Posts Tagged ‘China-US’

Beijing aims to avoid battle but win war with new dark arts

Posted: December 29, 2020 in Sunday Times
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An end of year piece (or beginning of the new decade depending on how you see things), this time projecting forwards looking at how conflict with China is likely to play out for a UK audience in the UK’s Sunday Times. Have a suspicion that this year is going to involve a lot of discussion around this, have a few events already planned which will touch on some of these issues. The newspaper also produced a great graphic to accompany the piece which is posted below and draws on Global Fire Power‘s data.

Beijing aims to avoid battle but win war with new dark arts

As Britain prepares to send the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to the Asia-Pacific region in a new year show of hard power, 2020 is ending with ringing warnings about the military threat that China presents to the world order.

Shortly before Christmas, the chiefs of the US navy, Marine Corps and coastguard pointed out that Beijing’s naval battle force was bigger than America’s (350 ships and submarines to the US Navy’s 293). The chief of the UK defence staff, General Sir Nick Carter, warned in sync with the Americans that the West needed a long-term strategy against Chinese expansionism.

Is China preparing for war? Not quite. The conflict is likely to be dominated by asymmetry, cyberweapons, clashes in third locations and economic sniping. As Carter explained, paraphrasing the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu: “Their goal is to win without going to war.”

China is aware of its hard-power limitations. While the military has been on a spending spree of dramatic proportions over the past few years, it remains a relatively weak power overall compared with its biggest rival, America. As a consequence, it has sought to harness opportunity where it sees over-reliance and weakness in its principal adversary.

The result is an army that is focused on diversionary conflict, trying to throw the US off balance. On the battlefield this means a focus on electronic warfare, satellites and disruption, making it hard for the highly advanced American fighting machine to talk to itself and deliver its shock and awe capability.Off the direct field of battle, it involves political meddling, using economic levers, and targeting American allies such as Australia in ways that undermine their links with America and create complicated situations that Washington will struggle to confront in classic deterrence terms. It is difficult to calibrate an appropriate response to economic sanctions against Australian wine producers.

This does not, however, mean that China has not also developed advanced weapons to place on the field of battle. The military has swarm drone technology that seeks to overwhelm adversaries with a confusing number of small, unmanned vehicles. Over a tense summer in which the US conducted exercises in the Pacific and a cabinet-level official visited Taiwan, China showcased its ability to conduct exercises simultaneously across its coasts.

It concluded this summer of tension by testing its DF-21D, the so-called “carrier killer” missile. According to a Chinese academic it also deployed microwave weapons to move Indian forces off rival mountaintops during their springtime clashes. China’s army is making sure that it is able to deliver on President Xi Jinping’s demand that it can “fight and win”.

But true to Sun’s maxims, the priority for China is the asymmetric conflict that avoids confrontation on the battlefield. While being ready for conflict and showing strength is important, it is clear that Beijing realises that a catastrophic global conflict would hurt China as well. Reliant on global trade and commerce, Beijing would worry about the consequences of a clash that brings the world’s economy shuddering to a stop.

Translated to the field of battle, this means confronting your enemies in indirect ways: targeting American allies in lieu of angering the US directly.

This means aggressive tariffs on Australian products alongside an escalating war of words played out over social media. It means kidnapping and holding hostage the Canadian consultants Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor as punishment for the detention by Canada of Meng Wanzhou, a senior Huawei executive, in response to an American arrest warrant. Or it means detaining or scaring off journalists from English-speaking publications based in Beijing; an action that is a net loss to both sides, depriving everyone of a key bridge in understanding between China and the world.

And then there is the new bombast of the Chinese foreign ministry. While it still talks of win-win and a harmonious world, it has increasingly taken a tabloid approach to delivering these messages.

Twitter has become populated by a growing number of Chinese diplomats and journalists who use their feeds to shout at and confront adversaries online. Look at the webpages of Chinese embassies, and it seems as though their priority is confrontation with America, rather than the priorities of the countries they are based in.

The UK has been fortunate to have avoided most of the direct fire. The clash over Huawei caused a lot of noise, but resulted in little response. Downing Street walked away from the company, notwithstanding all the menacing talk. Nor, aside from public declarations of anger, has Beijing responded directly to Britain’s criticism of its clampdown in Hong Kong.

When it does so, the response is unlikely to be a military. Rather, it will be a complicated web of pushing and pulling of levers that will hit the UK in different ways. It will materialise in pressure on countries with which the UK is seeking to develop stronger ties or with which it has strong links — in parts of Africa and south Asia in particular we are likely to see this sort of competition heating up.

China usually seems more eager to focus on the UK as a potential partner in these parts of the world, but it is hard to know how long this will last. China might start to try to push the UK out of some of these locations by forcing local leaders to make a choice between China or the UK. The trigger could be a decision by Beijing to more prominently associate the UK with America.

Beijing is also likely to seek to use the UK’s post-Brexit isolation from Europe as a fissure to apply more strategic economic pressure to persuade the UK to take its side on the world stage. Any tensions between London and Washington will be exploited in similar ways. Key trade restrictions may be applied, UK companies targeted for punishment or cyberinterference increased.

So far, none of this has taken place any more than usual, but these are the sorts of options that Beijing is more likely to turn to instead of open warfare.

These actions are ones that recognise that conflict is taking place against a backdrop of a world that continues to be deeply interconnected, meaning that the effort by Beijing (and Washington) will constantly be to keep the adversary on the back foot and off-balance, avoiding the catastrophic consequences of direct confrontation.

These are the choppy waters into which HMS Queen Elizabeth will be steering. A conflict that is neither black nor white, but is made up of moves and countermoves played out across a globe where no one really wants to have to choose sides, and no one really wants to fight.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies

Washington Focuses on China While Delhi Drifts

Posted: December 29, 2020 in LKY School
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Going to quickly upload a couple of pieces now in that netherworld between Christmas and New Year, both China focused, but for very different outlets. This first one is for the China-India Brief, which is a bi-weekly newsletter published by the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Am not totally content with everything here to be honest, but China-India relations are going to stay complicated for the near future whatever happens. My understanding is both sides have now factored in a higher level of tension as the established norm between the two of them. It will just be a question of how effectively they are able to manage this.

Washington Focuses on China While Delhi Drifts

  
CIB173Image credit: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

There is a sense in Asia that the arrival of the Biden administration in Washington foreshadows a softening of the US’s stance towards China. Nowhere is the concern more acute than in Delhi, where India fears it might find itself without its preeminent ally against China at a moment when confrontation is all the vogue. But India’s concerns are misplaced. The problems Delhi may have with Washington are not likely to be the product of a shift in America’s view on China. Rather, they will emanate from a more coherent and focused American approach towards dealing with Beijing, as towards Delhi over its numerous domestic problems. 

