetious,” he said. “I’m being deadly earnest.”

    Biden added: “The idea that China is going to be negotiating the outcome of a war that’s a totally unjust war for Ukraine is just not rational.”

    Despite America’s skepticism toward the proposal, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy cautiously welcomed Beijing’s efforts Friday and said he would like to meet with President Xi Jinping to discuss China’s proposals. “As far as I know, China respects historical integrity,” he told reporters in Kyiv.

    Speaking to Muir, Biden also made it clear that the United States would be extremely displeased if China offered military aid to to Russia in its fight against Ukraine in the year-old war.

    “We would respond,” Biden said. He also noted that hundreds of American companies had left Russia after its invasion of Ukraine “without any government prodding” and that China might face the same consequences.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • China’s Communist Party begins key meeting to discuss major revamp, government

    China’s Communist Party begins key meeting to discuss major revamp, government

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    China sanctions two U.S. individuals

    Beijing: China’s ruling Communist Party on Sunday began a key meeting to carry out a major revamp of the party and the government ahead of next month’s annual session of the Parliament.

    The meeting of the Communist Party of China (CPC) plenum started its three-day plenary session in Beijing on Sunday, with President Xi Jinping, who is also the general secretary of the party, presenting a work report, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

    The Central Committee plenary session is being held ahead of the annual session of China’s Parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the top advisory body — the China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) — in the first week of March.

    During the NPC’s annual session, China will unveil a new leadership, including a new premier to succeed the incumbent Li Keqiang who is retiring. Barring Xi, most of the officials at the top were expected to be replaced.

    Earlier this week, the political bureau of the party discussed the draft plan for the reforms of the CPC as well as state institutions and finalised recommendations to be submitted to the Central Committee plenary for approval.

    The Central Committee which was elected at the once in five-year Congress of the party held in October last year consisted of 203 members and 168 alternate members.

    Xi, 69, was re-elected for an unprecedented third five-year term by the Congress.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • U.S. dismisses China’s Ukraine peace proposal as an attempt to distract

    U.S. dismisses China’s Ukraine peace proposal as an attempt to distract

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    “China’s been trying to have it both ways — it’s on the one hand trying to present itself publicly as neutral and seeking peace, while at the same time it is talking up Russia’s false narrative about the war,” Blinken said. “There are 12 points in the Chinese plan. If they were serious about the first one, sovereignty, then this war could end tomorrow.”

    Those comments echoed remarks from President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, the day before. “My first reaction to it is that it could stop at point one, which is to respect the sovereignty of all nations … this was a war of choice waged by Putin,” Sullivan told CNN on Thursday.

    The proposal itself falls short of what Beijing had promised. China’s top diplomat Wang Yi touted last week that the plan would include “important propositions” from Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping “conducive to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.” Instead it mostly restates Beijing’s existing positions on the war by linking it to the Kremlin’s “legitimate security concerns.”

    The timing, however, is significant. The proposal comes after Blinken warned this week that China is considering providing lethal weaponry to Moscow to use against Ukraine.

    And world leaders are coming out en masse to counter China’s messaging. Beijing’s peace proposal “doesn’t have much credibility because they have not been able to condemn the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday. The EU would consider China’s proposals “against the backdrop that China has taken sides,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Beijing helped earn that distrust by abstaining from a United Nations’ resolution on Thursday demanding that Russia immediately withdraw from Ukraine.

    Beijing’s proposal doesn’t reference Russia as the conflict’s aggressor or demand that Putin stop the war. Instead it calls for Kyiv and Moscow to “exercise restraint” and says it supports “promoting talks for peace.” The Chinese government also distances itself from leading such efforts by limiting its participation to a hands-off “constructive role.”

    “The Chinese are running up against the problem that their buddy Russia has a maximalist position [on Ukraine] and is not going to budge,” said Daniel Fried, former assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But instead of pushing the Russians, they’re coming up with mush.”

    That rhetoric could have impact in other parts of the globe, said Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. He argued that the U.S. and European officials lashing out at the proposal may not be its intended audience.

    China can now market the plan in the global south as proof of Beijing’s dedication to peace and tell the U.S. and its allies “It’s your job to convince the Ukrainians [to stop fighting] — our mission here is accomplished,” Gabuev said.

