China Direct: Packed Pacific — Xinjiang leaks greet UN chief — Full of Lav - POLITICO Europe

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Exploring Europe’s diplomatic and commercial relationship with China.

By STUART LAU

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THE (UN)PACIFIC THEATER: The Pacific Ocean is perilously busy this week. Right after U.S. President Joe Biden unveiled the long-awaited Indo-Pacific Economic Framework on Monday, Beijing struck back. Starting tomorrow, Foreign Minister Wang Yi will undertake an unprecedented 10-day grand tour to eight Pacific nations.

All eyes will be on his stop at the Solomon Islands: It recently struck a security deal with Beijing allowing China to send in police and dock their warships in their country — causing alarm in Australia and America alike. Wang will also host his second foreign ministerial meeting with Pacific island counterparts in Fiji, marking the second such even in just over half a year. The West will be watching to see whether Beijing attempts to offer more security deals to others. There’s already intelligence suggesting a possible arrangement with Kiribati in the pipeline. See the map below for Wang’s other stops.

The West is hurrying for counter-plans: On Tuesday, Biden and his Indian, Japanese and (new) Australian counterparts agreed to work “individually and collectively” to help the region build infrastructure, improve maritime security and adapt to climate change. Earlier on, the White House’s Indo-Pacific czar Kurt Campbell scurried to the Solomon Islands to announce plans to reopen an embassy there. As for the EU, it dispatched the Indo-Pacific envoy Gabriele Visentin to Fiji this week, but there don’t seem to be any concrete projects being announced.

Well, où est la France? After all Paris has been reminding everyone it’s the only Indo-Pacific country in the EU — especially after the AUKUS submarine snub. Its silence on these Pacific developments has been rather deafening. (With the new Australian government in place, Sydney-based editor Zoya Sheftalovich and yours truly explain why a Franco-Aussie détente is on the way. Enjoy.)

WELCOME TO CHINA DIRECT! This is your host Stuart Lau, POLITICO’s Europe-China correspondent. We’re in your inbox a day early this week, so we can all take a break and grab a beer on the Belgian holiday on Thursday … that is, barring any crazy news from Asia. What are the chances?

XINJIANG GETS UGLIER, GERMANS NOISIER

WALKING INTO A TRAP: Michelle Bachelet, the U.N.’s human rights chief, is finally in China this week for a long-awaited visit to Xinjiang, the Uyghur-populated region subject to high-handed Chinese policies including widespread internment camps. While she was still in Guangzhou settling down for a long flight from Geneva, explosive news broke. The well-timed leaks, under the code name “Xinjiang Police Files”, were released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media, showing photos of thousands of inmates arrested by the Chinese police under a “catch-all” policy long denied by Beijing.

Unfettered access? Well, would Bachelet get to see any of these faces?

Further reading, just for her: On her first day, China’s foreign minister Wang gave her a book of President Xi Jinping’s “discourse on respecting and protecting human rights”. Here’s that somewhat embarrassing moment.

Credibility at stake: Western diplomats covering Geneva, speaking to POLITICO anonymously, lambasted Bachelet for ignoring their advice against going to Xinjiang. “She’s been delaying a report on Xinjiang, citing the need for this trip to Xinjiang. With the latest cache of files and photos, can she credibly say she can find information to prove or disprove them?” a Western diplomat said.

EUROPE GETS ANGRIER THAN NORMAL: In a rather unusual turn of events, Europe is voicing its fury over the Xinjiang situation more strongly than the U.S. That is especially remarkable among the Green Party in Germany. Take German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck: “There are always shocking reports about China’s brutal treatment of the Uyghurs. Nevertheless, the information that reaches us about detention, abuse and forced labor is particularly shocking. There must be a clear answer internationally as well as further clarification,” he said in a statement.

We ain’t Merkel: He drew a line on the sand. “This government has changed the way it deals with China issues,” Habeck said, adding the concerns for human rights in China had been “hidden for years” in Germany. “We are diversifying more and are also reducing our dependencies on China. The protection of human rights carries a higher weight.”

Screen, screen, screen: The German government, according to Habeck, will “carefully examine” German companies’ applications for federal guarantees for investments in China. “A close look is also taken here to see whether the Xinjiang region is affected. Applications that do not meet the requirements will be rejected accordingly,” he said.

BAERBOCK GETS TOUGH: Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, also from the Greens, had a phone call with China’s Wang on the same day, in which she called on him for a “transparent clarification” on the “shocking” material. “The images from Xinjiang are disturbing,” she added in a tweet. “They underpin what has been in the air for a long time: that the worst human rights violations are being committed in Xinjiang.”

Others join the chorus: Baerbock’s Dutch and British counterparts similarly voiced concerns. “The messages with new information about serious human rights violations in Xinjiang are very worrying,” Wopke Hoekstra of the Netherlands said. The U.K.’s Liz Truss went further, saying: “New evidence shows the extraordinary scale of China’s targeting of Uyghur Muslims … We remain committed to holding China to account.”

AMBIGUOUS AMBIGUITY

BIDEN’S TAIWAN PLEDGE: In a rather unambiguous explanation of Washington’s decades-old policy of “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan, U.S. President Biden on Monday made clear what will happen in the event of Beijing’s invasion of the island. He’s ready to “get involved militarily.” Here’s the full Q&A with a reporter while in Tokyo:

— Reporter: You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons. Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?

