US-China Relations - 43. page

On Tuesday December 1, at an online seminar that the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank hosted, Alex Wong, deputy assistant secretary of state for North Korea, said that China’s failure, if not refusal, to implement UN sanctions aimed at denuclearizing North Korea may be delaying the process.

The UN Security Council obligated all UN Member States to repatriate DPRK laborers by the end of last year. “China continues to host at least 20,000 DPRK laborers, who earn revenue that goes straight back to North Korea’s weapons development efforts. In fact, earlier this year Chinese authorities were making it easier for DPRK nationals to work in China, in complete violation of its UN obligations.”

“The Chinese government increasingly allows its companies to conduct trade with North Korea in a broad spectrum of UN-prohibited goods, including seafood, textiles, iron and steel, industrial machinery, transportation vehicles, and sand and gravel. Chinese companies transact with North Korean companies and establish UN-prohibited joint ventures with them. They even continue to conduct business with UN-designated North Korean entities and those operating on their behalf—including entities that play key roles in North Korea’s weapons programs.”

China also hosts no less than two dozen North Korean WMD and ballistic missile procurement representatives and bank representatives.

“In the past year, on 555 separate occasions, we have observed ships carrying UN-prohibited coal or other sanctioned goods from North Korea to China. On none of these occasions did the Chinese authorities act to stop these illicit imports. Not once.”

“400 of those voyages were North Korean-flagged vessels shipping coal to Chinese coastal waters. Most of these shipments go to China’s busy Ningbo-Zhoushan area, where the vessels are required to provide extensive information about their identity, origin, and destination to local authorities. These ships are not coming to China like a thief in the night. They are ringing the doorbell and literally announcing themselves. Yet the Chinese authorities have done nothing.”

“On another 155 separate occasions, Chinese-flagged coastal barges have sailed directly into North Korea, loaded up on UN-prohibited coal, and then carried the illicit cargo back to Chinese ports.”

Wong acknowledged that China has reduced its overall trade with the DPRK since 2017, and especially in 2020 due to COVID-19. “The remaining illicit, unreported trade that exists is significant and it is trending in the wrong direction. In no other country do we see this breadth and depth of continuing illicit commercial activity with North Korea, the scale of which puts China in flagrant violation of its obligations.”

To help expose sanctions evasion activities by North Korea, the US State Department has, since June 2019, offered up to a $5 million reward for information on such activities.

According to Wong, the State Department on Tuesday launched a website specifically dedicated to such information.

“Today, the State Department is launching a new website, DPRKrewards.com, through which individuals across the globe (can) provide information to our rewards for justice program on DPRK sanction evasions,” he said.

Wong argued that removing or easing sanctions on North Korea now would only weaken the reasons for North Korea to consider denuclearization faithfully.

“Chinese leaders are asking us to build the frame of a house, even furnish it, without laying the foundation first,” said Wong.

Source: U.S. State Department, November 30, 2020
https://www.state.gov/deputy-special-representative-for-north-korea-delivers-keynote-address-at-csis-conference-on-north-koreas-economy/

In June of this year, the US Department of Justice received a financial statement from China Daily, which showed that over the past three and a half years, China Daily paid a total of nearly US$19 million in advertising and printing costs to different US media. In the past six months alone, China Daily has invested nearly US$2 million in advertising in the US media. From May to October this year, China Daily spent more than US$4.4 million in printing, distribution, advertising and administration. Of the money paid, more than US$85,000 was spent on advertising with The Wall Street Journal, US$34,000 was spent on the Los Angeles Times; and US$100,000 was paid for advertising in the Foreign Policy Magazine. In addition to advertising fees, China Daily also pays a high printing cost to many newspapers.

The financial statement disclosed that China Daily paid to open a “China Watch” column on the inside pages of two newspapers to publish commentaries on China’s economy, culture and geopolitics. The Wall Street Journal has a website that China Daily funds. It is simply a reprinted version of “China Daily,” carrying articles such as Beijing’s handling of COVID 19 as well as articles that criticize US officials because they blame the Chinese government for misleading the West and causing the virus to spread throughout the world. In August this year, some newspapers cut off their ties with China Daily. For example, the Washington Free Beacon disclosed that the New York Times quietly ended its partnership with China Daily.

In February of this year, the U.S. State Department listed China Daily, the Xinhua News Agency, the China Global Television Network, China Radio International, and the overseas edition of People’s Daily as “foreign agents” because China has direct control over them and they are part of the CCP’s propaganda machinery.

Source: Radio Free Asia, November 23, 2020
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/propaganda-11232020111312.html?encoding=simplified

On November 18, U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, published a majority report entitled, “The United States and Europe: A Concrete Agenda for Transatlantic Cooperation on China,” to advance greater collaboration between the United States and Europe on the challenges that China poses.