There will be a change in Washington’s approach towards China, but it is more likely to be a tactical shift than an adjustment in perspective. Beijing has been formally classified in American strategic thinking as the principal adversary in a global confrontation (Moscow scores as a problem just behind it). President Trump’s attempt to cast his political adversary as ‘Beijing Biden’ never resonated. Comment pages and think tank output over the past few years have gone to great lengths to emphasize that the aggressive posture towards China emanating from Washington was in fact a bipartisan push. Few on either side of the aisle has dared to articulate a narrative of cooperation or engagement, with a hawkish perspective that portrayed China as a new Soviet-style adversary on the world stage being the dominant view. 
 
But while this firm shift against China took place in Washington in the shade of an erratic Trump administration, Delhi found itself getting into an ever-tighter fix with Beijing. Constant border irritations escalated to the point that in the summer of 2020 Indian and Chinese soldiers fought a medieval-style battle in contested territory leading to unknown numbers of dead. Fury boiled over as hawks screamed for vengeance and confrontation.  
 
Yet the result has been as inconsistent as could have been expected. On the one hand, there has been a sharpening. The security establishment in Delhi is now minded towards confrontation with greater alacrity. Visions of cooperation with China in Afghanistan are gone, the long-dormant Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor is stalled (if not defunct), and Delhi is seeking to slowly push China out of its domestic cyber infrastructure in every possible way. India’s military establishment is using this moment to burnish its budget and buy as many new tools as it can. 
 
On the other side of the coin, however, India has continued to engage with China. Most specifically through various multilateral formats that the two share. At the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS Summits, India has appeared at the appropriate level and sought to avoid bringing its bilateral clash with China to the table. This reflects a broader reality that Delhi continues to acknowledge, namely, that no matter what happens, it will still find itself bordering China, a country on its way to being the world’s second (or possibly) largest economy.  
 
India has always been amongst the most hesitant partners of the Australia-India-Japan-US Quad. Its defence arrangements with the US have improved considerably over the past few years with a series of major agreements, but remain quietly complicated by India’s close relationship with Moscow. Delhi has always sought (understandably) to have its cake and eat it: it engaged with Russia and the US at the same time. It benefitted from stratospheric Chinese growth while also hinting at joining anti-Chinese alliances. And since Beijing saw its future as one intimately bound to Delhi in some way and did not see India as much of a threat, China was willing to let this prevarication go, until the recent confrontation which seems to have tipped the scales in both Delhi and Beijing towards the hawks. 
 
But Delhi’s hedging is going to become more complicated under a Biden administration, though not necessarily for reasons of Biden softening on China. Far from Washington changing on China, we are likely to see a continuation of an aggressive policy towards Beijing under President Biden. The difference will be that it is likely to be delivered with greater coherence and consistency than under President Trump. In fact, we are likely to see a more hardnosed and transactional relationship between the US and China – one  that no longer looks with optimistic lenses towards a world they would like to build together or fantastical bargains that cannot be maintained, but rather a relationship built on realpolitik focused on national interests. Biden will be more able to work with China on certain issues, but these will be framed through a context of importance to Beijing rather than being about American nationalism or global goods. Trade relations will be dealt with in a way that genuinely prioritizes American industries and holds China to account for promises that it has failed to fulfil. The US will continue to push on human rights and will not offer any break on these in exchange for other issues. This will all be delivered alongside Western allies who have been desperately waiting for American leadership. And crucially, the President will not personally hint in meetings at offering a break in his policies to China and will stand behind what his staff have negotiated. 
 
Beyond the difficulties India will have hedging with China is that the Biden hardliners will also come down on Delhi. While India has largely gotten a pass on domestic problems which have been bubbling up under Prime Minister Modi during the Trump administration, under President Biden human rights questions in Kashmir as well as problems in domestic political discourse will be raised. And it is unlikely that Washington will be willing to bargain these away in exchange for a deeper partnership against China. In addition, Washington might actually ask for a harder line towards Russia, something President Trump refused to broach, while fissures between Washington and Delhi on issues like technology openness and access might become bigger. Delhi will find itself under greater pressure from Washington and be unable to exploit space between China and the US.  

Delhi may look at a new Biden administration as a spanner in the works of its relationship with China, casting blame on soft Democrats unwilling to confront Beijing. But this will miss the real problem, which is that the US’s perspective on India has shifted while clarifying on China. Delhi will find itself still hedging with China while Washington has marshalled a new clarity and direction in its policy towards Beijing and the world.

Raffaello Pantucci is a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI and a Senior Fellow at RSIS.

Will China be better off as the US quits Afghanistan?

Posted: December 15, 2020 in Straits Times
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A longer piece for my current local newspaper the Straits Times on a topic that have been doing a lot of work on of late, China in Afghanistan. It has been something of a running theme for some time and this tries to focus the analysis specifically through the lens of the pending US withdrawal. When I started to first really dig into this topic in the early 2010s, the discussion was Obama’s potential withdrawal which seemed to accelerate Chinese thinking. This time, it does not seem to be having the same effect.

In addition, a quick media catch up. Spoke to the Financial Times in the wake of the Austria and France terror incidents (which was picked up in Croatian), to RFE/RL about Central Asian decisions to repatriate more of their people from the Syrian camps, and on the other side of the coin spoke to David Wertime for his excellent Politico China Watcher column.

Will China be better off as the US withdraws from Afghanistan?

A US Chinook helicopter flying over Kabul in 2017. Beijing may now be enjoying America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it is the one that is most likely to feel the longer-term repercussions, says the writer.PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

China is enjoying the United States’ precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan. From Beijing’s perspective, America’s abrupt dash for the exit as the conflict continues to rage reinforces the argument that the US is an erratic and unreliable player on the world stage.

This glee, however, should be tempered by the fact that the trouble that is likely to follow America’s withdrawal is going to cause Beijing more trouble than the seemingly never-ending conflict which it has been able to observe from the sidelines.

In the short term, China has comfortably hedged itself against all direct threats from Afghanistan.

In the wake of declarations under the Obama administration that the US was going to withdraw from Afghanistan, China started a programme of investment into the military and border capabilities of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan, countries with which it shares the Wahkan Corridor, China’s direct border with Afghanistan.

It established a forward base for the People’s Armed Police in Tajikistan, as well as built a base for Afghan forces in Badakhshan, where in the first few years Chinese forces would also patrol. The Chinese also inaugurated a new regional multilateral structure, the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism, that brought together the chiefs of army staff of the countries with which it shared the Wakhan Corridor.

