The enigma of CEFC’s Chairman Ye
Posted: June 7, 2013 Filed under: PLA & PLAN | Tags: CAIFC, CEFC, Chairman Ye, China CEFC Energy Company, Chinese military, Daiwah, enemy work, external propaganda, General Political Department Liaison Department, Huaxin, Kissinger, liaison work, Nishan Forum, PLA General Political Department, Xing Yunming, Ye Jianming, Ye Xuanning, Zhenrong, 华信能源有限公司, 叶简明, 叶选宁, 叶主席 2 Comments »
The father? Long-time Director of the Liaison Department of the PLA General Political Department, and of Marshal Ye Jianying, Ye Xuanning 叶选宁
The son: CEFC & Huaxin Chairman Ye Jianming 叶简明, presiding.
The following odyssey through the business and ideological world of CEFC, an apparent platform of the Liaison Department of the PLA General Political Department, was co-written with John Garnaut for publication, but the feedback was that it doesn’t work.
Read on if you dare…
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The enigma of CEFC’s Chairman Ye
By Andrew Chubb & John Garnaut
Senior Colonel Dai Xu, of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, apologised profusely for running late as he lowered his tiny frame into a plastic chair.
The display of manners and humility, in the mosquito-ridden lobby of his three-star Sanya hotel, seemed an unlikely departure point for an exploration of the evolving nature of Chinese power and how it is projected into the world.
Nevertheless, he was about to open a door into the labyrinthine universe of China’s ruling families, big oil and the most secretive and least understood corner of its military intelligence complex.
“I used to use Long Tao as pen name,” Colonel Dai said, confirming for the first time that he was indeed the “China Energy Fund Committee strategic analyst” whose incendiary writings have provoked fear and anxiety across the resource-rich South China Sea.
The most memorable article, published in the state-owned Global Times in September 2011, is now seen as emblematic of China’s “peaceful rise” entering a more belligerent phase.
“When those towering oil drilling platforms become flaming torches, who will be hurt the most?,” said Long Tao, presenting a case for waging war against the Filipino and Vietnamese “chickens” in order to scare the hegemonic American “monkey”.
The identity of Long Tao as Colonel Dai – a media pundit who holds a senior military rank yet has never commanded any troops – proved to be straightforward, however, compared with the organisation he purported to represent.
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The cult of Chairman Ye
The China Energy Fund Committee (CEFC) describes itself as a “non-profit, non-governmental think tank” that strives for “a better future for mankind”.
At its apex sits a mysterious 36-year-old chairman named Ye Jianming, about whom so little is known that the Chinese-language internet has numerous bulletin board posts asking, “Who is Ye Jianming?
Chairman Ye, it turns out, heads an energy logistics megalith that came from nowhere in 2010 to claim revenues of more than US$30 billion last year.
China Huaxin Energy Company is the centre of a constellation of Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland Chinese companies that link as far as Zhuhai Zhenrong, a company that is subject to US sanctions for oil trading with Iran.
News on the company’s website details Chairman Ye leading delegations on visits to dignitaries around the world.
Despite his tender years, he has won the admiration of global statesmen from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to Henry Kissinger, who apparently addresses him as “Chairman”.
Ye Jianming and Henry Kissinger
The young chairman’s “thought” (in the sense of Mao Zedong Thought) and “important speeches” are lauded in the pages of company publications.
His slogans adorn the company’s website: “Starting with power, finishing with virtue”, “Faith, Unity, Rigor, Devotion” and – rather strikingly for a self-proclaimed private enterprise – “Repay the country through industry”.
“We must continue to deeply study Chairman Ye’s speeches and articles,” says a piece in the 120-page internal study journal, “to thoroughly understand the development path the Chairman has pointed out for us.
“As an enterprise, Chairman Ye has assigned Huaxin the mission of ‘repaying the country through industry’, and this is Huaxin’s fundamental pursuit and final destination.”
Rapturous scenes ensued when the chairman made an appearance at Huaxin’s Chinese New Year function in February – according to the company’s in-house publicity (propaganda) centre.
“At 11 o’clock the entire room erupted into enthusiastic applause as Chairman Ye entered the venue, cordially shaking hands with everyone . . . the children jumped up one after another to wish Chairman Ye a happy new year.”
