Vice President Mike Pence's China Speech at Hudson Institute
Flemming Hoeg
Dear Friends,
I feel very lucky having been born into our Western Civilisation. We do have to look after our Western Civilisation and prepare ourselves, when it is under threat, as it is now.
Flemming
‘Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.’
Winston Churchill
One ought never to turn one’s back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.”
Winston Churchill
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
Ronald Reagan
Vice President Mike Pence's China Speech at Hudson Institute
Pence is refreshingly candid in his assessment and criticism of Communist China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYAHPPXmcts
I come before you today because the American people deserve to know… as we speak, Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States...
After the fall of the Soviet Union, we assumed that a free China was inevitable. Heady with optimism, at the turn of the 21st Century, America agreed to give Beijing open access to our economy, and bring China into the World Trade Organization.
Previous administrations made this choice in the hope that freedom in China would expand in all forms – not just economically, but politically, with a newfound respect for classical liberal principles, private property, religious freedom, and the entire family of human rights… but that hope has gone unfulfilled.
The dream of freedom remains distant for the Chinese people...
Over the past 17 years, China’s GDP has grown 9-fold; it has become the second-largest economy in the world. Much of this success was driven by American investment in China. And the Chinese Communist Party has also used an arsenal of policies inconsistent with free and fair trade, including tariffs, quotas, currency manipulation, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and industrial subsidies doled out like candy, to name a few. These policies have built Beijing’s manufacturing base, at the expense of its competitors – especially America.
China’s actions have contributed to a trade deficit with the United States that last year ran to $375 billion – nearly half of our global trade deficit...
Now, through the “Made in China 2025” plan, the Communist Party has set its sights on controlling 90% of the world’s most advanced industries, including robotics, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. To win the commanding heights of the 21st Century economy, Beijing has directed its bureaucrats and businesses to obtain American intellectual property – the foundation of our economic leadership – by any means necessary.
Beijing now requires many American businesses to hand over their trade secrets as the cost of doing business in China. It also coordinates and sponsors the acquisition of American firms to gain ownership of their creations. Worst of all, Chinese security agencies have masterminded the wholesale theft of American technology – including cutting-edge military blueprints.
And using that stolen technology, the Chinese Communist Party is turning plowshares into swords on a massive scale…
China now spends as much on its military as the rest of Asia combined, and Beijing has prioritized capabilities to erode America’s military advantages – on land, at sea, in the air, and in space. China wants nothing less than to push the United States of America from the Western Pacific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies.
Beijing is also using its power like never before. Chinese ships routinely patrol around the Senkaku Islands, which are administered by Japan. And while China’s leader stood in the Rose Garden of the White House in 2015 and said that his country had “no intention to militarize the South China Sea,” today, Beijing has deployed advanced anti-ship and anti-air missiles atop an archipelago of military bases constructed on artificial islands.
China’s aggression was on display this week, when a Chinese naval vessel came within 45 yards of the USS Decatur as it conducted freedom-of-navigation operations in the South China Sea, forcing our ship to quickly maneuver to avoid collision...
America had hoped that economic liberalization would bring China into greater partnership with us and with the world. Instead, China has chosen economic aggression, which has in turn emboldened its growing military.
Nor, as we hoped, has Beijing moved toward greater freedom for its own people...
Today, China has built an unparalleled surveillance state, and it’s growing more expansive and intrusive – often with the help of U.S. technology. The “Great Firewall of China” likewise grows higher, drastically restricting the free flow of information to the Chinese people. And by 2020, China’s rulers aim to implement an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life – the so-called “social credit score.” In the words of that program’s official blueprint, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven, while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”
And when it comes to religious freedom, a new wave of persecution is crashing down on Chinese Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims…
Last month, Beijing shut down one of China’s largest underground churches. Across the country, authorities are tearing down crosses, burning bibles, and imprisoning believers. And Beijing has now reached a deal with the Vatican that gives the avowedly atheist Communist Party a direct role in appointing Catholic bishops. For China’s Christians, these are desperate times.
Beijing is also cracking down on Buddhism. Over the past decade, more than 150 Tibetan Buddhist monks have lit themselves on fire to protest China’s repression of their beliefs and culture. And in Xinjiang, the Communist Party has imprisoned as many as one million Muslim Uyghurs in government camps where they endure around-the-clock brainwashing. Survivors of the camps have described their experiences as a deliberate attempt by Beijing to strangle Uyghur culture and stamp out the Muslim faith.