China also started to more openly cultivate its relations with all of the factions on the Afghan battlefield. Previously Beijing would rely on its “iron brother” Pakistan to facilitate contacts with the Taleban. This included visits to Kabul pre-2001 to meet Taleban leader Mullah Omar and offers by companies like Huawei to help build infrastructure in the country. But while this outreach was initially done behind the scenes, from 2014 onwards China started to openly host Taleban delegations in Urumqi and Beijing, while its special envoy for Afghanistan Sun Yuxi would help organise meetings involving Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and China.

In addition, every senior visit by a Chinese official to Afghanistan was accompanied by photo calls with all of the major political leaders in the city. The result of all this engagement was statements by the Taleban that they would help protect Chinese infrastructure investments in the country, as well as regular support for Chinese perspectives by all factions in the Afghan government.

Neither side – Taleban or the Afghan government – said they would provide support for Uighur militant groups using Afghanistan as a base to launch attacks in China. In fact, both said they would actively eject such groups from their territory.

All of this has given Beijing the sense of having effectively shielded itself from the Afghan conflict. It has hardened its direct and indirect borders and has won friends across the board. Theoretically, China is well-placed no matter what happens in a post-America Afghanistan.

INDIA, U.S. AND THE UIGHURS

Yet this happy situation for China is now vulnerable to the broader tensions it has engendered through its recent aggressive foreign policy. Afghanistan used to shine for China as a place where it could cooperate with even its most difficult partners. During the Obama years, China and the US had developed a series of cooperative projects in Afghanistan, including a diplomat training programme which involved courses in Beijing and Washington. When President Xi Jinping and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi met first in Wuhan in April 2018 and then later near Chennai in October last year, they discussed Afghanistan as a place for cooperation, with infrastructure as a possible area of particular focus.

But the souring of ties with the US and India has largely put paid to these efforts. The Sino-US joint programme was suspended earlier in the year purportedly because of Covid-19 restrictions, but seems unlikely to start again. And anyway, any cooperative activity between the US and China in Afghanistan is going to be complicated by the fact that the US government made a decision in October this year to remove the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from its list of terrorist organisations.

An organisation whose specific existence has long been disputed, ETIM is the catch-all term used by the Chinese authorities to describe Uighur militants. For years the US had acceded to the group’s inclusion on its list of banned terrorist groups, in part to ensure China’s support for Washington’s broader war against terrorism. But what Uighur militants do exist tend to use a different name, fighting in Afghanistan and Syria under the banner of the Turkestan Islamic Party. They talk about attacking China in their videos, and have historically claimed links to incidents in China (though the evidence of actual responsibility is limited).

Washington’s decision to remove ETIM from its list of proscribed groups hardens the rupture between China and Washington in Afghanistan. One of Beijing’s biggest stated concerns about Afghanistan is the possibility of Uighur militants operating as ETIM using the country as a staging point from which to attack China.

Yet now Washington does not even acknowledge that the organisation exists, meaning it formally disputes one of the fundamental reasons for Chinese engagement in Afghanistan. For the US to reverse this decision would require the State Department to push through legislation targeting Uighur militants at the same time as the entire US government is attacking China’s broader policy towards Uighurs through an escalating sanctions regime.

India’s position is less complicated, though it is unlikely that the government in Delhi will be very interested in engaging China over Afghanistan given current broader tensions as a result of the border clashes earlier this year.

The Taleban’s continued hostility towards India as well as Pakistan’s long shadow and close ties to China suggest it is unlikely that we will see cooperation between Delhi and Beijing soon. In fact, there are indications that we might even see the opposite.

BALUCHISTAN SEPARATISTS

One of the irritants that China has noticed over the past few years is the growing instances of violence by Baluchi separatist groups in Pakistan targeting Chinese projects in the country. These groups loudly tout their anger against Islamabad and Beijing, accusing them both of raping their land in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province while launching attacks on prominent targets linked to China such as a busload of Chinese engineers, or a hotel in Gwadar (the Pakistani port that is spoken of as the “jewel” of the wider China Pakistan Economic Corridor). They do this from bases in Afghanistan, particularly in Kandahar.

Pakistani, and increasingly Chinese, experts blame much of this Baluchi violence on Indians and their Afghan proxies. From their perspective, Delhi is playing an old game of manipulating militants based in Afghanistan against them. Place this activity alongside the American decision about ETIM, and it can look to Beijing like Afghanistan is becoming a place where two of its biggest adversaries are lining up to support anti-Chinese militant groups.

Whatever the merits of the accusations, the fact remains that Afghanistan’s geography and porous borders make it an inviting base from which militant fighters can strike at Pakistan and Xinjiang province.

TALEBAN PROMISES

China may draw comfort from Taleban statements about not supporting foreign militants in using their territory, but the Taleban’s history of reliability about such statements is quite thin.

Chinese officials and experts alike love to chuckle about how Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. They point to the futility of previous British, Russian and now American efforts to assert their might over the country. They would never be so silly as to get caught in that trap, they say.

Yet simply standing back is not going to make Afghanistan’s problems go away. China’s large mineral extraction projects in Afghanistan (a copper mine in Mes Aynak and an oilfield in the north) have not brought the Afghans the benefits hoped for. Beijing cannot but be on the watchout for its adversaries latching on to local disgruntlement against failed projects to stoke a bigger backlash.

China may not want to get dragged into Afghanistan’s troubles, but it may find itself unable to avoid them. Whether America completely withdraws or not, China will still be Afghanistan’s wealthiest neighbour with growing economic interests in every country that Afghanistan borders. Its concerns about domestic and regional threats from terrorism and instability have links into the country.

Beijing may now be enjoying America’s embarrassing withdrawal, but it is the one that is most likely to feel the longer-term repercussions.

Raffaello Pantucci is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and has a forthcoming book looking at China’s relations with Central Asia that draws on almost a decade’s worth of travel and research across the region.

There is no new cold war, the West is just losing influence in Eurasia

Posted: August 6, 2020 in South China Morning Post
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New piece for the South China Morning Post, exploring the shifting Eurasian dynamics around China. My manuscript looking at China across this space is now with the publisher, so should be landing sometime in the near future.

There is no new cold war, the West is just losing influence in Eurasia

Is there a new axis between China, Russia and Iran against the West? Not quite. Beneath the surface of the anti-US alliance, there are undercurrents of hostility and scepticism. Across Eurasia, there is also a reluctance to take sides

Raffaello Pantucci

Published: 1:00am, 31 Jul, 2020

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A global conflict like the Cold War needs two sides. To the West, a new axis between Beijing, Moscow and Tehran appears to be taking shape. Drawing on the common thread of anti-Americanism, this alignment strengthens the sphere of influence that China has been building across Eurasia.