Chairman Ye enters the room
Explaining Huaxin
Yet, despite his flourishing cult of personality, the chairman is far from satisfied with the work of his propaganda department.
In April last year he told them they had “fallen behind”, “not grasped the main themes”, and “not explained what it is that Huaxin does”.
Indeed, how does Huaxin make its billions – aside from sponsoring belligerent think tanks?
The answer, according to the man himself: “In business it is a global trading company, in industry it is centred on energy storage and new energy projects.”
According to Singapore corporate filings, Ye Jianming was previously chairman of the board at Shanghai Zhenrong, part of the Zhuhai Zhenrong family that was hit with US sanctions for oil trading with Iran.
One of Huaxin’s current projects is to build a mammoth oil storage facility on Hainan Island, with capacity of 12 million cubic metres, to absorb a large share of China’s strategic oil reserve.
“Oh yes, Huaxin – the princeling company . . . they are into everything around here,” ventured a Hainan taxi driver late last year.
“No-one dares to mess with them.”
Aside from energy logistics, Huaxin’s subsidiaries are involved in rubber, chemicals, and metals.
At a meeting last month with Mexican state oil giant Pemex, Huaxin CEO Chen Qiutu (representing Chairman Ye Jianming of couse) boasted of his company’s “great financial system made up of many domestic and foreign listed companies and equity banks, trusts and securities companies”.
Its interests even extend as far as Australia, where last year it spent about $2 million for control of an iron ore hopeful, Buxton Resources, under the name National Business Holdings.
Huaxin’s website specifies its mission as, “Expanding the country’s overseas energy economic interests, being a national enterprise.”
But some assets closely related to the Huaxin family appear to be the personal property of the chairman.
In November 2011, Singapore Petrol Development Pte Ltd (SPD) purchased a beauty products trader called Sun East, with the intention of “exploring” a move into the petrochemical trading business.
SPD promptly renamed its acquisition CEFC International.
Corporate filings indicate that Ye Jianming is the sole shareholder of SPD, as well as the controlling shareholder of Daiwah Group, a Shanghai-based company established in January 2012 with capital of RMB 100 million. Daiwah deals in rubber, palm oil, non-ferrous metals, chemicals and shipping.
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CEFC (Huaxin) Energy Company
CEFC think tank logo
Cryptic symbolism
Huaxin’s English name, China CEFC Energy Co, is almost identical to that of the CEFC think tank and until recently it listed the think tank as one of its charitable ventures.
Their logos are also almost identical except that the corporate entity’s is tinted Communist Party red, with golden stars like the Chinese flag, while the think tank has bronze stars on a background of United Nations blue.
At the centre of its logo is a big star which represents “civil rights”, according the CEFC’s English-language version of its website.
But the Chinese-language explanation makes no mention of civil rights and, in contrast, says the star represents how “this organization will play a strong and powerful role for the interests of the Chinese state and nation”.
Three smaller stars represent its participant “organizations and individuals”. A CEFC spokesperson declined repeated inquiries as to their identity or nature.
Months of questions to CEFC headquarters have provided no answers on the question of who or what is really behind its activities.
“Sometimes you just know it’s better not to know, so I don’t even ask,” was one typical response, from an employee.
“Let’s not talk about money, let’s eat lunch.”
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Friends all over the world
The fact that CEFC might be set up and owned by an opaque oil company has not deterred global statesmen from participating in its high-level events.
Last month it quietly co-hosted an “energy conference” in Beijing attended by Kissinger and former German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder.
And while Huaxin’s internal structure uses Chinese government nomenclature and refers to its executives by the Communist Party appellation “comrade”, the United Nations has nonetheless vouched for CEFC’s non-government-status.
The “NGO” was granted Special Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council which, in turn, enabled it to segue away from oil and war in order to co-host a “dialogue between Confucianism and Christianity” at United Nations headquarters in New York, in November 2012.
CEFC’s partner in that venture, the Nishan Forum on World Civilizations, is another new and mysterious Chinese organisation that describes itself as an NGO.
Its personnel and aspirations overlap with those of CEFC.
The interests of the Nishan vice chairman, Xing Yunming, reach far beyond Confucius and religion and might provide a clue to what lies behind the CEFC think tank.
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Political warfare?
Mr Xing is in fact a lieutenant-general in the People’s Liberation Army and, according to isolated, and perhaps inadvertent, reports in provincial media, he is director of the military’s secretive political warfare agency – the Liaison Department of the PLA General Political Department (GPD).
The PLA GPD Liaison Department emerged in 1955 out of an entity with a more descriptive moniker: The Enemy Work Department.
Almost unknown to civilian researchers, it behaves like an intelligence agency but with broader scope and greater power, targeting foreign political and economic elites.
In recent years it appears to have broadened the focus of its “enemy work” – a term its operatives still use – from Taiwan and overseas Chinese communities to Western countries and their allies.
“Liaison work operates at a nexus of politics, finance, military operations, and intelligence,” said Mark Stokes, executive director of a Washington think tank, the Project 2049 Institution.
“It is responsible for active measures taken to influence foreign defence policies,” said Mr Stokes, who is sifting through reams of internet material to map the department’s personnel and networks across various front organisations.
The central strategy of enemy work is to create two simultaneously contradictory perceptions in the adversary’s mind: one, that China is friendly and benign, the other (invoked at the crucial moment) that China is powerful, ruthless and inevitable.
Perhaps this might explain why CEFC, the think tank, goes to great lengths to organize friendly cultural exchanges, yet also associates itself warmongering articles by PLA officers.
CEFC, the think tank, repeatedly declined requests to clarify the nature of its links to the PLA GPD Liaison Department.
But publicly available records say from 2003 to 2005 chairman Ye Jianming was deputy secretary general of the China Association for International Friendly Contacts (CAIFC) – one of the GPD Liaison Department’s best-known public platforms.
CAIFC has mediated many of Kissinger’s contacts with the Chinese regime.
And there is a certain similarity at the center of CEFC and CAIFC’s logos, too.
CEFC logo
CAIFC logo
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More questions than answers
Which, in turn, hints at an answer to the ultimate mystery: who is Ye Jianming, the 36-year-old who sits atop both the CEFC think tank and its sponsor, the start-up oil megalith Huaxin?
Close observers in Hong Kong and southern China note that his features bear a striking resemblance to Lt-Gen Ye Xuanning — Director of the PLA GPD Liaison Department until 1998, and long-time President the Carrie (Kaili) Group, of one the original PLA business empires.
Ye Xuanning is the son of one of China’s great marshals, Ye Jianying, and has been described by peers as “the spiritual leader” of the princelings – the children of China’s original communist revolutionary heroes, who now dominate the top echelons of the party leadership.
The close observers say the PLA GPD Liaison Department continues to be his power base, 15 years after his official retirement.
Could the young chairman be – as many suspect – the youngest and previously unidentified son of Ye Xuanning?
Are his businesses and the CEFC think tank an instrument of Chinese state power, a family fiefdom, or merely private initiatives?
Dai Xu, the Air Force colonel, who has been pictured with Chairman Ye, knows the answers but is not forthcoming.
“Is Ye Jianming the grandson of Ye Jianying? It’s not convenient to say.”
Father and son? Ye Xuanning 叶选宁 (undated picture – source), and Ye Jianming 叶简明
Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang blasts PLA pundits’ “interference” in decisions and deployments
Posted: April 29, 2013 Filed under: China-Japan, Diaoyu, Global Times, PLA & PLAN | Tags: Chinese army propaganda, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese media, Chinese military, Chinese nationalism, Dai Xu, Diaoyu Islands, fire control radar, General Liu Yuan, Huanqiu, Huanqiu Shibao, Luo Yuan, Peng Guangqian, PLA, propaganda, radar incident, Senkaku, Wang Hongguang, Xi Jinping, Zhang Zhaozhong 1 Comment »
Increase vigilance: the reasonable conclusion of PLA pundits like Dai Xu?
[I spent hours on this post, then WordPress kindly lost it without a trace, hence this is a bit out-of-date, sorry]
The April 20 edition of the Huanqiu Shibao (Global Times) carried an article by recently-retired PLA Lieutenant-General Wang Hongguang, directly criticizing the Chinese media’s hawkish military commentators.
The article is brief — indeed so brief that the obligatory preface declaring support for the pundits’ patriotic mission does not even run to a full sentence:
In recent years, military affairs experts have frequently appeared on TV and in all kinds of publications, with the positive effect of strengthening the masses’ national defense awareness and arousing patriotism, but it cannot be denied that some have said off-key things, things that have misled the audience and been irresponsible.