But as history attests, a country that oppresses its own people rarely stops there. Beijing also aims to extend its reach across the wider world...
China uses so-called “debt diplomacy” to expand its influence...
Just ask Sri Lanka, which took on massive debt to let Chinese state companies build a port with questionable commercial value. Two years ago, that country could no longer afford its payments – so Beijing pressured Sri Lanka to deliver the new port directly into Chinese hands. It may soon become a forward military base for China’s growing blue-water navy.
Within our own hemisphere, Beijing has extended a lifeline to the corrupt and incompetent Maduro regime in Venezuela, pledging $5 billion in questionable loans that can be repaid with oil. China is also that country’s single largest creditor, saddling the Venezuelan people with more than $50 billion in debt. Beijing is also corrupting some nations’ politics by providing direct support to parties and candidates who promise to accommodate China’s strategic objectives…
And since last year, the Chinese Communist Party has convinced 3 Latin American nations to sever ties with Taipei and recognize Beijing. These actions threaten the stability of the Taiwan Strait – and the United States of America condemns these actions... America will always believe Taiwan’s embrace of democracy shows a better path for all the Chinese people.
These are only a few of the ways that China has sought to advance its strategic interests across the world, with growing intensity and sophistication. Yet previous administrations all but ignored China’s actions – and in many cases, they abetted them. But those days are over..
The American people deserve to know that, in response to the strong stand that President Trump has taken, Beijing is pursuing a comprehensive and coordinated campaign to undermine support for the President, our agenda, and our nation’s most cherished ideals.
I want to tell you today what we know about China’s actions – some of which we’ve gleaned from intelligence assessments, some of which are publicly available. But all of which is fact...
The Chinese Communist Party is rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists, and local, state, and federal officials.
Worst of all, China has initiated an unprecedented effort to influence American public opinion, the 2018 elections, and the environment leading into the 2020 presidential elections…
To put it bluntly, President Trump’s leadership is working; and China wants a different American President.
China is meddling in America’s democracy. As President Trump said just last week, we have “found that China has been attempting to interfere in our upcoming 2018 [midterm] election[s].”
Our intelligence community says that “China is targeting U.S. state and local governments and officials to exploit any divisions between federal and local levels on policy. It’s using wedge issues, like trade tariffs, to advance Beijing’s political influence.”
In June, Beijing circulated a sensitive document, entitled “Propaganda and Censorship Notice,” that laid out its strategy. It states that China must “strike accurately and carefully, splitting apart different domestic groups” in the United States.
To that end, Beijing has mobilized covert actors, front groups, and propaganda outlets to shift Americans’ perception of Chinese policies. As a senior career member of our intelligence community recently told me, what the Russians are doing pales in comparison to what China is doing across this country.
Senior Chinese officials have also tried to influence business leaders to condemn our trade actions, leveraging their desire to maintain their operations in China. In one recent example, they threatened to deny a business license for a major U.S. corporation if it refused to speak out against our administration’s policies.
And when it comes to influencing the midterms, you need only look at Beijing’s tariffs in response to ours. They specifically targeted industries and states that would play an important role in the 2018 election. By one estimate, more than 80% of U.S. counties targeted by China voted for President Trump in 2016; now China wants to turn these voters against our administration.
And China is also directly appealing to the American voter. Last week, the Chinese government paid to have a multipage supplement inserted into the Des Moines Register – the paper of record in the home state of our Ambassador to China, and a pivotal state in 2018. The supplement, designed to look like news articles, cast our trade policies as reckless and harmful to Iowans...
Beijing now requires American joint ventures that operate in China to establish “party organizations” within their company, giving the Communist Party a voice – and perhaps a veto – in hiring and investment decisions.
Chinese authorities have also threatened U.S. companies that depict Taiwan as a distinct geographic entity, or that stray from Chinese policy on Tibet. Beijing compelled Delta Airlines to publicly apologize for not calling Taiwan a “province of China” on its website. It also pressured Marriott to fire a U.S. employee who liked a tweet about Tibet.