— Biden: Yes.

— Reporter: You are?

— Biden: That’s the commitment we made. We are not… Look, here’s the situation: We agree with the One China policy; we’ve signed on to it and all the attendant agreements made from there. But the idea that, that it can be taken by force, just taken by force — is just not a — is just not appropriate.

A ROOM FULL OF SURPRISE: Here’s the instant reaction on the scene, as witnessed by POLITICO’s Alex Thompson at Tokyo’s Akasaka Palace. According to Alex, Biden’s response to the question caused an audible stir in the room, with reporters quickly recognizing he had stepped further away from the strategic ambiguity of U.S. Taiwan policy than presidents are supposed to go …

Heads turned away from Biden and to the seated U.S. delegation to gauge their reaction. Those present — including National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Commerce Department Secretary Gina Raimondo — did their best to keep facial expressions unfazed though Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, “bulged his eyes a bit” in apparent surprise, Alex wrote.

Crisis management, again: Sure enough, the White House attempted to tone down Biden’s remarks right after the press conference. “As the president said, our policy has not changed,” an official said in a statement. “He reiterated our One China Policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

‘Needlessly unsettling’: “I still think this is Biden’s gut instinct reflected in mindless wording, not a policy reversal, but it is needlessly unsettling … if Biden keeps doing this, it could be a ‘big deal’ indeed,” Winston Lord, former U.S. Ambassador to China, told POLITICO’s Phelim Kine in a statement.

IS EUROPE READY? In the three years since your correspondent moved to Brussels, Taiwan has never come up more often in my conversations than after the Ukraine war broke out. Much of the attention initially centered on Taiwan’s microchips, but lately there’s much more talk about whether the kind of sanctions the EU imposes on Russia today might be replicated on China when (and if) it invades Taiwan. If that happens, it would be a huge game changer, one whose effect will be beyond unbearable for many EU companies that rely on the Chinese economy. Now that Biden is making it clear about military involvement, one way or another, well that would be a lot of food for thought for Europe.

RUSSIA-CHINA BONHOMIE

SHOULDER BY SHOULDER: Russo-Chinese bonhomie is in full swing this week. In a joint exercise, warplanes from the two militaries flew close to Japanese airspace while Tokyo was hosting Biden and others for the Quad summit, before flying off to the East China Sea and West Pacific. “We believe the fact that this action was taken during the Quad summit makes it more provocative than in the past,” Japan’s Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi said.

How long? The whole exercise lasted 13 hours, according to the Russian defense ministry.

Testing the water: Clearly this is not a case where the Chinese military are assisting in Russia’s war on Ukraine. But by launching a joint exercise in Russia’s far east, Beijing could satisfy Russia’s wish for some solidarity, while not attracting too much criticism from the West.

FULL OF LAV: Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said the country’s future lies in China. “Now that the West has taken a ‘dictator’s position’, our economic ties with China will grow even faster,” he said, adding that China’s information and communications technologies “are in no way inferior to the West.”

But but but… A report by Israeli-American cybersecurity firm Check Point shows that state-sponsored hackers from China have been trying to hack Russian (!) targets. They are mainly scientists and engineers at several of Russia’s military research and development institutes that belong to Rostec Corporation, the Russian military conglomerate and one of the most powerful entities in Russia’s defense sector. These scientists specialize in satellite communication, radar and electronic warfare, according to the New York Times.

GUEST IN BRUSSELS: Seasoned Chinese diplomat Wu Hongbo, the foreign ministry’s special representative for Europe, was in Brussels yesterday. He met cabinet members of European Council and European Commission presidents. Over at the European External Action Service, he met his usual interlocutors: Deputy Secretary-General Enrique Mora and Asia-Pacific managing director Gunnar Wiegand.

Unenviable mission: Wu’s arrival comes amid Beijing’s fear that Europe could be drawn closer to the U.S. bloc in the face of the Russian war. The growing divide — most recently illustrated by the EU’s tough messaging at the April 1 summit with Xi — is certainly one that Wu alone won’t be able to narrow. His trip also closely follows two other senior Chinese diplomats’ trips to the Baltics, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkans.

Feeble messaging: “Special Envoy Wu Hongbo on China-EU relations is always welcome. I appreciate his work,” Mora tweeted. “Long, fruitful conversation on bilateral relations and our positions on Russia’s aggression against Ukraine”… Is that seriously what his boss Josep Borrell expects of EU’s power of narrative?

END-OF-MAY READING LIST

Here’s my six must-read for the month:

How a Humboldt Foundation fellow joined China’s military commission, on Deutsche Welle

China Insists Party Elites Shed Overseas Assets, Eyeing Western Sanctions on Russia, on Wall Street Journal

The faces from China’s Uyghur detention camps, by BBC’s John Sudworth

Escape from Hong Kong, by The Atlantic’s Timothy McLaughlin

Rebooting Europe’s China strategy, by Institut Montaigne, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and the Centre for European Reform

‘The Last Generation’: The Disillusionment of Young Chinese, on the New York Times

MANY THANKS TO: My editor Christian Oliver and producer Giovanna Coi.