Welcome to Foreign PolicyOverview of China.
Highlights this week: US President Donald Trump claims China to interfere in the 2020 electionChinese and Filipino workers fighting in the South China Seaand the United States and China have reportedly held talk about artificial intelligence in September.
Welcome to Foreign PolicyOverview of China.
Highlights this week: US President Donald Trump claims Chinese meddling in the 2020 electionChinese and Filipino workers fighting in the South China Seaand the United States and China have reportedly held talk about artificial intelligence in September.
Trump accuses China of meddling in the election
US President Donald Trump speech Last Thursday-where he claimed interference by foreign countries, especially China, in the 2020 elections-was held full of lies. From the perspective of US-China relations, however, what is interesting is not the height of the claims about China, but the lack of any expectation that they should lead to a tougher China policy.
If Trump truly believed China had it installed a massive operation to subvert American democracy, one would expect a strong response. Instead, his second term China policy has been occasionally soft than his first administration or that of former US President Joe Biden. Time and again, Trump’s actions have been at odds with the threat he claims to be exposing.
Trump released a series of new, declassified intelligence documents to back up his accusations. One of these of course claims that China used TikTok to collect massive amounts of data on US voters. Still Trump unlawful delay enforcement of the TikTok ban to negotiate a politically beneficial deal.
Many of Trump’s other claims revolve around Chinese cyberattacks, even as his administration has scaled back U.S. cybersecurity capabilities, particularly election security. Trump also personally adopted shipments of high-powered Nvidia chips to China.
This trend extends beyond Trump. In American right-wing politics, China has become a floating figure: an idea detached from real meaning that can be manipulated to fit any interpretation. China has long served as a screen against which Americans of all political stripes the project theirs hope and fear.
The new thing is to give up even the pretense that the rhetoric about China should be in line with the actual behavior of the Chinese or the firm policy of China. The change is particularly visible in defense circles, where many self-described China hawks below long-term policy positions for Trumpian political loyalty.
This can generate some surreal results, such as when a Truth Social representative recently announced, “I’ve lived in Beijing. I can say the election in Beijing is better than California and the United States.” (China does not have democratic elections today. It briefly experimented semi-democratic elections of village leaders in a few areas starting in the 1980s, but even then, Beijing—due to its political sensitivity—never had a legitimate argument.)
More commonly, however, China simply functions as an all-purpose bogeyman. In the United States, the new discrimination of Senator Marsha Blackburn election announcementfor example, China exists only as an unspecified threat to his state of Tennessee’s land and values. Compare that to previous election cycles, where China served as a stand-in for US job losses due to globalization. That was an exaggerated and often xenophobic idea but one with at least some connection to reality.
None of this means that China’s political intervention is imaginary. Documented examples do exist, but they are generally small in scale, either aimed at Chinese living abroad or aimed at shaping individual politicians’ positions on China rather than choosing one political party over another.
In Australia, for example, Chinese hackers targeted politicians based on their stance on Beijing’s human rights abuses, not their party’s ideology. In New York, Beijing has sought to bring Chinese American civil society organizations under his influence. And in universities around the world, Beijing has tried interfere in the election of Chinese student groups promote candidates favored by Chinese ambassadors.
These activities are legitimate concerns, but bear little resemblance to the deeper concepts of mass voter fraud. They are best understood as social influence campaigns, online propaganda, and above all, intelligence gathering.
Canada is a good example here. In response claims of interference by China in its 2019 and 2021 elections, Canada took place detailed investigation and found that these activities did not affect the results of the election. Canada’s National Security Intelligence Service assessed these efforts as “low-risk, high-reward” operations. especially directed in controlling Chinese Canadian communities and encouraging politicians to adopt pro-China policies.
It is also important to distinguish between interference and influence. China often tries influence foreign political and business elites who share interests with Beijing. But this is not unique to China. In Washington circles, China’s presence is small compared to, for example, that of United Arab Emirates.
Effective responses to Chinese intrusions need to be impartial, reasonable about the scale and nature of the threat, anti-racist, and closely coordinated with the Chinese diaspora, which is the primary target of these operations. Even if it really wanted to deal with foreign interference, the Trump administration has shown little ability for such a measured approach.
What we’re after
Battle of the South China Sea. Chinese and Philippine seafarers once again collision in the South China Sea. China has disputes with almost all of its maritime neighbors, but the Philippines has been more aggressive in pushing back against Beijing’s claims, including through prominent — though largely unimplemented — channels.2016 arbitration victorywhich China rejects.
Maritime confrontations between China and the Philippines have become common, although so far they have not involved serious violence. The fear, however, is that these violent conflicts and tensions will lead to an increase in deaths, as was the case with China’s border disputes with Soviet Union in 1969 and India in 2020.
Purchase of soybeans. As part of last year’s trade talks with the United States, China pledged to buy large quantities of American soybeans. But Chinese purchases of American soybeans declined 20.6 percent year to year in June and a high percentage of 42.4 for the first half of the year.
This is partly the result of Trump’s harsh tariff policies, but it also represents a significant shift towards other suppliers, particularly Brazil. This has run China’s major investment in Brazilian agricultural business—especially the expansion of agriculture in the north of the country—raising more concerns deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.
Most Read FP This Week
Technology and Business
The AI is talking. Reuters reported on Tuesday that Beijing and Washington will do so to have a conversation on artificial intelligence in September, as US companies scramble to respond to a new generation of Chinese AI designs.
The United States holds a thin leadbut embrace China’s open-weight AI models-where the underlying architecture is made public for others to read, modify, and build on – it cuts down on local companies. In response, several US AI companies have urged the Trump administration to protect their business interests, framing the Chinese approach as “AI Communism.”
Tech stocks stocks. Even as American AI companies are apprehensive, Chinese investors seem less convinced by Beijing’s strategy. Chinese tech stocks fell sharply last week, motivate nearly 9 billion dollars injection and government-backed funds to stabilize the market.
The stock market is less important in China than in the US, and government intervention is common, but the latest move may reflect an internal skepticism of an AI strategy that appears to be driven more by geographic competition than commercial revenue.
