China Postures at Shangri-La

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Chinese military leaders engage in aggressive rhetoric at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Beijing tentatively reacts to former U.S. President Donald Trump’s conviction in a New York court, and China stalls a Russian natural gas pipeline project with pricing demands.

China Embraces Aggression at Security Summit

Chinese military leaders displayed surprising aggression over the weekend at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, with a few generals at the security summit threatening military action.

In his speech on Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun threatened that Taiwan will face “destruction” if the self-ruled island pursues independence. Dong also threw in strong words for the Philippines, which were echoed by other generals at the forum. Another repeated Chinese talking point at the event was accusing the United States of trying to create an “Asia-Pacific NATO.”

Things haven’t been going well for Beijing with either Taipei or Manila. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s assertive inauguration speech prompted a round of military exercises in the Taiwan Strait last month. Meanwhile, China’s relatively strong relationship with the Philippines has suffered since President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. took power in 2022. Marcos himself gave a belligerent speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Adding to China’s headache at the forum was a surprise appearance by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who challenged Beijing’s diplomatic and material support for Russia during its ongoing war in Ukraine. Zelensky went directly after China’s claim that it supports global peace, accusing the country of undermining peace talks on Moscow’s behalf.

China might hope that it can bully other countries into accepting its positions in the South China Sea and the wider region. But it has tried that tactic for years, and the problem with threatening other countries is that they have options. China’s shows of strength prompt those countries to take actions that Beijing claims not to want, such as entering multilateral alliances or looking for a protector in Washington.

So, why did China take a sudden turn at the Shangri-La Dialogue, where it has generally favored a more diplomatic stance in the past? That’s because aggression from Chinese officials in overseas forums often stems from political need back home.

Take the so-called Battle of Portland Place in 1967, when staff at the Chinese Embassy in London demonstrated their revolutionary fervor by attacking the British police and press; or the Chinese diplomats who started a fight at a party in Fiji in 2020 because of a cake with the Taiwanese flag on it. In both cases, the damage done to diplomatic relations mattered less to the individuals involved than protecting themselves from accusations of lack of zeal from rivals at home.

In that light, the rhetoric used by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Singapore makes sense. At last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, then-Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu was the country’s main representative. He disappeared from public view a few months later, in August, and was officially removed from his job without explanation in October. Li’s purge seems to be part of a wider crackdown on PLA corruption, stirred by probes into logistical failings after Xi saw Russia’s initial failures during the invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. intelligence has also been leaking more information than usual about PLA activities. The sources are likely to be signals intelligence rather than human intelligence, but it’s still possible that an espionage-obsessed Chinese Communist Party has gone on an internal mole hunt. The party backed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s initial purges in 2013 in part because of the discovery of how deeply the CIA had penetrated the Chinese leadership.

Add to the mix the fact that things have been going poorly for China with Taiwan and the Philippines, and someone has to take the blame. Keeping one’s job—and even one’s freedom—must be a daunting task for PLA leadership now.

Yet alongside the harsh rhetoric at the Shangri-La Dialogue, practical talks with the United States during the forum confirmed the maintenance of military-to-military communication intended to reduce tensions. It is worrying if China’s generals think that the way to curry favor with Xi is this type of aggressive performance, but it also means that they may be more focused on domestic concerns than they are on meaningful plans for military action.

The bigger concern, however, is that these displays of aggression can trickle down to the operational level, where commanders may feel that they can’t back down from border clashes or maritime confrontations for the sake of their own careers. That creates the potential for rapid escalation of a crisis, especially as Philippine and Chinese sailors keep staring each other down in the South China Sea.

What We’re Following

China reacts to Trump verdict. Chinese coverage of the conviction of former U.S. President Donald Trump last week for falsifying business records has been relatively muted, perhaps because Beijing doesn’t quite know what angle to take on the news. China has no great affection for Trump, but it also often takes the opportunity to claim that U.S. democracy is chaotic or even a sham.

China’s most authoritative state media, Xinhua and the People’s Daily, so far appear to have published only one deeply buried report on Trump’s conviction, which was depicted in relatively straightforward and factual terms. A brief story in the English-language Global Times took the chaos angle. Instead, coverage of Xi’s recent Middle East trip dominates headlines.

Tiananmen anniversary passes quietly. This year, Hong Kong continued its crackdown on any mention of the killings of Chinese student protesters on June 4, 1989, in Beijing as well as Chengdu and other Chinese cities. Thousands of Hong Kongers used to commemorate the massacres every year with a mass vigil in the city’s Victoria Park. Today, a heavy police presence and the sentencing of pro-democracy advocates has stifled almost any vestige of remembrance.

On Tuesday, the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, a handful of protesters were detained by police in a city where political freedom has essentially evaporated following the introduction of a new national security law in 2020.

Tech and Business

Russia pipeline deal stalled. The long-planned Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, intended to supply natural gas to China from Russia, remains stalled thanks to Beijing’s price demands, the Financial Times reports. Russia has hoped to make up for the long-term decline in exports to Europe by diverting gas to China through a pipeline—scheduled to be completed by 2030—that would run to China from the Yamal Peninsula fields in Siberia.

The Power of Siberia 1 pipeline already supplies 34 percent of China’s natural gas imports, but the new pipeline could more than double the supply. However, China knows it has Russia over a barrel on the issue, given the dire state of Gazprom, Russia’s state-run energy company.

According to the Financial Times reporting, China is demanding very low prices—close to Russia’s domestically subsidized levels—and has committed to only buying a small portion of the supply. The Russia-China alliance is one of convenience, and Beijing is happy to take advantage of its friend. Mongolia, while tentatively agreeing to the project, could also easily delay construction further.

Epoch Times scandal. The chief financial officer of the Epoch Times, Weidong Guan, was indicted in the United States on Monday for an alleged money laundering scheme. The Epoch Times is backed by Falun Gong, a dissident Chinese religious movement; it has also developed a strong social media presence in order to become a key part of the global far-right media system.

According to the indictment, the Epoch Times’ claims to profitability acted as a cover for the criminal scheme. The scandal is reminiscent of that of Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese billionaire currently on trial in the United States for a fraud scheme involving an anti-China, pro-Trump media organization. Falun Gong’s media empire has also received Western government funding.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• The U.S.-Saudi Agreement Is a Fool’s Errand by David M. Wight
• The Normalizing of Assad Has Been a Disaster by Charles Lister
• Why Is Xi Not Fixing China’s Economy? by Scott Kennedy

A Bit of Culture

Built by Yang Shi (Yang Guishan) in the early 12th century, the Eastern Grove (Donglin) Academy in Wuxi, China, was a site of orthodox neo-Confucian learning that gave its name to a faction of political critics who were brutally repressed in the 1620s by the notoriously powerful and corrupt court eunuch Wei Zhongxian.

Deng Tuo (1911-1966), a poet and the editor in chief of the People’s Daily from 1948 to 1958, composed “Passing the Eastern Grove Academy” in 1960 as part of a set of five poems. He died by suicide in 1966 after becoming one of the first targets of the Cultural Revolution.—Brendan O’Kane, translator

Passing the Eastern Grove Academy
By Deng Tuo

Following the path of Yang Guishan,
the discourse of the Eastern Grove

Encompassed all the works of man,
and sought justice on earth below, as in heaven above.

Call it empty words from scholars if you will—
Where their heads rolled, the blood is spattered still.