Risch’s counterparts from the EU and the U.K Foreign Affairs Committees are Member of the European Parliament David McAllister, chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Member of Parliament Tom Tugendhat, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, who joined him in the release of the report. Jamie Fly, senior fellow and senior advisor to the president at The German Marshall Fund of the United States moderated the event.

Risch stated, “Legislatures in free and open nations must step up and do our part to protect our freedoms and uphold the interests and values that nations on both sides of the Atlantic share. It is my hope that this report and event are just the starting point as we continue to chart a cooperative path forward on China.”

David McAllister said, “The transatlantic partners are facing similar challenges as regards China: unfair trade practices, cyber security, disinformation and the pursuit of geopolitical and technological dominance.”

Tom Tugendhat added, “It is clear to policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic that we’re seeing active attempts by the Communist Party of China to undermine the rules based system and rewrite the code of global exchange. We need to back our values and invest in our allies to defend our interests, and that means a coordinated response. The peace and prosperity of the last 70 years is based on the values of freedom that matter to us; together we can defend them.”

“Just as the United States and its European allies have tackled so many other challenges together, hopefully leaders on both sides of the Atlantic will follow this report’s advice and find common approaches to ensure that China does not further threaten the prosperity and security of Americans and Europeans,” said Jamie Fly.

Source: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, November 18, 2020
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/chair/release/chairman-risch-publishes-report-discusses-greater-transatlantic-cooperation-on-china-with-parliamentarians

According to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post on the 13th, after the US presidential election, China and the United States restarted their stalled behind-the-scenes diplomacy. This semi-official communication channel is usually through former officials, think tanks and business leaders. A Chinese government consultant revealed that semi-official exchanges between China and the United States have been suspended in recent months, but they have now resumed. Professor Wang Xiangsui of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics revealed that several people close to Biden have recently contacted China and discussed with Chinese think tanks how to restart Sino-US relations.

Wang Xiangsui said that the message from the Biden camp is positive. The message sent by the Democrats visiting China is that China and the United States should avoid a Cold War or direct conflict. Both parties must learn how to manage their differences and find ways to coexist. A Chinese government adviser had previously met Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan from the Biden camp. He said that in the past few years, some former Democratic Party officials have visited Beijing many times.

Source: China Press, November 16, 2020
http://www.uschinapress.com/static/content/SZ/2020-11-16/777859594532954112.html

The Office of Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State (DOS) issued a research report on Tuesday November 17, which summarized the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), analyzed the ideological roots behind the behavior and the vulnerabilities that the Chinese Communist regime faces, and provided suggestions on how the United States should respond to China’s challenges.

The report, titled “The Elements of the China Challenge,” states that “awareness has been growing in the United States — and in nations around the world — that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has triggered a new era of great-power competition. Yet few discern the pattern in China’s inroads within every region of the world, much less the specific form of dominance to which the party aspires.”

The report characterizes the Chinese Communist regime as “modeled on 20th-century Marxist-Leninist dictatorship.”

The report is composed of five sections: the China Challenge, China’s Conduct, the Intellectual Source of China’s Conduct, China’s Vulnerabilities, and Securing Freedom.

The report said, “The CCP aims not merely at preeminence within the established world order — an order that is grounded in free and sovereign nation-states, flows from the universal principles on which America was founded, and advances U.S. national interests — but to revise the world order fundamentally, placing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) at the center and serving Beijing’s authoritarian goals and hegemonic ambitions.”

The report concludes that “meeting the China challenge requires the United States to return to the fundamentals. To secure freedom, America must refashion its foreign policy in the light of ten tasks.”

The ten tasks include:

1. “Securing freedom at home by preserving constitutional government, promoting prosperity, and fostering a robust civil society,” 2. “Maintaining the world’s most powerful, agile, and technologically sophisticated military while enhancing security cooperation,” 3. “Fortifying the free, open, and rules-based international order that it led in creating after World War II,”                          4.“Reevaluating its alliance system and the panoply of international organizations,”
5. “Strengthening its alliance system by more effectively sharing responsibilities with friends and partners and by forming a variety of groupings and coalitions to address specific threats to freedom,”
6. “Promoting American interests by looking for opportunities to cooperate with Beijing, subject to norms of fairness and reciprocity,”
7. “Educating American citizens about the scope and implications of the China challenge,”
8. “Training a new generation of public servants — in diplomacy, military affairs, finance, economics, science and technology, and other fields — and public-policy thinkers who not only attain fluency in Chinese and acquire extensive knowledge of China’s culture and history,”
9. “Reforming American education, equipping students to shoulder the enduring responsibilities of citizenship in a free and democratic society by understanding America’s legacy of liberty,”
10. “Championing the principles of freedom through example; speeches; educational initiatives; and public diplomacy.”

The 70-some-page-long report contains more than 20 pages of footnotes, accounting for almost half of the main body of the report.

Source: State Department,
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20-02832-Elements-of-China-Challenge-508.pdf