Beijing routinely demands that Hollywood portray China in a strictly positive light, and it punishes studios and producers that don’t. Beijing’s censors are quick to edit or outlaw movies that criticize China, even in minor ways. “World War Z” had to cut the script’s mention of a virus originating in China. “Red Dawn” was digitally edited to make the villains North Korean, not Chinese.
Beyond business, the Chinese Communist Party is spending billions of dollars on propaganda outlets in the United States, as well as other countries.
China Radio International now broadcasts Beijing-friendly programming on over 30 U.S. outlets, many in major American cities...
The Communist Party has also threatened and detained the Chinese family members of American journalists who pry too deep. And it has blocked the websites of U.S. media organizations and made it harder for our journalists to get visas. This happened after the New York Times published investigative reports about the wealth of some of China’s leaders.
But the media isn’t the only place where the Chinese Communist Party seeks to foster a culture of censorship. The same is true of academia.
Look no further than the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations, of which there are more than 150 branches across American campuses. These groups help organize social events for some of the more than 430,000 Chinese nationals studying in the United States; they also alert Chinese consulates and embassies when Chinese students, and American schools, stray from the Communist Party line.
At the University of Maryland, a Chinese student recently spoke at her graduation ceremony of what she called the “fresh air of free speech” in America. The Communist Party’s official newspaper swiftly chastised her, she became the victim of a firestorm of criticism on China’s tightly-controlled social media, and her family back home was harassed. As for the university itself, its exchange program with China – one of the nation’s most extensive – suddenly turned from a flood to a trickle.
China exerts academic pressure in other ways, too. Beijing provides generous funding to universities, think tanks, and scholars, with the understanding that they will avoid ideas that the Communist Party finds dangerous or offensive. China experts in particular know that their visas will be delayed or denied if their research contradicts Beijing’s talking points.
And even scholars and groups who avoid Chinese funding are targeted by that country, as the Hudson Institute found out firsthand. After you offered to host a speaker Beijing didn’t like, your website suffered a major cyber-attack, originating from Shanghai. You know better than most that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to undermine academic freedom and the freedom of speech in America today.
These and other actions, taken as a whole, constitute an intensifying effort to shift American public opinion and public policy away from the America First leadership of President Donald Trump. But our message to China’s rulers is this: This President will not back down.
The American people will not be swayed and we will continue to stand strong for our security and our economy even as we hope for improved relationship with Beijing...
Comment:
An incredibly hawkish speech that will be deeply unsettling for Beijing.
We are really seeing just how coherent the strategy towards China was over the past year as the targeted "hits" slowly escalated.
As analysts such as Arthur Kroeber have suggested, the Administration is fighting two wars: one against China and one against MNCs.
Their goal to is reroute supply chains away from China and engage in a long-term technological cold war.
In this scenario, resolution is not the aim but rather isolation and erosion of the enemy.
In this way the US can win the advanced manufacturing race and "on-shore" these supply chains.
While the Administration has been seen as isolationist, I see them as the very opposite.
They are in fact trying to reengage the liberal democratic core of the international order that has been eroded since the end of the Cold War.
Their aim is to bring the provinces back into line - they want allies and not protectorates.
The USMCA agreement is a vital first step to achieving this.
Their strategic goal for a North American manufacturing hub is clear and they have also used the agreement to isolate China further:
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), finalised on Sunday to replace the 24-year-old North America Free Trade Agreement, stipulates that any of the three parties to the deal has the right to be informed about any negotiations on a free-trade agreement with a “non-market economy” at an early stage, and can review any such deal signed by another member.
If one of the three were to sign a free-trade deal with a non-market country, either of the other two would have the right under article 32.10 to terminate the trilateral USMCA with six months’ notice and form its own bilateral deal on the same terms.
The clause would effectively end any dalliance between Canada and China – Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the United States – over a possible free-trade deal. The two countries agreed in 2016 to study the feasibility of such a deal, although it was not taken further and the Chinese government’s announcement in March of its existing and potential future free-trade deals did not mention Canada.
But the clause has wider implications than scuttling any future China-Canada deal.
If the US were to insert a similar clause into trade deals it is negotiating with the EU and Japan, it would mean Beijing’s best hope of trading with the EU, Japan and Canada to offset an extended trade war with the US would be quashed, according to trade experts.