But in these very places where China has been most actively cultivating allies, underlying fears and concerns consistently undermine Beijing’s approach. Still, the arc of these relationships continues to bend in Beijing’s favour, and little the West offers by way of confrontation has been able to entirely break it. We are seeing less a new bifurcation than a gradual freezing out of Western influence.

The China-Iran-Russia coalition has been a long time in the making. Most recently, it has been expressed in attempts by Moscow and Beijing to protect Tehran from American sanctions. Bilaterally, China and Iran are in the process of signing a 25-year strategic agreement, while China and Russia are parroting each other’s narratives of the United States and advancing similar conspiracy theories about the source of Covid-19.

The three recently established, with Pakistan, a new grouping to focus on Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US troops. None of this is especially new, as it builds on a long history of cooperation between the three. According to some reports, they may have shared intelligence to take down US intelligence networks within their countries; late last year they held joint naval exercises.

Military sales between the three are substantial, and they have cooperated diplomatically at the UN to stymie Western goals. Yet this coalition masks deep tensions at the official and public levels. Chinese companies may seem willing to step into contracts abandoned by European firms in Iran, but until recently they were more fearful of US secondary sanctions than the importance of China’s relationship with Iran.

As for Russia, its detention of a prominent Arctic academic on accusations of spying for China hints at an undercurrent of hostility in the countries’ hard-power relations.

Iranian officials have complained publicly about China’s Covid-19 information, while Russian officials have targeted ethnic Chinese for racial profiling amid coronavirus fears. And while Russia and Iran might be fighting on the same side in Syria, neither trusts the other’s long-term intentions in the Middle East.

At the public level, scepticism about China is prevalent in both Russia and Iran. With conspiratorially minded audiences, it does not take long to find voices wary of Chinese economic influence. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is trying to ride this wave, ahead of next year’s presidential election.

This translates more widely into other geopolitical relationships that cut across the loose coalition. Both Moscow and Beijing have close relationships with Saudi Arabia, which theoretically contradict their alliance with Tehran. And both Moscow and Tehran have close relationships with India, China’s foil in Asia with whom it is currently locked in an aggressive land confrontation.

But there is a ruthless pragmatism at work across the three countries and the broader region. The heart of Eurasia is increasingly a Chinese-dominated space in which the cold logic of realism reigns supreme. The idealism advanced by liberal Western democratic powers is being crowded out by China’s pursuit of economic prosperity above all else.

And it is striking to see how this logic applies even to relationships in which China seems more bent on confrontation. In Kazakhstan, there appears to be a low-level information war with China, with instances of nationalistic Chinese reporting on Kazakhstan causing friction at an official level. Yet, the two countries continue to want to work closely together.

In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi still seems uncertain as to how far he can push tensions with China. His decision to ban Chinese mobile apps seems toothless at best, even as his officials continue to actively participate alongside Beijing in multilateral forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation or the Russia-India-China grouping.

And while he may have rhetorically moved towards the so-called Quad and Washington, his long-term future remains bound to Beijing, a reality he can hardly change, notwithstanding the current Indian media narrative.

And even if India did shift dramatically and aggressively against China, it is not clear that this would create a Western democratic bulwark within the region. Quite aside from India’s historical hedging strategy with regard to the West, Russia and China, there are concerns about India’s treatment of its Muslim minorities.

Some of India’s Muslim-majority neighbours have escalated these concerns, though they have a habit of doing so only when it suits their interests – much like how the issue of Xinjiang is raised selectively.

This is the reality of the situation in the heart of Eurasia – a complicated mess where idealism is in the rear-view mirror. There is a continuing narrative of a new cold war, but this time, the non-Western bloc is not a clearly unified structure.

Although Russia and Iran are close enough to be willing to overlook their differences in favour of China, theirs remains a skin-deep alliance. In the region, even among the like-minded powers that would more naturally fall on the American-led side, there is a confused picture – and no one really wants bifurcation.

We are not entering a new cold war, just seeing the gradual freezing out of the West in the Eurasian heartland.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

Beijing faces a perfect storm as the world turns against its narrative amid rising nationalism, leaving it no room for compromise

Posted: May 20, 2020 in South China Morning Post
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A new piece in the South China Morning Post which seems to have elicited anger and positivity from both sides in equal measure. Part of a broader theme around some of my writing of late which is taking quite a negative turn. Hard to be hugely positive given the current state of the world.

Beyond this, media appearances have been more limited, but did feature in BBC Radio 4’s Briefing Room series about China’s relations with the world. And two of the recent Webinars that I did are now available on YouTube. Watch here to see me talking about Mapping the Pandemic and the implications to UK-China relations courtesy of RUSI with Veerle, Steve and Jonathan moderating, and here talking about Kabir’s excellently readable book on ISIS in South Asia hosted by Maya and ORF with Indrani Bagchi as a fellow discussant.

Beijing faces a perfect storm as the world turns against its narrative amid rising nationalism, leaving it no room for compromise

In the face of growing global criticism, Beijing may be painting itself into a corner with its narratives, which are fuelling an increasingly angry nativism in China, forcing it to take the dangerous path of doubling down on confrontations

Raffaello Pantucci
Published: 10:45am, 16 May, 2020

People wave Chinese flags as they gather for a flag-raising ceremony to mark the New Year in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo: Reuters

People wave Chinese flags as they gather for a flag-raising ceremony to mark the New Year in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Photo: Reuters

China is heading into a perfect storm on the world stage. While the Communist Party habit is to double down when confronted, others are showing a willingness to match, and top, anything China does. The Covid-19 crisis has provided the perfect cover with China already painted by some as the instigator, something its conspiratorial rhetoric has only exacerbated.

The most obvious problem China faces is its confrontation with the US. Already bad before this crisis, relations have only worsened. But President Donald Trump is not the problem; without him at the helm, the situation might be even worse for China. Without his confusing and contradictory noise, the US might be able to mount a coherent and consistent strategy with allies against China.

Beijing is out of supporters in Washington. Sinophiles are appalled at the negative human rights news. The harassment of journalists based in Beijing has hardened the foreign press corps against the party. The think tank community is concerned about the continued detention of the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.

And the business community has realised the limits of the economic opportunities in China. Even fewer will want to champion Beijing, as the narrative of China as an adversary takes off in the public imagination.

Beyond Washington, the grand Western alliance is turning against China. Beijing may be able to persuade some European powers to side with it, but the underlying orientation within Europe will still be towards a transatlantic partnership.

Serbia, for example, is not going to turn its back on Europe or European Union membership in favour of Beijing. Nor are Hungary, Italy or any other powers where senior political figures say positive things about China.