Lt-Gen Wang, who now serves as Vice President of the PLA’s Academy of Military Science, made it quite clear that by “military affairs experts” he was referring to fellow PLA academics, particularly Zhang Zhaozhong, Luo Yuan, and of course Dai Xu.
It’s unusual to hear a PLA academic criticize his comrades in public; even more so for someone of such high rank. But most remarkable was Lt-Gen Wang’s claim that PLA academics’ war talk is “interfering” with the CCP-PLA leadership’s decision-making, citing the specific example of Sino-Japanese relations:
Some experts have inappropriately made comparisons of China and Japan’s military strength, claiming “China and Japan will inevitably go to war”, and that this “would not significantly affect our period of strategic opportunity”, [thus] inciting public sentiment and causing some interference with our high-level policy decision-making and deployments.
Wang Hongguang is in a position to know. Until recently he was Deputy Commander of the PLA’s Nanjing Military Region.
Abe’s Southeast Asian Diplomacy: intersection of the South and East China Sea disputes
Posted: February 25, 2013 Filed under: China-Japan, China-Philippines, China-Vietnam, Diaoyu, People's Daily | Tags: Diaoyu Islands, diplomacy, East China Sea, Global Times, Japan-ASEAN, Japan-Philippines, Japan-US, Japan-Vietnam, Malaysia and South china SEa, Nguyen Tan Dung, People's Daily, Shinzo Abe, Sino-Japanese relations, south china sea, Truong Tan Sang, Vietnam, Vietnam-Japan, Zhong Sheng Leave a comment »
Japanese & Vietnamese Prime Ministers Nguyen Tan Dung and Shinzo Abe on January 16 in Hanoi
This post was originally published on the China Policy Institute Blog:
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Between January 10 and 19 this year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida paid formal bilateral visits to the Philippines, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia: seven countries in the space of 10 days. The diplomatic blitz illustrates the intersection of the East and South China Sea disputes, and the impetus this has given to Japan’s policy of deepening regional engagement since the early 2000s.
Six of Abe and Kishida’s seven destination countries were ASEAN member states, and three of them were parties to the South China Sea disputes. In fact, Taiwan aside, the only non-PRC South China Sea claimant state that Japan’s leaders did not visit was Malaysia, which continues to quietly extract hydrocarbons and develop tourism in the disputed area with little hindrance, thanks to its steadfast determination to avoid antagonizing Beijing.
Abe had actually wanted Washington to be his first destination after taking office, in line with his publicly stated intention to strengthen ties with the US, but Barack Obama was too busy to host a January summit. The hasty arrangement of Abe’s jaunt through Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia — he set out on January 16, only nine days after being told Obama’s schedule was full – seems to suggest receptiveness to Japan’s advances in major ASEAN capitals.
Not surprisingly, the Philippines and Vietnam were the most openly enthusiastic about the Japanese leaders’ visits. Kishida arrived in Manila on January 9, exactly one month after Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told the Western media the Philippines would “very much” welcome a rearmed Japan free from pacifist constitutional constraints. This time Del Rosario took the opportunity to denounce the PRC’s South China Sea policy in probably the strongest terms yet seen from a serving minister, telling reporters after the meeting that the China was engaging in “very threatening” behaviour: “We do have this threat and this threat is shared by many countries not just by Japan.”
If the rhetoric sounded highly-strung, it was almost matched by the two countries’ actual actions. Del Rosario said Kishida had brought with him an offer of 10 brand-new patrol boats for the Philippines Coast Guard, later confirmed to be supplied under Japan’s Official Development Aid program. To put that in context, the Philippines Coast Guard only has 15 ships currently in service, plus 5 on order from France, so Japan is single-handedly increasing the PCG’s ship numbers by more than 30%.
Radar Incident Obscures Beijing’s Conciliatory Turn toward Japan
Posted: February 18, 2013 Filed under: China-Japan, CMS (China Maritime Surveillance), Diaoyu, Global Times, PLA & PLAN, TV | Tags: CCTV, 环球时报, Diaoyu Islands, diplomacy, fire control radar, General Liu Yuan, Global Times, Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, Natsuo Yamaguchi, PLA General Logistics Department, radar incident, Senkaku Islands, Sino-Japanese relations, 刘源 7 Comments »
As seen on TV…well, not quite but almost
Apologies to anyone who may have visited in hope of new material in the past few weeks. This year I need to write a PhD dissertation so posts will be even more sporadic than usual. There are a number of unfinished ones in the pipeline that I really hope to get around to completing at some point, and I will try to also post some of the summary translations of significant PRC media articles and comment threads that I normally keep to myself.
What follows is a piece I wrote for the Jamestown Foundation’s China Brief which came out last Friday: Radar Incident Obscures Beijing’s Conciliatory Turn. This version here has the addition of links to the sources at the end.
Also, since there are no comments on the Jamestown website, I encourage anyone who wants to discuss to leave comments here on this post.
Thank you for tuning in and making this blog such a temptation to write on.
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Radar Incident Obscures Beijing’s Conciliatory Turn Towards Japan
February 15, 2013
On February 5, Japanese Defense Minister Onodera Itsunori told the world that a Chinese Navy frigate had pointed “something like fire-control radar” at a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF) destroyer some 100-150 kilometers north of the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands on January 30. He said the same may have happened to a MSDF helicopter on January 19, though this remained unverified (Daily Yomiuri, February 7; Sydney Morning Herald, February 7).
This marked the first direct involvement of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy ships in the ongoing confrontations around the islands since Japan’s government purchased three of them from a private Japanese owner on September 10 last year. Accordingly, much reportage and analysis has characterized this as part of an ongoing series of escalatory Chinese actions in the East China Sea. Yet the radar incidents ran counter to a distinctly conciliatory trend since mid-January in China’s official rhetoric, diplomatic action, media discourse and even maritime activities.
“Evacuate all Chinese people from Japan”: warning shots in the East China Sea, or just media war?
Posted: January 15, 2013 Filed under: China-Japan, Diaoyu, Global Times, PRC News Portals | Tags: CCTV, Chinese media, Chinese public opinion, Diaoyu, Global Times, Huanqiu, media effects, PLA Air Force, PRC foreign policy, Senkaku, Sino-Japanese relations Leave a comment »
[Updated 16 Jan 3.45pm BST]
On Tuesday afternoon the Chinese online media, led by Huanqiu Wang (Global Times Net), started reporting, “Japan official explicitly states for first time that warning shots will be fired at Chinese planes“.
HQW’s reporter Wang Huan 王欢 quoted the Asahi Shimbun website quoting Defense Minister Onodera, when asked about warning shots, replying that “any country would make this response if its airspace was intruded upon”.
Onodera’s comment may well have been coaxed out of him by reporters looking for a juicy headline, as it comes across as a contradiction of Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga’s comment last week as reported by CNS (the other Xinhua) as reported by CNS that there were no plans for firing warning shots.
According to the Chinese internet media headlines that have relayed the story, Suga “denied” 否认 plans to fire warning shots, but now Onodera has “explicitly confirmed” 明确表态 that they will occur.
The news that Japan “will fire warning shots” was still the top splash on HQW’s website more than 12 hours later:
Whether Onodera’s statement has been reported accurately or not, the result is that the Diaoyu ball game now rests with the PRC, and the party-state is playing on a big-time court with a packed house looking on.
Xi Jinping: a hardline nationalist in control of China?
Posted: December 14, 2012 Filed under: China's foreign relations, China-Japan, CMS (China Maritime Surveillance), Diaoyu | Tags: 18th CCP Congress, China leadership transition, China Maritime Surveillance, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese nationalism, CMS, Diaoyu Islands, great revival, Hu Jintao, PRC foreign policy, PRC maritime law enforcement, PRC-Japan, Senkaku, taoguang yanghui, western media, Xi Jinping, Xi Jinping foreign policy, Xi Jinping nationalism 8 Comments »
April, 2012: Vice President Xi Jinping Meets with the Japanese Association for the Promotion of International Trade Delegation
Last week the New York Times ran a story on how Ling Jihua’s attempt to cover up his son’s death in that Ferrari crash may have severely weakened Hu Jintao’s position during this year’s CCP leadership transition.