    The document’s publication means “China gets a PR victory upfront without doing anything,” Gabuev said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Why China’s reopening could be bad news for the Fed

    Why China’s reopening could be bad news for the Fed

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    That’s why they are closely monitoring China for signs of an acceleration in the global appetite for goods and services. If that happens, it would strengthen the Fed’s resolve to hold interest rates at punishing levels for longer — raising the odds of economic pain in the U.S. later this year and dashing hopes that the country can avoid a recession.

    “There’s an argument — which I’m probably, at this point, more in the camp of … that says, inflation will be persistent longer than we’d like it to be,” Richmond Fed President Thomas Barkin said in an interview. A prominent reason: “The reopening of China’s going to put pressure on commodity prices.”

    Fed officials mentioned the possible ripple effects from China five times in the summary of their last rate-setting meeting that was released this week. The questions for policymakers: How big a boost will there be to spending, and will it be offset by other events?

    To be certain, there’s a strong upside to a Chinese rebound: Global economic growth is expected to get an additional boost as factories in the manufacturing powerhouse ramp up production and the country’s big-spending tourists begin to travel the world again.

    Yet all of that could lead to higher oil prices, reversing some of the decline in fuel costs that have helped lead to strong drops in overall inflation. The International Energy Agency forecast that demand for oil would increase by 2 million barrels per day this year — nearly half of which would come from China.

    “It frankly is the biggest factor that people are looking at,” said Andrew Lipow, head of Houston-based oil market consulting firm Lipow Oil Associates.

    Meanwhile, the cost of imports could rise — fueling inflation — if more economic growth in other countries leads the dollar to weaken against foreign currencies. Stronger economies translate into stronger currencies.

    At the same time, Beijing’s decision to loosen restrictions on activity could help with the supply shortages that have stoked inflation, which could counteract some of the effects of renewed Chinese demand.

    “I don’t think we can overstate how important that is,” said Eric Robertsen, head of global research at Standard Chartered. “It’s not just T-shirts and baseball caps. A lot of it is higher-value-added stuff too. That should help reduce the supply-demand imbalance around the world, which is not inflationary, it’s disinflationary.”

    China is the world’s largest economy in terms of purchasing power, and two-way trade with the U.S. hit a record $690 billion in 2022, showing how deeply intertwined the two countries remain, though some of that increase is attributable to inflation.

    Beijing is also the largest consumer of global commodities like iron ore and copper, key inputs for a range of construction and manufacturing processes, which could pick up as the economy gathers speed. China’s property market has been in an extended slump since the government cracked down on financing for new homes, slowing construction on already-sold apartments.

    “There’s a question on how much industrial activity is going to pick up — especially in the construction area, which would consume a lot of diesel fuel — given that they have a real estate crisis on their hands,” Lipow said.

    But global demand will also be affected by what’s happening outside of China where many major economies including the U.S. are raising borrowing costs and could see economic slowdowns this year.

    “There is a view, and it’s too early to confirm whether the view is correct or not, that the slowdown in Western economies will offset the improvement in China’s economy,” Robertsen said.

    The oil market in particular is also highly sensitive to unexpected shocks, meaning prices in that sector will depend in no small part on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to play out.

    “The real question or concern from the Fed’s perspective would not necessarily be these slow-moving factors, but do we see spikes,” said Matthew Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. “That would be more driven by geopolitical risk events.”

    Both situations are of keen interest within the Fed. According to the minutes of their February policy meeting, officials “saw a number of upside risks surrounding the outlook for inflation stemming from factors abroad, such as China’s relaxation of its zero-Covid policies and Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine.”

    Analysts have also speculated that there could be a boom in so-called revenge spending by Chinese consumers after years of little activity and growing savings. But that effect, too, could be tempered because consumers are still reeling from the economic shock. Traffic on subways and roads has surged in the past six weeks, but unemployment among young adults, Robertsen noted, is still 17 percent.

    “There will be a recovery in China, and it will be strong, but there will be a large part of the population that will be very cautious,” he said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • U.S. diplomatic counter-offensive targets China’s ‘false information’

    U.S. diplomatic counter-offensive targets China’s ‘false information’

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    The new details about Washington’s messaging strategy, including the extent to which the administration is pushing back on Beijing behind the scenes through diplomatic outreach to allies and partners, illuminates the lengths to which Washington feels it needs to go to counter China.

