Fuck them...

China is furious about Biden's democracy summit

By PHELIM KINE

Hi China Watchers. ‘Tis the season for summits! Check your advent calendar: President JOE BIDEN’s two-day Summit for Democracy is just around the corner. This week’s newsletter dives into how China — uninvited — casts a shadow over the event. We’ll also unpack the dramas surrounding both the latest Taiwan codel and another high-profile U.S. corporate apology to Beijing.

Let’s get to it. — Phelim

Next week’s Summit for Democracy is Biden’s latest effort at coalition building against threats to what he calls the “international rules-based order.”

And to China’s dismay, Taiwan has been invited to join representatives of 111 democratic countries (several with dubious democratic credentials) convening at the Dec. 9-10 summit in a demonstration of international resolve. Though unstated, the Biden administration's aim is to counter diplomatic, economic and military dangers posed by a rising authoritarian tide spearheaded by the Chinese and Russian governments.

China is neither invited to the event nor listed on its agenda, but its focus on “individual and collective commitments, reforms, and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad” will likely produce new initiatives to support democratic states, including Taiwan and Lithuania, facing down Chinese military and economic coercion.

“For Taiwan, this is a big deal … an incredible opportunity to interact with other nations on an equal footing and feel respected in an international arena, while brandishing its democratic credentials,” ANTHONY J. SAICH, director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard’s Kennedy School, told China Watcher. “The benefit for [Lithuania] is simply to be seen in a meeting of like-minded nations and to be able to irritate China further by showing that they are still welcome in a big club, of which China is not a part.”

A State Department official implicitly sought to distance the event’s focus from Taiwan, stating Tuesday that the summit’s goals “are about much more than any one participant,” without naming names. Another U.S. official underscored that position by describing the event as “not about any one country or participating stakeholder.”

But Taiwan’s government — denied United Nations representation and diplomatically recognized by only 15 states while beset by increasingly aggressive Chinese military moves — views the democracy confab as an unparalleled opportunity to shine on a high-profile international, albeit virtual, stage. And it sees the potential gains outweighing any possible risks of intensified Chinese military intimidation tactics, such as mass incursions into the island’s air defense identification zone.

“Taiwan’s liberal polity and its vital importance in the global semiconductor and high-tech sectors will be an important talking point [and] will make [Taiwan] a natural part of the [Summit’s] agenda and discussions,” said WEN-TI SUNG, sessional lecturer in Taiwan Studies at the Australian National University. “Taiwan’s [hoped-for] deliverables at the summit are to boost its international visibility, normalize its direct on-the-table interactions with government leaders around the world at the multilateral summit level … and build common cause and networks of cooperation with the U.S. and Japan on areas such as cybersecurity.”

Taiwan’s President TSAI ING-WEN won’t attend the summit. Instead, Taiwan will be represented by Digital Minister AUDREY TANG and its Washington, D.C.,-based envoy, HSIAO BI-KHIM. And Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has made clear that it anticipates a prominent role for the self-governing island and its representatives.

“We are pleased to share Taiwan's successful democracy story with the international community at the Democracy Summit … [with] the expectation that Taiwan's democratic achievements will be given due prominence,” the ministry said in a Nov. 24 statement.

That expectation is shared by — and has infuriated — Beijing. One metric of that anger is an unprecedented joint opinion piece published Saturday in The National Interest by the Chinese and Russian ambassadors to the United States, QIN GANG and ANATOLY ANTONOV. The op-ed rails against China’s and Russia’s exclusion from the summit as both a failure to recognize what they describe as their respective countries' unique democratic systems as well as a U.S. effort to “stoke up ideological confrontation.”

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., attacked Taiwan’s invitation as “bolstering and emboldening” its pro-independence forces. “China firmly opposes the invitation by the U.S. to the Taiwan authorities to the so-called ‘Summit for Democracy’ … [because] Taiwan has no other status in international law than being part of China,” embassy spokesperson LIU PENGYU said Monday in a written statement. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson WANG WENBIN said Wednesday that the summit will “expose further the true face of the US as a manipulator and saboteur of democracy.”

That hostility to Taiwan’s participation comes despite a U.S. official’s assurances to POLITICO that “Taiwan has been and will be engaged in Summit participation in a manner consistent with the U.S. 'one China' policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three Joint Communiques, and the Six Assurances.”

Taiwan and the U.S. can expect similar bluster over the coming days. But it’s unlikely that Beijing’s response will threaten Biden and Xi’s mutual resolve declared at their Nov. 15 virtual meeting to steer the bilateral relationship toward a more mutually productive setting. And Taiwan should not be held hostage to China’s expectations of U.S. conduct conducive to good relations, said Rep. TOM MALINOWSKI (D-N.J.).

“China will get very cross in hopes that anger will deter other countries and institutions from dealing with Taiwan and it's important for all of us to be very calm in the face of that manufactured outrage,” Malinowski said. “And if resetting the bilateral relationship requires removing irritants in the relationship, I would ask whether Xi Jinping has considered ending the crackdown in Hong Kong or the genocide in Xinjiang … why is it solely America's responsibility to remove irritants to the other side?”

Little Lithuania will also have unusually large summit star power thanks to its deepening confrontation with Beijing over Taiwan’s representative office in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius. China recalled its ambassador to Lithuania in August and demanded that Lithuania do likewise in reprisal for allowing Taiwan to christen its new representative office in Vilnius the “Taiwanese Representative Office.” China insists that any of Taiwan’s limited international official outposts be demarked as “Taipei” rather than “Taiwan.”

Lithuania has refused to comply, prompting Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson ZHAO LIJIAN to ominously state on Nov. 19 that Beijing “will take all necessary measures” to compel Vilnius into complying with Chinese demands and warning that “the Lithuanian side shall reap what it sows.” The U.S. has responded by agreeing to provide the central European state a $600 million export credit agreement with the U.S. Export-Import Bank as a proactive balm against likely Chinese economic reprisals.

That threat makes building coalitions of democratic states to mitigate collectively China’s punitive economic power a top priority for Lithuania’s representatives at the summit. “We can work at consolidating our societies’ respect for human rights and democracy, but also to see how we can counter [economic] coercion measures and how to have reliable supply chains,” said Lithuania’s ambassador to the U.S. AUDRA PLEPYTE.

That seems to be exactly what the Biden administration has in mind. “We reaffirm our support for Lithuania and are working to expand and deepen our already robust bilateral relationship [and] will continue to oppose China’s economic coercive practices around the world,” a U.S. official said.

While the Chinese government fumes over the summit, plans may well be afoot to give Beijing the last word.

“I’m curious to see whether China will respond with an international event of its own, one targeted at countries in the Global South, a ‘Summit for Anti-Imperialism with Chinese characteristics’,” said KUAN-TING CHEN, chief executive officer of the Taiwan NextGen Foundation, a Taipei-based think tank.