It might just be me and my island-centricness, but this story certainly didn’t seem to be following the inverted-pyramid rule, for only those readers who persisted to the very last paragraph (or read the Sinocism China Newsletter) would have learned that:
By September, party insiders said, Mr. Hu was so strained by the Ling affair and the leadership negotiations that he seemed resigned to yielding power. As Mr. Hu’s influence faded, Mr. Xi began taking charge of military affairs, including a group coordinating China’s response to the escalating row with Japan over disputed islands.
Given both the vital role Ling had played in managing the logistics of the General Secretary’s day-to-day activities, and the likely emotional toll of the death of a close associate’s son, this idea of a Human Jintao feeling the pinch is logical enough.
Although the Times‘ sources say Ling’s replacement as CCP General Office Director, Li Zhanshu, arrived in July, the public announcement of Ling’s reassignment from the post was only made on September 1. Then Noda reached his agreement with the Kurihara family to make the purchase on September 4. Could all this explain Xi Jinping’s lack of a public appearance between September 2 and September 12? If i were gearing up to take over as CCP General Secretary in a few months’ time and then found myself taking charge of the country’s response to a rapidly-escalating crisis, i’d have trouble finding time for photo ops.
Consensus at the top? China’s opportunism on Diaoyu and Scarborough Shoal
Posted: November 28, 2012 Filed under: Academic debates, China-ASEAN, China-Malaysia, CMS (China Maritime Surveillance), Diaoyu, FLEC & Ministry of Agriculture | Tags: 1988 Spratly Battle, anti-Japanese protest, ASEAN and South China Sea, China-ASEAN, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese public opinion, COC, Code of Conduct, Diaoyu Islands, escalation, 钓鱼岛, Johnson South Reef Skirmish, nationalism card, PRC foreign policy, PRC maritime law enforcement, PRC-Japan, reactive assertiveness, Scarborough Shoal 黄岩岛, south china sea, uses of public opinion 1 Comment »
“New facts on the water”
In last week’s Sinica Podcast, M. Taylor Fravel discussed the March 1988 Sino-Vietnamese battle in the Spratly Islands, recounting how the PLAN Commander was moved from his post afterwards as a result of his unauthorized decision to open fire on the Vietnamese Navy.
This could make the 1988 battle appear as a historical example of uncoordination in the PRC’s behaviour towards the outside world — a rogue commander taking foreign policy into his own hands. However, the decision to send the Navy in to establish a presence on unoccupied reefs in the Spratlys was a centralized, high-level one.
Today, the Chinese Navy is better equipped and better trained, so the chances of something similar happening are small. The unwavering non-involvement of the PLAN in China’s maritime territorial disputes, even as tensions have risen to boiling point, is a testament to the navy’s professionalization, and a site of consensus among China’s policymakers. The US Department of Defense in 2011 presciently pinpointed (see p.60) the increasing use of non-military law enforcement agencies to press China’s claims in disputed waters as an important component of PRC policy. Since then, this approach has become ever-more salient.
China’s maritime law enforcement fleets have long been seen as a source of policy disorganization, both within China and abroad; back in 2002, for example, the Hainan Provincial NPC delegation tabled a motion to establish a unified maritime law-enforcement fleet.
But in the podcast Fravel drew attention to how this year the China Maritime Surveillance and Fisheries Law Enforcement fleets have actually coordinated rather well, both with each other and with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in advancing China’s maritime claims.
“You cannot not support this”: the passport saga impresses China’s online nationalists
Posted: November 27, 2012 Filed under: Academic debates, China's foreign relations, China-India, China-Philippines, China-Vietnam, Comment threads, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, PRC News Portals | Tags: Arunachal Pradesh, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese nationalism, Foreign Ministry, foreign policy incoherence, Hua Chunying, maps, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Public Security, new Chinese passports, new foreign policy actors, nine dashed line, online nationalism, passports, PRC foreign policy 2 Comments »
New PRC e-passport and old version
Students of PRC foreign policy constantly come up against the question of whether the actions of the Chinese state are the result of decisions made by the centralised leadership or individual state agencies.
Linda Jakobson and Dean Knox’s 2010 SIPRI report, ‘New Foreign Policy Actors in China‘ provided an excellent overview of the range of players on the Chinese foreign policy scene. Taking a similar approach in relation to the South China Sea issue, the International Crisis Group’s ‘Stirring up the Sea (I)‘ report earlier this year emphasised the incoherence that can result from individual (and sometimes competing) agencies acting according to their own priorities rather than a consistent centralized policy.