    Those efforts also underscore the Biden administration’s resolve to hold Beijing accountable for the incident and to use it as an exemplar of the long international reach of China’s malign activities, even as China tries to woo Europe and other regional blocs.

    The Biden administration has reacted strongly “because it’s so clearly a case where the Chinese should just have admitted that they took an action that they should not have taken,” said Zack Cooper, former assistant to the deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism at the National Security Council.

    “And rather than just owning up to what was pretty obvious for all to see, [Beijing] launched into a whole propaganda campaign that was pretty frustrating for the administration, especially given that they were heading into what would have been [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken’s first trip to Beijing.”

    The National Security Council declined to comment on the record for this story.

    China has continued to push back against the U.S. allegations, deflecting questions about its surveillance activities and the extent to which it is planning on supporting Russia in Ukraine. Now, the two countries are engaged in an intense public standoff, and neither side is indicating that it’s ready to back down anytime soon.

    It started with the spy balloon. On Feb. 5 — the day after the U.S. shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina — the Biden administration sent out an “action request” to U.S. diplomatic posts across the globe telling them to push the message that China “is attempting to change the narrative by providing false information.”

    The cable included 28 concise talking points for U.S. representatives from Brussels to Grenada and Frankfurt to Busan to share with foreign government officials “in private diplomatic engagements.” The U.S. had several key demands for Beijing, according to the cable, including that the airship “cease operations” and “immediately” leave U.S. airspace.

    The State Department pushed its diplomats to move fast. Beijing was mobilizing state media to accuse the U.S. of overreacting in its decision to destroy the balloon in a bid to paint the Chinese government as “the responsible actor in the dispute.” Diplomats were directed to emphasize that the U.S. “is not looking to escalate the situation.”

    “We thought it was the responsible thing to do on our part to share as much as we could. Our presentations have been fact-based. This is not an effort to engage in a messaging exercise or to put spin on the ball,” said a State Department official who was granted anonymity because the individual was not authorized to speak on the record.

    The U.S. was just as persistent with China. Officials from the top tiers of the Biden administration down to the embassy level of the State Department have engaged with their counterparts in China in more than a dozen meetings since the balloon was first detected in late January, according to two of the U.S. officials. The officials, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic discussions.

    There’s been little to show for that outreach, however. Beijing rejected an offer to get on the phone with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Feb. 4, the day the balloon was shot down. It wasn’t until several days later that the Chinese embassy called to lay out the country’s official response, one it had already given publicly: The balloon had merely been dispatched to monitor the weather, one of the U.S. officials said.

    Then, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this weekend, both had sharp words for their counterparts. And Blinken didn’t limit himself to the balloon. He also directly warned the Chinese about taking the step to send weapons to Russia to aid its Ukraine war effort — a prospect the U.S. is increasingly worried about.

    “I was able to share with [Wang], as President Biden had shared with President Xi, the serious consequences that would have for our relationship,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation.

    Beijing has responded with provocations of its own.

    “It’s the U.S. side, not the Chinese side, that’s providing an endless flow of weapons,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters Monday. “The U.S. side isn’t qualified to point fingers at China or order China around.”

    U.S. officials say they’re trying to force Beijing to back down, in part, by detailing the intelligence they have against them.

    Over the last several weeks, administration officials have downgraded the classification level on certain intelligence regarding the balloon and China’s plans regarding support for Russia in order to share that information with their Chinese counterparts, two of the officials said.

    The officials said that though the U.S. has long been concerned about China and Russia’s alliance, new details about their economic and military partnership have emerged in recent days, putting the administration on edge.

    The U.S. has also briefed allies about that intelligence and is requesting diplomats across the world push back against both Beijing’s false narrative about the balloon and its consideration of sending lethal weapons to Russia, two of the officials said.

    If messages coming from Europe this week are any indication, the outreach to allies, at least, is creating a united front.

    On Monday, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said it would be a “red line” for the European Union if China sends arms to Russia. Top diplomats from Sweden and Lithuania voiced similar sentiments. And NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg followed suit on Tuesday.

    China’s Wang Yi, meanwhile, arrived in Russia Wednesday where he met with President Vladimir Putin and the head of Russia’s National Security Council. Putin declared that Russia-China ties had reached “new frontiers” and announced that Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russia later this year.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )