Inside China’s Quest for Global Influence: ‘Sages of the Sun’ (Episode #10)

This week, we sit down with contributing editor Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu to discuss China’s global ambitions. Ms. Tirziu is an expert on foreign affairs, with an emphasis on U.S.-China and China-Africa relations, China’s global ambitions, innovation, technologies for economic development, and geopolitics.Ms. Tirziu is a graduate of the University of Oxford, where she earned her PhD and MPhil in Politics, as well as Northwestern University. Born in Europe and raised in the American Midwest, Aleksandra has lived and worked in six countries across three continents. She is a lecturer at the University of Zurich and a fellow at the Atlantic Council.Episode 10 – 6/2/2022 – China’s Global Influence with Aleksandra Gadzala TirziuCaroline Vik: Aleksandra, thank you so much for joining us. I’m eager to talk to you about all the different things that you have been writing about and watching. Why don’t we start with Macron and your spotlight on him? Seth Lipsky: He’s never going to recover from that Aleksandra column. Aleksandra Tirziu: I have a few more up my sleeves too so there’s more to come. Macron’s position in Europe has shifted quite a bit from where he started out at the beginning of the year. In the whole course of the war on Ukraine, even the French media has taken a hard line on him insofar as he hasn’t even showed up in Kyiv yet. He has been doing his telephone diplomacy with Putin, together with Scholz, more recently. In the last few weeks, he’s also come out and said that Europe should revise its treaties, so calling for a new Europe at a moment when Europe is kind of trying to salvage itself in a way. He’s doing this interesting political game that has left half of Europe, let’s say the eastern half plus the Baltics, increasingly frustrated and then the other half scratching their heads a little bit. Macron is a figure that I’ve been watching quite a bit because there’s a lot going on with him and it seems that he’s trying to, from the beginning of his presidency, find himself in a way. He actually wanted to be a writer. He didn’t want to be a president to begin with. In his politics, you see more of a philosophical undercurrent that’s a bit detached from reality and I think that that’s what he is increasingly bumping up against in the world or in the context of the war. I think generally too. Lots more to say so just tell me what direction you’d like me to go.Vik: What is his philosophical view?Tirziu: He is rooted a lot in kind of Decartes, the old traditional kind of French philosophers, a bit of a nihilist in some ways, a bit of a Universalist in other ways. In the context and just generally, he’s very much a proponent of multilateralism, which is part of the reason why he engages with, for instance, Xi Jinping. He’s of the view that if you bring these strong men to the table, they will perhaps kind of “come around.” That’s also how, in the past, he has also engaged with some other Middle Eastern leaders as well. He’s quite an idealist in that regard. With respect to Europe, he’s increasingly speaking about bringing Russia to the table and that it can’t be a Europe without Russia. It has to include Russia, so his worldview is kind of difficult to pinpoint, but threads of it are starting to become increasingly apparent over the last month. That kind of hang, on particularly multilateralism, and a fairly clear push back against US influence in the content, and he’s been quite open about that in many of his speeches, especially in the context of this last presidential campaign. He doesn’t want France or Europe to be a “Puppet of America” and so on. He touts this theme of European sovereignty that actually isn’t his idea. He borrowed that. It was a report that was drafted in 1994 by two German politicians, Lamers and Schäuble. If you mirror his work or his remarks with that document, you see it feeding through his thinking quite a bit. He sees Europe as an entity that in a way, should stand on its own two feet, but at the same time, the policies that he’s pursuing over the last months or years certainly don’t take it in that direction either. It’s a long way of saying that his philosophy is a bit muddled, but there are certain threads that we can pull on it and try to grasp at. Vik: Can you tell us a little bit more about that document and what it was arguing? Where has the most concrete pushback against US influence in the region been? Tirziu: Sure. The document was drafted by two politicians of the Christian Democrat Party in Germany in 1994. It echoes Macron’s suggestions regarding a multi-speed Europe and effectively picks up those ideas. The idea of European sovereignty was already floated then exactly more or less along the lines of how Macron speaks of it, in that, Europe should be its own entity, and there should be a Pan-European defense force independent of NATO, which is also a lot of what we hear from Macron. There is also the idea that Macron now refers to as a “multi-speed Europe.” Lamers and Schäuble referred to it as “Europe based in concentric circles,” where at the core, would be Germany and France. The idea being that the core powers were the ones that were more open and enthusiastic towards a greater European integration. Then you would go out and on the edges, you would have countries that had interest in the European project, but were perhaps not so central to European integration. If you listen particularly in the past month or so to Macron’s suggestions of a multi-speed europe, it’s basically that. It’s funny. In several speeches over the years and already in 2017, he was referring quite a great deal to this paper. In a speech he gave in 2017 in Germany, he was kind of apologizing that his predecessors didn’t pick up and run with that idea. In a strange way, if you follow through with some of these threads, it seems like this idea that was already floated