Hi, China Watchers. This week we check in with Australia’s new ambassador to the U.S., assess Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping’s three-day Russia trip and parse the fine print on Xi’s new Global Civilization Initiative. And with one eye on Capitol Hill’s anti-TikTok push, we profile a book that warns of Beijing’s malign overseas reach through “intimidation, infiltration, influence operations and espionage.”

Don’t forget — from next Tuesday March 28, China Watcher will be coming to you on a twice weekly (Tuesday & Thursday) schedule. I’m teaming up with my colleague Stuart Lau in Brussels to deliver to you a double-barrel blast of hot scoops, cool takes and deep dives essential to connecting the dots between D.C., Europe and Beijing. The wait is almost over — you’re going to start receiving China Watcher on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:30AM ET. But If you’d rather opt out of the new, improved twice-weekly China Watcher launching Tuesday March 28 — we’ll miss you! — you can update your newsletter preferences here.

Let’s get to it. — Phelim

Former Australian Prime Minister KEVIN RUDD started work this week in his new job: Australian ambassador to the United States. That puts a decades-long China scholar adjacent the key U.S. decision-making on China and Indo-Pacific policies. China Watcher spoke to Rudd last week as he closed out his tenure as president of the Asia Society and prior to taking up his diplomatic role about the state of relations between the U.S., Australia and China.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

You recently said that a new Asia Society initiative to jumpstart anti-cancer collaboration between the U.S. and China could be “the new ping pong diplomacy ... bringing some stabilizing and positive force for the bilateral relationship and beyond.” How might that work?

U.S.-China ties are experiencing challenges right across the entire framework of the relationship. And it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about geopolitics, economics, climate or human rights. We failed spectacularly to collaborate during the pandemic. But there is an ongoing and growing epidemic of cancer not just in the United States, but in China. In China, in any given year, we have something like three million cancer deaths and in the U.S. it’s about 600,000.

People who are affected by cancer — the patients, their friends and loved ones — don’t care much about geopolitics when it comes to the question of early access to innovative cancer treatment drugs. So what we’ve been seeking to do is work with both regulators and researchers in China and the United States to get them to agree on arrangements which make it possible for drug trials with large patient groups in China and in the United States, so that we can get these innovative drugs from the laboratories into the marketplace rapidly.

What does it say about U.S.-China relations that 50 years after the inauguration of ping pong diplomacy, we’re grasping for issues that could reignite engagement and cooperation?

What it means is that whatever the current state of the political relationship was back then, we are now looking for similar people-to-people initiatives that have some potential of breaking back through into politics. I don’t underestimate the degree of difficulty here. Back in the seventies we reached into the bottom drawer and pulled out ping pong diplomacy. I suggest we reach into the middle drawer and pull out cancer research collaboration.

President JOE BIDEN and Chinese paramount leader XI JINPING agreed in their meeting in Bali in November to try to ease bilateral tensions. What is it going to take to try to put the brakes on a relationship that has been tumbling to new lows ever since?

The political will on the part of the two leaders was there. They reached that conclusion based on their own calculation of their own national interests that taking the strategic temperature down several notches was worthwhile. Since then, the problem we’ve run into is that we haven’t had sufficient political clear air in the relationship. In fact, we’ve run into a lot of clear air turbulence instead. So what it will take is several months of clear air again before hard heads both in Beijing and Washington want to get back to the business of stabilization and putting a floor under the relationship.

What do you make of the fact that a defining element of the U.S.-Australia relationship for the next three decades will be the China-countering AUKUS nuclear submarines deal?

The U.S. Australia relationship is broad, deep and its strategic and security dimensions go back years. So AUKUS is simply one aspect of it. It’s an important aspect of it, but in terms of the future evolution of the U.S.-Australia relationship, there are many dimensions to the relationship, both in the security domain, but also the broader foreign policy domain. Not to mention the enormous economic engagement between the two countries and the fact we share deep, underlying values. So AUKUS is one important part of the relationship, but it’s not the totality.

In a recent interview with CNN you warned that “we’re living in really dangerous times.” How dangerous?

The challenge that we all face is to reduce the risk of crisis, conflict and war by accident. And that’s why leaders in both China and the United States have been speaking about the need to stabilize and to manage this competitive relationship. Because managing it at that level is important if you’re going to reduce the risk of accidental escalation. And in the absence of that, the issues at stake become increasingly dangerous.

Xi and Putin’s Potemkin “peace journey” to nowhere

Xi Jinping touted his three-day trip to Russia this week as a “a journey of friendship, cooperation and peace.” But Xi’s 72 hours with his “no limits” comrade President VLADIMIR PUTIN was a bust in delivering movement toward ending Putin’s Ukraine aggression.

The arguably most important Xi-Putin joint statement focused on “Settling the Ukraine Crisis Through Dialogue” and clocked in at a meager 285 words. It reiterated Beijing and Moscow’s existing position about Russia’s “legitimate security concerns” in Ukraine and included implicit swipes at the U.S. with references to “bloc confrontation,” “fanning the flames” and “unilateral sanctions.”

That shouldn’t have been a surprise. As POLITICO’s STUART LAU reported on Monday, Beijing’s worldview requires it to stay strategically close to Russia. As Beijing’s leaders see it, the U.S. is blocking China’s path to global leadership, aided by European governments. At the same time, most of its own geographical neighbors — from Japan and South Korea to Vietnam and India — are increasingly skeptical of China’s geopolitical motives in the region.

Xi’s willingness to meet with Putin just days after the International Criminal Court indicted him for war crimes in Ukraine wasn’t auspicious. And the two leaders’ meetings produced rhetoric reinforcing their existing position that Russia is battling a “proxy war” against NATO on its sovereign territory. That suggested that “China feels no responsibility to hold the Kremlin accountable for the atrocities committed in Ukraine,” Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN told reporters on Monday.

But the brevity of the Ukraine statement and its absence of any new pledges of Chinese support for Russia also highlights a bilateral power dynamic increasingly lopsided in China’s favor. Russia is now a supplicant to a Chinese regime frustrated by the grinding attrition of Putin’s war.

The statement reads as though “China slapped back the Russians,” said DANIEL FRIED, former assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs. “They didn’t throw them under the bus, they didn’t break with them, but it’s impossible to read that statement and not think that the Chinese put the Russians in their place and the Russians had to suck it up,” Fried said.

Still, China doesn’t have a global strategy that doesn’t involve Russia, so it also can’t backpedal.

The takeaway from the meetings’ messaging is likely the opposite of what Beijing and Russia intended. “China looks exasperated. Russia looks weak. And by implication, Ukraine looks tough and the United States looks steady,” said Fried, who’s now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council.

TRANSLATING WASHINGTON

— BIDEN SIGNS COVID-19 ORIGINS ACT: Biden ensured a long term congressional focus on China’s possible role in the start of the pandemic by signing into law the “Covid-19 Origin Act of 2023.” The law mandates review of “all classified information relating to Covid–19’s origins, including potential links to the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” Biden said in a statement on Tuesday. The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s WANG WENBIN said the law aimed to “smear and attack China.”

— YELLEN, RAIMONDO BEIJING TRIP IN WORKS: The White House is trying to broker a visit to Beijing by Treasury Secretary JANET YELLEN and Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO. “We’re having discussions with the PRC right now about a potential visit … to go over there and talk about economic issues,” national security adviser JOHN KIRBY told reporters on Monday. Kirby said the White House was still trying to arrange a call between President Biden and Xi Jinping and that it was looking to get Blinken’s Beijing trip — postponed by the Chinese spy balloon furor in February — “back on the calendar.”

— BLINKEN SLAMS BEIJING’S RIGHTS RECORD: Blinken sharply criticized China during his rollout of the State Department’s annual 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. Blinken accused Beijing of “genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs, repression of Tibetans, crackdown on basic rights in Hong Kong, and targeting of individuals on the mainland for exercising fundamental freedom,” in a press briefing on Monday. Wang at the Foreign Ministry said the report is “fraught with political lies and ideological prejudice.”

— JAPAN’S KISHIDA PLEDGES INDO-PACIFIC INVESTMENT: Japanese Prime Minister FUMIO KISHIDA committed $75 billion for security assistance and infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific on Monday during a state visit to India. In an implicit reference to Beijing’s growing regional military heft, Kishida said the funds will help ensure a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” The Biden administration approves. “Japan’s new Indo-Pacific framework … is aligned with ours,” national security adviser JAKE SULLIVAN said in a tweet on Monday.

— TAIWAN’S PRESIDENT TSAI IS U.S.-BOUND: Taiwan’s President TSAI ING-WEN will visit the U.S. next week and in early April on layovers between official travel to Latin America. Tsai will have a layover in New York City on March 30 and in Los Angeles on April 5 between trips to Taiwan diplomatic allies Belize and Guatemala, Taiwan state media said on Tuesday. Tsai is scheduled to receive the Hudson Institute’s “Global Leadership Award” on March 30 and may meet with House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-Calif.) in L.A. on April 5. The White House wants to mitigate Beijing’s likely wrath. “It’s personal. It’s unofficial. There should be no reason for Beijing to react in any way to this,” National Security Council spokesperson Kirby told reporters on Tuesday. The Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Wang called Tsai’s trip an effort to “propagate Taiwan independence.”