The next to be brought into line will be the European Union, who have faced repeated broadsides from Trump.
An increase in military spending has already been extracted.
The use of these bilateral measures and negotiations are also continuing to show their wisdom and intent.
The TPP would have resulted in the inclusion of low-wage economies that would have further undercut and eroded the North American secondary sector.
This grand strategy has shifted the reality of the past 30 years of neoliberalism and "globalism" - one that China has prospered greatly from.
The game has now fundamentally changed.
Bottom of Form
Did Cold War II break out last week while no one was watching?
- By Walter Russell Mead
- The Wall Street Journal
- An hour ago October 9, 2018
- No Comments
As the Kavanaugh confirmation battle raged, many missed what looks like the biggest shift in US-China relations since Henry Kissinger’s 1971 visit to Beijing.
The Trump administration’s China policy swam into view, and it’s a humdinger. Vice-President Mike Pence gave a guide to the approach in a speech last week at the Hudson Institute. Denouncing what he called China’s “whole-of-government” approach to its rivalry with the US, Mr Pence vowed the Trump administration would respond in kind.
He denounced China’s suppression of Tibetans and Uighurs, its “Made in China 2025” plan for tech dominance, and its “debt diplomacy” through the Belt and Road initiative.
The speech sounded like something Ronald Reagan could have delivered against the Soviet Union: Mr Xi, tear down this wall! Mr Pence also detailed an integrated, cross-government strategy to counter what the administration considers Chinese military, economic, political and ideological aggression.
In the same week as the Vice-President’s speech, US Navy plans for greatly intensified patrols in and around Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea were leaked to the press. Moreover, the recently entered trilateral US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement was revealed to have a clause discouraging trade agreements between member countries and China. The administration indicated it would seek similar clauses in other trade agreements.
Also last week, congress approved the Build Act, a $US60 billion ($85bn) development-financing program designed to counter China’s BRI strategy in Africa and Asia. Finally, the White House issued a report highlighting the danger that foreign-based supply chains posed to US military capabilities in the event they were cut off during a conflict.
Any one of these steps would have rated banner headlines in normal times; in the Age of Trump, all of them together barely registered. But this is a major shift in US foreign policy.
As China responds, and as other countries formulate their approaches to the emerging US-China rivalry, a new international reality will take shape. With many longtime US allies opposed to the Trump administration on trade policy and other matters, and with Russia, North Korea and Iran all looking to frustrate US goals, an indignant China looking for opportunities to make Washington pay may find help.
American businesses engaged with China could face difficulties as the US strategy is implemented. US presidents have broad authority over trade and investment related to national security. Donald Trump has already used this to threaten and impose tariffs and Mr Pence has warned that even higher tariffs are on the way. The White House report highlighting supply-chain vulnerabilities could provide the basis for new, more far-reaching restrictions.
Business and investors may still be underestimating both the Trump administration’s determination to challenge China and the economic disruption that greater US-China tension can bring. To the longtime China hawks and trade hawks now driving US policy, national security matters more than economic friction, and many of the protestations from the American business community may fall on deaf ears. Both China and the US are likely to move quickly, unpredictably and disruptively; Wall Street should brace itself for further shocks.
In terms of domestic politics, the more confrontational policy is likely to be broadly popular. Mr Trump’s populist base resents the “theft” of American jobs, and human-rights and religious-freedom advocates are troubled by China’s severe repression at home and support for authoritarian regimes abroad.
The foreign-policy establishment may oppose Mr Trump’s tactics but it generally accepts the need for a stronger stance against China. Businesses will be split; while some are heavily exposed to a potential deterioration in US-China relations, others are angry about stolen intellectual property, resent restrictions on access to Chinese markets or fear competition from subsidised Chinese firms.
Democrats who have relished attacking Mr Trump for allegedly being soft on Vladimir Putin will have a hard time explaining why a hard line on Russia is a patriotic duty but a tough China policy is a mistake.
Replacing the North American Free-Trade Agreement, reshaping the Supreme Court and launching a new Cold War in the same week is quite the trifecta. The US may or may not be on the road to greatness under Mr Trump, but it is going somewhere, at an accelerating pace.
The Wall Street Journal