In the PRC’s latest diplomatic disaster, images embedded on the visa pages of the PRC’s new passports have managed to simultaneously provoke the official ire of Vietnam, the Philippines, India and Taiwan.
Close-up of nine-dash line depiction in new People’s Republic of China passport
The two South China Sea claimants have protested the inclusion of a map including the nine-dash line representing China’s “territory” in the disputed sea, India disputes the maps’ depiction of Arunachal Pradesh as part of Tibet, and the passports’ pictures of Taiwan landmarks prompted rare expressions of anger from Ma Ying-jeou and the ROC’s Mainland Affairs Council.
This looks to be a classic case of policy uncoordination resulting from a domestically-focused agency taking actions that directly impinge on other countries’ interests. From the FT’s report breaking the story:
China’s ministry of public security oversees the design and issuing of the new Chinese passports, according to an official at the Chinese foreign ministry who declined to comment further.
The next day the Guardian quoted MFA spokeswoman Hua Chunying saying, “The outline map of China on the passport is not directed against any particular country.” Yet neither the Chinese nor the English versions of the official transcript of Hua’s November 23 press conference include the comment, suggesting that the Foreign Ministry remained disinclined to take responsibility for the move.
The SIPRI and ICG reports mentioned above didn’t focus much attention on the Ministry of Public Security as a player in PRC foreign policy, but it has certainly become one, inadvertently or otherwise.
The problem with claims about Chinese nationalism
Posted: November 4, 2012 Filed under: Academic debates, China's foreign relations, China-Japan, Diaoyu | Tags: anti-Japanese protest, Chinese foreign policy, Chinese nationalism, Chinese public opinion, demonstrations, Diaoyu Islands, Jessica Chen Weiss, nationalism, protests, public opinion, Robert Ross, Robert S. Ross, Senkaku, Sino-Japanese relations Leave a comment »
Robert S. Ross built a reputation over the 1980s and 1990s as one of the leading realist analysts of Chinese foreign policy. He published a seminal article in 1986 highlighting the importance of the US-USSR-PRC “security triangle” in explaining China’s behaviour under Deng Xiaoping, and after the Cold War made a successful switch into the richer and murkier terrain of the domestic security situation of the CCP leadership and its relationship to Chinese foreign policy.
Ross’s shift in emphasis towards the importance of domestic factors in explaining China’s behaviour towards the outside world was foreshadowed in his 1986 piece, which noted:
The relative importance of domestic politics has been a function of the range of choice allowed by the pattern of triangular politics [ie. the international environment]. When the range of choice was narrow, domestic politics had a small impact on China’s US policy. When the choices expanded, domestic critics wielded greater influence on foreign policy making.
In recent years, this Boston College professor and Harvard Fairbank Center associate has become fixated on the idea of nationalistic public opinion as a singular driving force behind the Communist Party’s foreign policy.
One early example was 2009′s ‘China’s Naval Nationalism’, which argued the PLA Navy’s modernization, especially its aircraft carrier program, was irrational and against China’s national interest. Instead, Ross wrote, “widespread nationalism, growing social instability, and the leadership’s concern for its political legitimacy drive China’s naval ambition”. This contention provoked a lengthy response from Michael Glosny and Phillip Saunders, who pointed out a range of national interest arguments that could be made for China’s naval modernization.
Ross was evidently unmoved by this critique, for in a 2011 piece in the National Interest he produced a greatly expanded list of PRC foreign policy actions allegedly designed to appease nationalist public opinion. Although there is no question that domestic public opinion, including its loudly hawkish trends, form an element of the CCP leadership’s decision-making environment, there are obvious interest-based explanations for each of the examples on Ross’s list:
- The Impeccable incident in the South China Sea, in which a motley flotilla of fishing boats and patrol ships harassed a US surveillance ship. (Forget the undesirability, from the PRC’s strategic perspective, of having US surveillance ships gathering data on its new submarine facilities at the bottom end of Hainan Island.)