These are internal dynamics at play. Serbia has long had a resentful relationship with Brussels – China offers an opportunity to poke it in the eye. But should Brussels suddenly change its passive approach and start imposing a cost on Serbia, the country’s Sinophilia would quickly melt away.

European powers will not reject the US at a strategic level in favour of China. There are issues where the US and Europe diverge but, at a fundamental strategic level, European powers still operate under an American security umbrella

There are frictions and resentments, but these are disputes within a long-standing marriage, rather than early signals of a divorce. The transatlantic alliance is a fundamental part of European strategic thinking and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Tensions also extend to Beijing’s supposed allies. Russia and Iran may see themselves as close to China at a strategic level, but it takes very little to get beneath the surface to find unhappiness towards Beijing.

Very public spats over Covid-19 between senior officials in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran are just one articulation of this. While at the official level, they continue to hold together against the common enemy of an American-led democratising West, this is a thin alliance.

There is also growing anger against China because of how high it has risen and how it acts in parts of the developing world. While China used to be able to hide behind the mask of being a developing country, this is no longer the case. China’s development may be uneven, but this is not what people see. China’s grandstanding on the world stage shows it to be a big power.

But once you ascend to this position, global expectations are raised. And when they are not met, people feel more able to say something and be angry. As a major power, you are supposed to be able to take such criticism. The global order is changing, but this comes with responsibilities and resentment.

And atop this, China’s domestic behaviour is viewed negatively elsewhere. Beijing may dismiss this as foreign interference, but it does not change perceptions about the treatment of Uygurs, Taiwan, Hong Kong or growing encroachment in the South China Sea. Given such domestic circumstances, few believe Beijing will be more magnanimous internationally.

How China deals with these issues is the final problem for Beijing: that of angry nationalism at home. China’s nativists are increasingly emboldened. They see their country rising and confronting the world superpower, the US. And they see no reason to back down. They have been told they are living the Chinese dream, with everyone eager to connect through the belt and road and have access to their success and wealth.

From their perspective, these ungrateful countries want to rip China apart. Any ceding of China’s position on core issues would be an admission of defeat, and would raise questions about the legitimacy of the party’s rule.
This means Beijing cannot back down, and must weather the coming economic storm while doubling down on any confrontation.

This is the quandary Beijing has got itself into. It can rail against the US and complain about double standards, but its narrative is only hardening opposition.

The world is becoming more restive. Everyone needs to think about what the future could look like if we continue along this dangerous path.

Raffaello Pantucci is senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London

Covid-19 is fuel to the flames of security threats

Posted: April 28, 2020 in Straits Times
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Another piece looking at how COVID-19 is impacting international security questions, somewhat emphasizing a point made in an earlier RUSI piece focusing in on how existing terrorist threats were evolving while the world was not paying attention. This time it is for my new local paper the Straits Times and takes a wider lens to look at how adversaries are actively taking advantage of distraction to advance their own interests. Given the dominance of COVID-19 on international affairs writ large at the moment suspect there are a few more pieces in me on this topic in some shape or form. In other matters, while not doing much media, am doing various webinars including one later this week (April 29 at 6PM Indian Standard Time) with the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) about the excellent Kabir’s very readable recent book on ISIS in South Asia. Last week spoke with a panel at the Pakistani Centre for Strategic and Contemporary Research (CSCR) on impact of COVID-19 on Belt and Road – the entire event was recorded and can be found on YouTube.

Covid-19 is fuel to the flames of security threats

Raffaello Pantucci For The Straits Times
PUBLISHED | APR 27, 2020, 5:00 AM SGT

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An Afghan security officer stopping motorists at a checkpoint in Kabul on April 8, during a government-imposed lockdown as a preventive measure against Covid-19. The virus may have brought much of the world to a standstill, but it has not ended conflict, says the writer. In Afghanistan, the peace process appears to be barely holding together amid continuing violence. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

The Covid-19 virus may have brought much of the world to a standstill, but it has not ended conflict.

In fact, there is a growing danger that some are exploiting people’s distraction to advance their own interests. Coming at a time when there is not the capacity to either respond directly to the threats or marshal the diplomatic wherewithal to stop problems from escalating, there is a real danger that it is not just the world’s economies that will be irrevocably damaged in the post-Covid-19 world, but our national security environment as well.

The problem is articulating itself in different ways, among adversaries large and small.

In many cases, the activity is an extension of existing issues – part of the general feeling of acceleration that is being driven by the crisis. But coming when most governments are focused on disease relief at home, there is little surge capability available to respond adequately.

Those who can respond – for the most part, the United States – are moving quickly to escalation, with all the risks that come with it.

China’s recent activity in the South China Sea is a good example of this. Beijing’s behaviour is not in itself new. With its nine-dash map, China has long made claims to much of the waterway and the atolls, reefs and islands that some countries in South-east Asian consider theirs.

But the recent decision to push at them by renaming sea features and establishing districts over disputed areas suggests that China sees an opportunity in further changing the realities on the ground and creating a context that will be difficult for others to push back on without engaging in some form of conflict.

Beijing’s behaviour has not gone unnoticed, with the US dispatching vessels to support South-east Asian partners. But this comes at a difficult moment, when South-east Asian countries are seeking to work with China to help manage the pandemic they face, and also hopeful for the country to rapidly turn its economy back on to boost regional growth once again.

The danger of confrontation is high given that managing relations between the two big powers is not the easiest in the best of times, even more so now with the region in the grip of the pandemic.

Big power rivalry aside, the pandemic is undermining the fight against terrorism.

Terrorist-fuelled conflicts in Africa have seen a rise in violence as Western forces find themselves increasingly stretched by the Covid-19 crisis. In Mali, Spain drew down a substantial proportion of its forces there, while France has seen some of its forces in West Africa fall sick and suspended some maritime operations. Over in East Africa, Interpol was forced by Covid-19 to suspend its regional intelligence coordination mission.

Terrorist groups have been quick to take advantage.

In West Africa, Al-Qaeda’s local affiliate gleefully celebrated the foreigners’ difficulties as reports from Mali suggest that militants are getting within reach of the capital Bamako. In East Africa, an Islamist-fuelled insurgency in northern Mozambique continues to escalate and is taking a trajectory that increasingly resembles that of Boko Haram, the terrorist group that continues to ravage Nigeria’s north and neighbours. Groups across the Sahel are becoming more ambitious and aggressive, with soldiers, civilians and fighters killed in growing numbers.

This pattern is also visible in Asia. In the holiday spot of the Maldives, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has claimed responsibility for its first attack amid a growing number of violent incidents in the country, including attacks on foreign visitors. In Afghanistan, the peace process appears to be barely holding together amid continuing violence.