— XI’S ‘CIVILIZATION INITIATIVE’ HAS CREEPY SUBTEXT: Xi Jinping last week rolled out the latest addition to the ruling Chinese Communist party’s arsenal of international outreach tools: the Global Civilization Initiative. The GCI joins Xi’s signature Global Development and Global Security Initiatives as Beijing’s preferred alternatives to a U.S.-dominated multilateral system geared to what the Biden administration calls the “rules-based international order.”

Like Xi’s other initiatives, the GCI is heavy on platitudes and thin on details. But its basic premise is that peaceful international relations hinge on dialogue and respect for diversity of opinion, systems and culture. That requires governments to recognize and promote “common values of humanity” through the strengthening of “people-to-people exchanges and cooperation.”

The GCI is an effort to “make the garden of world civilizations colorful and vibrant,” Xi said in a speech unveiling it last week. Wang at the Foreign Ministry described the GCI as “yet another important public good China has shared with the world.”

The GCI equates governance with criticism-proof national values and cultural traditions. “Countries need to keep an open mind in appreciating the perceptions of values by different civilizations and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation,” said Xi.

That rhetoric — and Beijing’s intent to export it into mainstream international discourse — could be dangerous.

The GCI is “a direct dig at the universal values system that underlies the United Nations core treaties, especially in regard to human rights — that’s what it’s really seeking to replace,” said KATJA DRINHAUSEN, program head at the Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies. “This is a state-focused state-defined value system … which really just means ‘don’t mess in our business’ and making that a principle of the international order.”

There may be a market for the GCI’s promise of a more limited role for the international community and its organs — the United Nations and the International Court of Justice — in policing how governments rule or misrule their countries. And Beijing has a vested interest in promoting a mechanism that would allow Chinese authorities to parry condemnation of everything from Beijing’s genocidal policies in Xinjiang to the strangling of rule of law in Hong Kong as unreasonable outside criticism of culturally-appropriate domestic policies.

“The messages behind this — ‘we don’t criticize any country for doing things their way, we mind our own business and are just interested in building friendly relations’ — appeals to a lot of countries around the world,” Drinhausen said.

HEADLINES

Wall Street Journal: At the China-Russia Border, the Xi-Putin Alliance Shows Signs of Fraying

The Atlantic: The Strongest Evidence Yet That an Animal Started the Pandemic

The New Yorker: What secrets does the “Donald Trump of Beijing” know?

HEADS UP

— TODAY’S CONGRESSIONAL HEARING CHINA-PALOOZA: All things China is the flavor of the day on Capitol Hill today and you can livestream them all from home or office. The fun kicks off at 10:00AM ET with the House Foreign Affairs Committee hosting Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN to discuss “The State of American Diplomacy in 2023: Growing Conflicts, Budget Challenges, and Great Power Competition.” Grab some lunch and then at 2:00PM ET tune in to the House Indo-Pacific subcommittee’s hearing on “Renewed U.S. Engagement in the Pacific: Assessing the Importance of the Pacific Islands.” The primetime climax is the 7:00 PM House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party’s hearing on “The Chinese Communist Party’s Ongoing Uyghur Genocide” which you can livestream here.

The Book: The China Nexus: Thirty years in and around the Chinese Communist Party’s tyranny.

The Author: BENEDICT ROGERS is the chief executive of the London-based nonprofit advocacy group Hong Kong Watch.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

What is the most important takeaway from your book?

After a period of limited opening in the 1990s and early 21st century, the Chinese Communist Party regime’s repression at home has intensified severely and across the board including the genocide of Uyghurs, atrocities in Tibet and the crackdown in Hong Kong. That represents the worst human rights crisis certainly since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 and in some respects since the Cultural Revolution. At the same time the regime’s aggression abroad has also intensified, threatening Taiwan and our own freedoms through intimidation, infiltration, influence operations and espionage.

What was the most surprising thing you learned while researching and writing this book?

The severity of the situation in Tibet and, in contrast, the reasonableness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people. The Dalai Lama told me that Tibetans “are not seeking separation from the People’s Republic of China.” Instead he advocates a “middle way approach,” whereby Tibet remains within China’s sovereignty but enjoys a high degree of autonomy and self-rule.

What does your book tell us about the trajectory and future of U.S.-China relations?

As long as Xi Jinping and the CCP are in power, U.S.-China relations are only going to deteriorate further. The regime poses an increasing threat, and that will lead to increasing tensions. Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine and Xi Jinping’s ‘no limits’ friendship should be the catalyst for the free world to stand together, and for the narrative to be about authoritarianism versus democracy rather than China versus the U.S.

Got a book to recommend? Tell me about it at [email protected].

Thanks to: Mike Zapler, Heidi Vogt, Stuart Lau and digital producer Tara Gnewikow. Do you have tips? Chinese-language stories we might have missed? Would you like to contribute to China Watcher or comment on this week’s items? Email us at [email protected].