GWPF Newsletter: China nixes US climate appeal over Uighur genocide claims

 

John Kerry promises US won't cave to China to save climate agenda

In this newsletter:

1) China nixes US climate appeal over Uighur genocide claims
New York Post, 28 January 2021
 
2) Chinese warplanes simulated attacking US carrier near Taiwan
Financial Times, 29 January 2021

  
3) China raises pressure on Taiwan, warns 'independence means war'
9News, 29 January 2021 
 
4) John Kerry promises US won't cave to China to save climate agenda
Vox, 27 January 2021
 
5) Walter Russell Mead: Biden’s opening salvo on Beijing
The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2021
 
6) John Kerry: COP26 climate summit in Glasgow is world's 'last chance'
The National, 28 January 2021

7) 'Last chance' UN climate summit could be cancelled again due to Covid
The Scotsman, 29 January 2021

Full details:

1) China nixes US climate appeal over Uighur genocide claims
New York Post, 28 January 2021
 
WASHINGTON — China’s Communist government smacked-down Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s appeals to work together on climate change after he said he agreed that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims amounted to “genocide.” 

 
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he agreed that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims amounted to “genocide.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he agreed that the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims amounted to “genocide.”

In a new statement released on Twitter, China’s foreign ministry accused Blinken of “interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests” after he backed predecessor Mike Pompeo’s declaration that it had launched “a systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs.”

“China is willing to work with the US on climate change. But such cooperation cannot stand unaffected by the overall China-US relations,” the statement read.

“It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs while interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests,” it added.

At his first press conference as Biden’s secretary of state on Wednesday, Blinken was asked by a Chinese journalist how the US would work with China with the genocide designation hanging over the relationship.

Blinken danced around the issue and said the US was able to compartmentalize difference issues with the Communist nation, which he described as “the most important relationship we have,” and called on them to step up alongside America to confront climate change.

Full story
 
2) Chinese warplanes simulated attacking US carrier near Taiwan
Financial Times, 29 January 2021
 
Chinese military aircraft simulated missile attacks on a nearby US aircraft carrier during an incursion into Taiwan’s air defence zone three days after Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to intelligence from the US and its allies.


The USS Theodore Roosevelt was leading a group of US Navy vessels in the area © Reuters

The People’s Liberation Army sent 11 aircraft into the south-western corner of Taiwan’s air defence zone on January 23, and 15 aircraft into the same area the next day, according to Taiwan’s defence ministry.

People familiar with intelligence collected by the US and its allies said the bombers and some of the fighter aircraft involved were conducting an exercise that used a group of US Navy vessels led by the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the same area as a simulated target.

Pilots of H-6 bombers could be heard in cockpit conversations confirming orders for the simulated targeting and release of anti-ship missiles against the carrier, the people said.

The revelations highlight that the intense military competition between the two superpowers around Taiwan and the South China Sea has not eased, posing a challenge to any attempts the Biden administration might make to improve its relationship with Beijing.
 
Full story (£)
 
3) China raises pressure on Taiwan, warns 'independence means war'
9News, 29 January 2021 
 
China has warned Taiwan an attempt to pursue independence from Beijing "means war" as it defended heightened military drills around the island.

A Chinese military spokesman said its military exercises were needed "to safeguard national sovereignty".

Beijing is concerned about perceived growing close links between Taiwan and the US.

It also believes Taiwan's democratically-elected government wants to issue a formal declaration of independence, even though the island's president Tsai Ing-wen has insisted that it is already an independent country called the Republic of China - its formal name.

But China regards the island as a renegade province of the mainland and strongly opposes diplomatic attempts by other countries to engage with Taiwan.

Beijing dispatched military aircraft - including nuclear-capable bombers - on two patrols over Taiwan airspace last weekend.
 
4) John Kerry promises US won't cave to China to save climate agenda
Vox, 27 January 2021
 
Many feared the US would make unsavory concessions to China to ensure climate change progress. Kerry says “that’s not going to happen.”


 
John Kerry, President Joe Biden’s special envoy for climate change issues, just addressed one of the biggest concerns early critics have of the new administration: Whether the White House will make unsavory concessions to China in exchange for progress on climate issues.
 
In a Wednesday afternoon press briefing to release the administration’s new climate change executive orders, Kerry answered that question definitively: No.

“Obviously we have serious differences with China,” the envoy said during the White House briefing, citing Beijing’s theft of intellectual property and aggression in the South China Sea as examples. “Those issues will never be traded for anything that has to do with climate. That’s not going to happen.”

It’s a pretty big statement, and one that hopefully clarifies an early controversy over the Biden administration’s foreign policy plans.

Climate change is a top Biden priority. So is confronting China.

In December, US foreign policy expert Thomas Wright wrote an article in the Atlantic with a provocative claim: That Kerry would prioritize extracting climate change-related concessions from China, and to do so would minimize America’s plans to push Beijing on trade, security, and human rights issues:

"According to three people familiar with Kerry’s thinking, Kerry believes that cooperation with China is the key to progress on climate change and that climate is by far the most important issue in the relationship between the United States and China. Kerry thinks the U.S. president should use his political capital to press Beijing on this subject. Yes, the United States should stand firm when it disagrees with Beijing, as he believes it did during his tenure as secretary of state, but everything else, including geopolitical competition with China, is of secondary importance to this overarching threat."



Kerry’s former aides and others close to him denied that Wright accurately portrayed the former secretary of state’s stance. Still, it led many in Washington, DC’s foreign policy expert community — especially those on the right — to preemptively worry the incoming Biden administration would be softer on China to make climate change progress.