Both the Maldives and Afghanistan also face Covid-19 outbreaks of unknown magnitude and are likely going to struggle to manage both a pandemic and terrorist attacks at the same time.

Again, outsiders have tried to step in to help, but the assistance is sporadic and mostly focused on providing medical aid, without focusing on the escalating security problems. A brief visit by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo showed the US’ concern with the Afghan security situation, but was not enough. In fact, the rush to exit from Afghanistan by the US risks leaving chaos in its wake that will have wider repercussions across the region.

In the meantime, Western powers have to contend with sabre-rattling and other provocative actions from the likes of Russia, Iran or North Korea. In a time of great distraction elsewhere, there are few moderating influences available to try to de-escalate these situations.

What Covid-19 has done is to act as an accelerant to the fires already burning in various hot spots around the world. If not contained, the conflicts will be hard to unwind. With the US and China on a path towards collision, there is increasingly little space for diplomacy.

Material changes on the ground, like claimed territories or cities taken over by terrorists, will not be easily reversed without conflict.

It is understandably difficult to get governments to focus on much else at the moment. Controlling the virus, saving lives at home and finding ways of getting economies moving again are clearly the immediate priorities.

But we are in danger of missing shifts happening in our national security environment that could lead to conflict or escalation beyond the point of control.

Without more attention being paid to these other problems, when the world starts up again after the contagion is over, we may find the geopolitical environment strategically altered for the worse.

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior visiting fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.

US unlikely to change minds by shouting at China’s neighbours

Posted: February 28, 2020 in Financial Times
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A new piece for the Financial Times Beyond BRICS site, looking at the wake of Secretary Pompeo’s trip to Central Asia. Covers ground that I have trodden a bit before, but also sets up some of the ideas in an upcoming much bigger book project. This aside, an earlier Foreign Policy piece on the UK’s response to the new terrorist threat was picked up in the I newspaper in the UK.

US unlikely to change minds by shouting at China’s neighbours
Washington needs more sophisticated narrative to break central Asia’s pragmatic ties to Beijing
February 24 2020

Workers outside the perimeter fence of what is officially an education centre in Xinjiang, China

Workers outside what is officially an education centre in Xinjiang, China. The plight of the Uighurs is not the only plank of Washington’s push against Beijing in the region © REUTERS

US secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s recent visit to central Asia was the latest stop on his global push against China. It comes amid visits to Africa, Latin America and Europe where China featured high on the agenda.

As the confrontation with Beijing slowly spills into every facet of relations — from trade and technology to social media, scientific exchange and business of every sort — China has become a top talking point everywhere US officials go.

The problem is that this uniform and loud hostility will work to different degrees around the world. And nowhere is it likely to be less effective than among China’s neighbours, which are bound by geography to have a relationship with Beijing.

Mr Pompeo’s visit to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan followed a session on the fringes of the UN General Assembly meeting last year when he pressed those countries on their relationship with China and zeroed in on China’s mistreatment of its Uighur minority as an issue of common concern.

While the central Asians made the right noises, none of them was willing to be as forward in their criticism of China as Mr Pompeo. This was repeated on his visit to central Asia, when the secretary of state had a meeting with families of people with relations caught up in Xinjiang’s grim detention camp system. While he kept pushing for condemnation by local authorities, he was met with silence.

The plight of the Uighurs was not the only plank of Mr Pompeo’s push against China in the region. He also spoke of the dangers of Chinese investment, railing against the Belt and Road Initiative concept in particular. This is a tune which his colleague Alice Wells, the principal deputy assistant secretary for the region, has been pushing in south Asia, most prominently in comments before a congressional committee on Afghanistan and during a think-tank event in Washington.

Talking of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor as “debt trap” diplomacy, and complaining about the lack of Chinese economic support in Afghanistan, Ms Wells has been replicating in south Asia her secretary’s push in central Asia.

Partners across China’s western flank are being told off by senior US officials for their relations with Beijing, and increasingly being pressured into confronting China more aggressively. The problem is that while these countries may respect the raw power Washington represents, they are also neighbours of China with strong economic and human ties.

These human ties are particularly relevant when it comes to what is happening in Xinjiang where there is evidence that central and south Asian family members are getting caught up in the camp system. But while countries feel some level of concern about their people, they are sensitive to the fact that this is taking place within China to Chinese nationals.

From their perspective, Beijing has not meddled in their affairs, so why should they violate this and meddle in those of Beijing? The central Asians in particular share with China a broadly similar assessment of what constitutes terrorism and extremism, and they are almost all bound together through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. They have little incentive to pick a fight with Beijing over what is happening.

In fact, the central Asia-China relationship is one with many layers. There is very little love lost between the peoples of the two regions at a public level — in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan there has been a noticeable increase in the past year of protests and clashes between Chinese populations and locals.

However, at a security level, they are getting closer. In economic terms — where almost all the attention is — their relationship is growing. The US is largely an irrelevance in trade terms for the region. Foreign direct investment is a similar story, though the US is more represented through international financial institutions. Nevertheless, none of these countries see their economic future as realistically bound up with Washington.

And the US has shown itself to be relatively uninterested in the region more generally. Mr Pompeo’s visit was the first by a senior US official since secretary of state John Kerry visited in 2015.

Aside from China (and Russia and Iran to a lesser degree), Washington’s principal preoccupation with the region appears to be to exit Afghanistan. creating a potentially major security issue on the borders of some central Asian states.

The US is also locked in an increasingly aggressive conflict with another of their neighbours, Iran, and has passed sanctions against another, Russia, as well. Living in this neighbourhood means the central Asians have to take a more pragmatic view.

The US continues to have a deep wellspring of admirers around the globe. They are increasingly finding this affection tested by the lectures about China. Nowhere is this more so than among China’s neighbours — all of whom are concerned about China’s rise but see that as an opportunity and a challenge they have to engage with rather than cut off from.

Washington needs to develop a more sophisticated and consistent narrative if it is to persuade them to work with it more closely.

Raffaello Pantucci is a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a UK think-tank

Why Iran has got China wrong: Beijing will follow its own playbook in countering the US-led West

Posted: September 29, 2019 in South China Morning Post
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And finally in this catch-up blast, a longer op-ed for the South China Morning Post looking at some of the recent machinations between China and Iran. Had a few comments back that this was an obvious point to make, but it feels like it needs to be all considered against the broader backdrop of China’s growing influence and power in its own backyard. More on this topic to come.