- China’s intransigence at the Copenhagen climate change conference. (Never mind that the PRC’s delegation was led by the National Development and Reform Commission, which has responsibility for China’s economic planning and thus a vested interest against binding carbon reduction targets. And ignore the repeated studies showing Chinese people to be relatively climate-aware.)
- The harsh reaction to the announcement of US arms sales to Taiwan in 2010. (Disregard how US military support for Taiwan stands between the PRC and fulfillment of its “sacrosanct mission” of “national reunification”.)
- China’s repeated strong protests against joint US-Korean naval exercises in the Yellow Sea in June-July 2010. (Also cited as an example of media-driven nationalist influence by Michael Swaine & M. Taylor Fravel, though China wound back its statements somewhat when further exercises were announced in November 2010.)
- The PRC’s lack of denouncement of North Korea for the sinking of the Cheonan. (Nothing to do with North Korea’s status as China’s only true ally in East Asia.)
- The party-state’s overreaction to the September 2010 detention of Captain Zhan, the Chinese fisherman who rammed a Japanese Coastguard vessel near the Diaoyu Islands. (Japan’s deviation from the established precedent of quickly releasing detained Chinese fishermen must have been irrelevant, likewise the opportunity this offered for China to use its burgeoning maritime law enforcement fleets to advance its sovereignty claims.)
- Denouncing the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo. (Liu’s jailing for criticizing the Chinese government was presumably won widespread praise from nationalist critics of the Chinese government.)
- The treatment of Google. (Unrelated to the latter’s refusal to censor its search results.)
“[T]he source of all the aggressive Chinese diplomacy,” wrote Ross, is “the party’s effort to appease China’s nationalists”.
The same dubious list has been extended and wheeled out again in the latest edition of one of the US’s top foreign policy journals Foreign Affairs, along with a number of related misperceptions, in a piece called ‘The Problem With the Pivot’.
For the benefit of any time-stretched readers, my problems with Ross’s argument, detailed below, are that it:
- Relies on the mistaken premise that there has been a severe economic downturn in China since 2009, from which a legitimacy crisis has ensued.
- Wrongly assumes that China’s assertive foreign policy actions are seen as such by nationalist sections of Chinese public opinion.
- Discounts the huge strategic and economic interests China has, or perceives it has, in advancing its claims to disputed islands and maritime space.
- Claims, in the face of strong evidence to the contrary, that the Chinese party-state is unable to prevent anti-foreign protests.
- Argues that the recent protests over Diaoyu caused the PRC’s foreign policy escalation, without considering the uses that such protests can serve in advancing the government’s foreign policy objectives.
First Luo Yuan, now Liu Yuan: from one “public opinion incident” to another
Posted: March 19, 2013 | Author: southseaconversations | Filed under: China-Japan, Comment threads, Diaoyu, PLA & PLAN, PRC News Portals, Weibo, Xinhua | Tags: Chinese internet, Chinese internet news portals, Chinese public opinion, 罗援少将, Dai Xu, Diaoyu Islands, 钓鱼岛, General Liu Yuan, iFeng, Luo Yuan, Netease, online nationalism, phoenix, PHoenix online, PLA, public opinion, public opinion incident, Senkaku Islands, Sina, Sina weibo, Weibo, 刘源, 戴旭 | 7 Comments »Liu Yuan giving his March 14 interview
…not to be confused with Luo Yuan
Over the past few weeks i’ve counted five instances of PLA General Liu Yuan publicly warning against military conflict with Japan over the Diaoyu Islands. If this puzzled the SCMP’s seasoned reporters, who described Liu as “hawkish” in a story quoting him saying, “The friendship between people in China and Japan is everlasting,” it was positively shocking for many the Chinese internet’s e-nationalists. [1]
Actual serving General Liu Yuan is not to be confused with retired academic “Major-General” Luo Yuan (i’ll continue to put his rank in quotes to distinguish them), who was dumped from the CPPCC this month for being “too outspoken”.
That rationale was a bit ironic given he too has been oddly conciliatory on the Diaoyu issue of late. Not only did “Major-General” Luo categorically refute a Japanese media report that he had called for Tokyo to be bombed, he also seemed to deny he had ever suggested establishing a military presence on Diaoyu. And in one of his earliest Weibos, Luo raised a historical episode that seemed to imply that the US could secretly be trying to fool China into giving it a rationale for military intervention over Diaoyu:
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