That was a fair concern. The US wants China to stop putting millions of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang camps, cease the intellectual property theft of American business, and quit harassing US allies in regional waters. If the US weakened its pushback on any of these issues so China would agree to lower carbon emissions, for example, many in the US and around the world might not deem that a good trade.

But the climate envoy has now stated such fears are overblown: The Biden administration will seek both to compete with China on myriad issues and work with it to reverse climate change’s effects.

It’s unclear if that approach will work, and the White House could face a future scenario where it would consider trade-offs. Criticism might be warranted then. For now, Kerry is clearly trying to put an end to an early controversy about his own views — and Biden’s foreign policy in general.
 
5) Walter Russell Mead: Biden’s opening salvo on Beijing
The Wall Street Journal, 26 January 2021

The Biden administration is less than a week old, but its most consequential foreign-policy decisions may already be behind it.

Initiating his China policy with the most aggressive concatenation of moves against a foreign power that any peacetime U.S. administration has ever launched so early on, President Biden has thrown down a gauntlet that Beijing is unlikely to ignore. Besides issuing a formal invitation to Taiwan’s top Washington representative to attend the inauguration (the first such invitation since the U.S. established formal relations with Beijing in 1979), the incoming team has pledged to continue arms sales to Taiwan and indicated that it wants to delay high-level U.S.-China talks until it consults with close allies—a stand that China will interpret as a rebuff. As if this weren’t enough, Secretary of State-designate Antony Blinken announced that he concurs with his predecessor Mike Pompeo’s finding that China is engaged in a genocide against its mostly Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. Taken with the previously planned dispatch of a naval strike group to the South China Sea, it all amounts to a stern message to Beijing.

These moves must be troubling for those who hoped that Mr. Biden would “prioritise global issues over great power competition,” as Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served as the State Department director of policy planning during the Obama administration, put it in a recent op-ed for the Financial Times.
 
It’s not entirely clear how coordinated the new measures are. The late designation of Chinese behavior as genocide by the Trump-era State Department in particular put Mr. Biden in a difficult spot. He had called the repression of the Uighurs a genocide on the campaign trail, but stump-speech rhetoric has no legal force. Once the State Department weighed in officially, Mr. Biden couldn’t walk back a designation he was on record as endorsing without looking weak.

It remains to be seen whether the administration will attempt to tone down the strong message sent by its early actions. The combination of the hard line on Taiwan and the genocide designation could be the foundation of a policy mix that is significantly more provocative than even some China hawks in the new administration wanted—and far more hawkish than the human-rights advocates supporting the genocide designation understood.
 
The ball is now in Xi Jinping’s court. His choices are limited. He can respond with tough statements but signal a willingness to engage Washington pragmatically. This would hand Mr. Biden a diplomatic victory at the start of his administration and tell the rest of the world that China isn’t yet prepared to take on America. It would also damage Mr. Xi at home, as anything that looks like a retreat would infuriate Chinese nationalists and undercut official propaganda about China’s global stature.

Alternatively, Beijing can respond with provocations of its own. Mr. Xi can order military moves in disputed territories from the Himalayas to the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. He can also double down on repressive measures in China. The object would be to call Mr. Biden’s bluff, forcing Washington to choose between a humiliating retreat or a further escalation of tensions.
 
The early signs aren’t encouraging. On Inauguration Day, Chinese forces attacked Indian positions in Sikkim, across the border from Tibet. Following 13 Chinese sorties into Taiwan’s southwestern air-defense identification zone on Saturday, State Department spokesman Ned Price warned China to cease “its military, diplomatic and economic pressure against Taiwan.” China responded by sending another 15 sorties the next day. The unifying theme of Mr. Xi’s speech to the World Economic Forum Monday morning was China’s staunch opposition to U.S. attempts to isolate China or limit its rise. China will think carefully before making its next moves, but it’s unlikely to submit tamely to American pressure.

The crisis in China policy is the most dramatic problem facing the new administration, but relations with Russia also look tangled. The quick U.S. response to support the rights of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his supporters is noble from a human-rights standpoint, but it will strengthen the hand of those in the Kremlin (and in Beijing) who argue that Washington’s ultimate goal in their countries remains regime change. How that will affect the Biden administration’s hopes for agreements on topics ranging from arms control to climate change remains to be seen. It will certainly stimulate efforts in both China and Russia to weaken U.S. power, meddle in American politics and disrupt Washington’s alliances.

All this may well be inevitable, and the U.S. cannot abandon either its strategic interests or its core values. But weaving those sometimes conflicting elements into a coherent foreign policy is never an easy task. The dramatic first steps of the Biden administration demonstrate how challenging American statecraft can be.

6) John Kerry: COP26 climate summit in Glasgow is world's 'last chance'
The National, 28 January 2021

THIS year’s climate summit in Scotland is the world’s “last best chance” to avert climate catastrophe, according to US climate envoy John Kerry.

The senior White House diplomat earmarked the COP26 conference in Glasgow as a crucial landmark in the global bid to combat the environmental crisis.

The United Nations talks, which will be attended by leaders from across the world, were pushed back a year due to the pandemic.

Full story

see also: The annual COP Ritual

7) 'Last chance' UN climate summit could be cancelled again due to Covid
The Scotsman, 29 January 2021
 
The United Nations environmental summit, COP26, due to take place in Glasgow this November, could be cancelled for the second time depending on the global levels of coronavirus.

The event, which attracts tens of thousands of people from around the world, was postponed last year and rescheduled to take place this autumn, with newly-elected US president Joe Biden expected to attend.

It would be the biggest international summit the UK has ever hosted, bringing together more 30,000 delegates, including heads of state, climate experts and campaigners to agree co-ordinated action to tackle climate change.

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.