All of these posts aside, spoke to the Sunday Times about Chinese investment and influence in Ireland, spoke to CNBC about China-Russia (which was translated into Hungarian), The National about the far right in Germany, to Samaa TV about ISIS in Khorasan, to The National again about bounties being put on ISIS leaders heads, an old interview was used again in this fantastic Portuguese piece in Sabato by Nuno Tiago Pinto about important Portuguese foreign fighter Nero Saraiva who lived for a while in the UK, an earlier comment to the Telegraph about Hamza bin Laden’s death was picked up again, and another earlier piece in the Sunday Times was picked up by VoA.

Why Iran has got China wrong: Beijing will follow its own playbook in countering the US-led West

  • While regional players like Iran seek to bring China into the conversation as an ally, Beijing continues to rely on the rhetoric of non-interference
  • China is focused single-mindedly on its own interests and set to get stronger as a result

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The first-ever Chinese goods train to Iran arrives in Tehran on February 15, 2016, after a 14-day journey hailed as a revival of the Silk Raod under China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China is emerging as the central power in its immediate and expanding neighbourhood, while the West tears at itself and old alliances. Photo: EPA

Buried among last week’s news of confrontation with Iran was a story that China was on the cusp of investing US$400 billion into the country’s hydrocarbon industry. This was followed late in the week by the news that Iran was going to be joining China and Russia in new naval exercises, an announcement that came a week after the Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff, Major General Mohammad Baqeri, visited a naval base in Shanghai.

The clear suggestion was that Iran was showing it had a strong ally in Beijing. The axis of convenience against the West was bringing Tehran firmly into its bosom.

Yet, in the face of all of this noise from Iran, Beijing was largely silent. A foreign ministry spokesman denied any knowledge when confronted with a question about the investment during a regular press briefing. The Chinese commentariat seemed mostly focused on downplaying Iran’s role in the strike on the Abqaiq and Khurais facilities in Saudi Arabia, and President Xi Jinping had a phone call with King Salman.

Reported in similar terms by both the Saudi and Chinese state media (the Belt and Road was only mentioned in Xinhua’s read-out and the Saudi statement was far more aggressive), the phone call was a decorative effort highlighting the importance of the bilateral relationship and China’s desire for events not to escalate.

And, while Beijing seemed eager to not engage, Iranian sources appeared to deny the existence of the supersized investment. On Friday, an interview emerged with the head of money and capital markets at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce stating that he had not heard anything about it.

Furthermore, Iran’s oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh denied the rumours, bluntly saying, “I have not heard such a thing.” In fact, the discussion in Tehran at the moment around China is about how long the Bank of Kunlun will be able to continue to be a lifeline of sorts for the country.

Owned mostly by the China National Petroleum Corporation, the bank is a Xinjiang institution that has long served as a conduit for financial relations between China and Iran. As the rest of the world severed its links to Tehran, Kunlun has kept a connection going. The bank has faced some pressure, falling into the US Treasury Department’s sights, leading the bank to try to downplay its relations for fear of damaging repercussions for parent institution CNPC.

The result has been a paring back of financial relations between the bank and Iran, with the maintenance of only a few lines of credit focused specifically on non-sanctioned goods.

Rather, the Iranian announcements have the ring of similarity to previous announcements to have emerged from Moscow, as its relations with the West went downhill.

Back in 2014, as the West’s condemnation of Russia’s redrawing of Ukraine’s borders reached fever pitch, President Vladimir Putin headed to Shanghai where he oversaw the signing alongside President Xi of a US$400 billion energy deal between China and Russia. The deal was one which had been announced and signed a few times before, but it landed in Shanghai at a convenient moment for the Russian leader.

Again, this was not a moment without some irritation for Beijing. While China never condemned Russia’s actions in Ukraine, it was not best pleased, keeping its comments sparse. China is not keen on major disruptions to international affairs, like the attack in Saudi Arabia, especially ones which might have repercussions for Beijing.

The precedent that Russia set in redrawing borders in Ukraine was not one that China wanted widely adopted –
fearing the loss of its own restive regions. And disruptions to international energy supplies result in higher prices, something China could do without.

The question, then, is whether China is hostage to disruptive powers like Iran and Russia, or whether Beijing is, in fact, gaining the upper hand.

To better understand this, it is important to note another event over the weekend that ties the three countries together – the Taliban negotiating team’s visit to Beijing after stops in Moscow and Tehran.

Organised after the dramatic failure of the American-led talks, the whistle-stop regional tour appears to be an effort by the Taliban to understand better where things now stand. With Afghan elections around the corner and the conflict showing little evidence of concluding, all three surrounding powers have begun to worry about how they will manage the long-term instability with which Afghanistan seems cursed.

From China’s perspective, however, this is all reflective of the fact that everyone appears to want to show that Beijing is on their side. In each of these situations, the regional players have all sought to bring China into the conversation and show that Beijing is backing them.

China is judicious in avoiding apportioning blame, and at best uses the opportunity to make digs at the United States. The net result is that China emerges as the central power in its immediate and expanding neighbourhood, while the West tears at itself and old alliances.

For Beijing, there is some danger in assuming this position. First, it reinforces the image of China as the central power in a new axis of convenience against the US-led West. And second, it places China in a position of potential responsibility between some of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

Yet, it is equally possible that Beijing has factored both of these realities in and is actually happy to bolster alliances against the US.

In terms of China’s unavoidable responsibilities, this is something that has been on the cards for some time, and yet Beijing has yet to really demonstrate a requirement to have to step in.

Instead, China continues to call on the rhetoric of non-interference to simply let things play themselves out, focused single-mindedly on its own interests. Rather than taking on the activist West at its own game, China appears to be crafting its own playbook.

And while Tehran may think that it is hustling Beijing into showing its hand in its favour, the reality is that it is China that is most likely to emerge strengthened from this geopolitical dance.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London

Why Eurasia will suffer if Donald Trump makes an enemy of China

Posted: February 16, 2017 in South China Morning Post
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Slightly belated posting of a piece for the South China Morning Post looking at how Eurasia may lose out from a US-China falling out. Been very busy with a variety of projects which will produce some interesting outputs in the near-term future. The image is not the one used in the article, but one I found on ChinaMil about the same US-China HADR engagement, as I could not seem to download the one from the SCMP.

Why Eurasia will suffer if Donald Trump makes an enemy of China

Raffaello Pantucci says the US president’s hostile stance not only puts at risk overall ties with Beijing, but could also deprive Eurasia of the cooperation it needs to advance, and a counterweight to China’s potentially overbearing sway

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There is a dichotomy at the heart of US-China relations that is best captured by the term “frenemies”. The relationship is both contentious and competitive, while also intertwined and interdependent. The economic side of this discussion is well-worn, but the security one is often overlooked, with a simplistic view concluding that interactions are constructed on an interdependent economic relationship and a tense security one.

This misses recent developments that may exacerbate the potential for a tense bilateral relationship under US President Donald Trump.

There is no denying the tense security relationship between Washington and Beijing in the Pacific and the seas off mainland China. A complicated weave of treaties and relationships gives the US a strong security footprint in an area which China claims as its own.

Yet, look over land and a very different perspective emerges. In Afghanistan, China and the US have cooperated for years in trying to bring the Taliban to peace talks, and undertaken joint training missions to build up Afghanistan’s own security capacity. In Central Asia, the two have discussed how to cooperate, though so far there is limited evidence of progress.

In Pakistan, China has played a positive role – with US support – in ensuring the relationship between Pakistan and India does not boil over into conflict. And the US has occasionally eliminated militant Uygurs of concern to Beijing in drone strikes in Afghanistan or Syria – in a reflection of how much China and the US face a joint threat of terrorism.

And there have been some direct joint operations and cooperative efforts. In November, US and Chinese forces practised a humanitarian disaster relief exercise in Yunnan. The concept was that, in the event of a natural disaster, American and Chinese forces might be able to play a role in mitigating the fallout together.

All of these positive moves may now be under threat as both sides ratchet up tensions in the wake of Trump’s aggressive arrival in office. If the US president lives up to his promises of demanding a shift in the Sino-US economic relationship and a more confrontational approach over Taiwan aimed at further advancing this, it is perfectly possible that we may see China choosing to act in a more transactional manner over its links to the US in Eurasia.

If the relationship becomes too poisoned over the seas, Beijing may choose to refuse to play a productive role over land. China is still trying to work out what role it will play in Eurasia, and how it will enforce its will.

If it sees the US in a more competitive light, it is possible Beijing will start to conclude that it no longer wants to play a cooperative role with Washington. Rather, it will look to others, and start to strengthen its relations in a way to cut the US out of the region.

The potential loser in all of this is Eurasia – a region that needs greater cooperation from all sides if it is to realise the potential of the various proposed Silk Road and connectivity routes across the continent. The long-fallow US “New Silk Road” initiative to help Afghanistan reconnect to its region will dissolve further into irrelevance and American interests in Eurasia will be further reduced.

Currently, the region is dominated by Beijing’s economic push, but it requires greater investment and cooperation from a wider range of actors if it is to truly succeed. This includes both China and the US, which have different and important roles to play, and are both sought after by countries across the continent. If the two powers start to develop a more confrontational approach, it will limit connectivity but also deprive Eurasian powers of a key alternative to China’s potentially overbearing power across the continent.

The US and China have developed habits of close cooperation across Eurasia that have helped open up new markets and opportunities, and reconnect the world as never before. It has also shown how the US and China are able to play a productive and cooperative role together. If Trump forces a more confrontational and transactional relationship, it is likely that China will continue on its path across Eurasia alone or with other partners – a net loss for American power across the region.

Raffaello Pantucci is director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as:
Trump duel with China would see Eurasia lose out

China has been getting its way with the world for three decades. Thanks to Trump, that’s over

Posted: December 20, 2016 in Telegraph
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Catching up on old posting again, this time a piece for the Telegraph after Trump’s Taiwan telephone call and the implications on the relationship for China. Not a title I would have chosen if I am honest.

China has been getting its way with the world for three decades. Thanks to Trump, that’s over

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Donald Trump’s assault on the basic assumptions of international relations continues. His latest broadside has struck China, with the President-elect refusing to bend to the “one China” policy which has governed the US-China relationship since President Nixon visited Mao Zedong in the 1970s. Yet while this challenge is fraught with risks of miscalculation, it also casts a light on the interesting potential that a President Trump administration offers – one where previously ossified assumptions that underlie international relations can no longer can be taken for granted.

The current world order is one that favours China. Sitting in Beijing last year, I watched as one of the senior figures in the party happily recounted the scene at September 2015’s 70th anniversary celebrations to commemorate the end of the Second World War. Looking wistfully into the distance, he recounted how blue the skies were that day and how impressive China’s mighty army looked. Aligned next to him were various world leaders eager to highlight the proximity of their relationship with Beijing. For China, a country that has taken full advantage of globalisation and its massive population to turn itself into the world’s factory, the world order is working very well.

Consequently, the arrival of Donald Trump, a leader talking of scrapping trade treaties and offering a newly assertive America, is deeply troublesome. China’s rise in the world under the shadow of a western-led liberal order focused on open markets had been a steady one. it was one in which China often rejected some of the same open principles that it was able to take advantage of in other markets. While it is relatively easy for Chinese companies to seek out opportunities in western markets, it is often nowhere near as easy for western companies to go into China.

On the geopolitical stage, China has also managed to establish a consensus that asserts its advantages and interests, something most clearly on display with the international community’s relations with Taiwan. While many welcome relations with Taiwan, it is very much on Beijing’s terms. Taiwanese Embassies around the world are called “Representative Offices” while its officials are kept out of international institutions. Yet at the same time, the United States is bound by the Taiwan Relations Act to protect any assault on Taiwanese democracy. The most visible sign of this is arms sales, whereby the United States continues to provide the weaponry to ensure that Taipei is able to protect itself from an attack from the mainland.

And yet, every time the arms sales are advanced, a delicate diplomatic dance is undertaken whereby Beijing complains, the United States refuses to bend, undertakes the arms transfers yet continues to acknowledge the “one china” policy. These past few weeks have started to upend the delicate diplomatic dance that underlies this transaction.

Talking to people in Beijing last week, the overriding sense from President-elect Trump’s statements was one of confusion. Still unclear as to how much his commentary should be taken seriously, Beijing saw him reaching out through the appointment of a new Ambassador who had a personal history with President Xi as well as through messages sent through former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Yet at the same time, he spoke the language of confrontation through his actions with Taipei and running commentary through interviews and Twitter. Beijing is now uncertain where it stands, and has begun to realize that the assumptions that underlay the world order that it was quietly riding to steady growth are increasingly going to be challenged.

It is entirely unclear how this is going to play out. This in many ways is probably President-elect Trump’s intent, aiming to establish a new bargaining point in negotiations with China. Yet the danger is in miscalculation. The Taiwan question for China is not one of international relations, but rather a domestic one. Consequently, the sort of horse-trading that might be possible in other fields will be harder if not impossible.

No doubt this has been considered to some degree in Trump Tower, but it is not clear that these messages are getting to Beijing in the manner they are supposed to. If Donald Trump has miscalculated, it  could mean a confrontation between two of world’s superpowers – with consequences that will impact us all.

Raffaello Pantucci is Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

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