in the nineties is a little bit of his pet project. In terms of pushback against US and interests in the continent, I think the clearest example of that is his constant insistence on a European defense force, which I find interesting in its own way. He said several years ago and made the point that NATO is braindead. I think that’s kind of ironic in a present context, but nevertheless, he constantly, or fairly frequently rather, speaks about the need for Europe to be able to defend itself and not be so reliant on the West. He’s also, in a cultural context, which is also a little bit ironic I think in a way, he’s pushed back or he’s in part accused American wokism of infiltrating French society. In particular, saying something like “France cannot become like the Americans. We cannot be woke,” which is also interesting if you trace back some of the ideas that shaped the “woke movement.” Those ideas actually originated, some of them, in France with some of the philosophical underpinnings, so he’s pushing back militarily. He’s pushing back culturally. It trickles in in different ways. Lipsky: Is there a French word for “woke?”Tirziu: Not that I’m aware of. No. We can come up with one. Maybe that’ll be the next column.Lipsky: Like “hot dog.”Tirziu: Yes, you just say it with a French accent, no? “Le hot dog.” “Le woke.”Vik: How does his idea of European sovereignty relate to national sovereignty?Tirziu: It usurps national sovereignty, so the idea is this kind of all-encompassing European community with an overarching supranational government, supranational judicial system, and so on and so forth. The idea was floated then. If you kind of pick up on some of Macron’s more recent thinking, and I believe that the wording is something along the lines of “only through the European community can states be sovereign,” there’s this idea that you need to give up quite a bit, which is what we see now with the European Union, in many respects, giving up quite a bit of national sovereignty as their vision to become sovereign and sovereign as Europe. That document, the Schäuble and Lamers document, one could also argue Macron, they don’t speak about national sovereignty. If you listen to the language and wording he uses. He speaks about European sovereignty. We can hypothesize what that entails. States giving up many of their privileges to a greater project is not just military or economic, but it’s fundamentally political. That’s the long and short of it. That’s the struggle that the European Union has had repeatedly. Particularly, with countries like Poland and Hungary for different reasons, countries have been pushing back on what they see from Brussels. Prior to the war, there has been significant debate and discussion as to where that line is, and to the extent which the EU can dictate, for instance, national laws, and the extent to which countries have the authority to push back. I think the case of Poland is an interesting one where that tension…[inaudible].Lipsky: Can France speak for itself in foreign policy or does it have to go through the EU now?Tirziu: France speaks for itself in foreign policy, but if Macron had his way, there would be a unified…[inaudible]. The argument that you hear quite a good deal in European capitals and also here in Switzerland where I’m perched, is that only by pooling together can Europe hench against forces like China…[inaudible]…undue interference by the US. Some of that thinking, among younger generations is, I think, lodged in what they see as being stuck in the middle between great powers, and independent countries not being able to push back against, bilaterally. If you look for instance, in the case of Lithuania and some other more recent examples, that’s of course, clearly not the case.Vik: I know you’re also taking a close look at Scholz. How is he evolving?Tirziu: How is Scholz doing? The Germans have found themselves in quite a pickle here in Europe. There was a good deal of hope and enthusiasm for German leadership in the context of the war. When Scholz gave his speech regarding a turning point in German foreign policy, that was very much welcome in Brussels and in Eastern capitals. It was warmly welcomed in Warsaw in particular, which is on the front lines. Since then, there really hasn’t been a good deal, but there have been some more recent announcements in the past days, that the Germans will supply some military equipment to Ukraine. Previous commitments have been stalled already for several months and some speculate that the earliest that some equipment might arrive would be in November. Who knows what the state of affairs will look like then? Scholz has kind of had his fall from grace. If he ever had a moment of grace here in Europe. In the Polish language, there’s an expression that translates loosely into “warm noodles,” that can bend and are a little bit soggy. He’s kind of a bit of a warm noodle in this context. He’s recently made some speeches. He hasn’t openly said that Ukraine must win. He said things to the extent that Putin cannot win, but not openly supporting Ukraine. He’s also interesting, perhaps in the same way that Macron is, insofar as he also has quite a history of dealing with, for instance, Xi Jinping. They’re quite close for various reasons. He also has had relations with Putin in several contacts though not as close as with Xi Jinping. I haven’t looked into him as closely as I have Macron I must say. That’s the next deep dive on my end, but he does seem to have a worldview that’s quite similar to Macron. Also, the idea that however Europe emerges out of this conflict, it must involve Russia. He’s done quite a good deal in a fairly short amount of time to change the balance of power in Europe. There are more voices that are calling for leadership, future leadership from Central Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, potentially also the UK despite its difficult relationship with the continent, and less from Germany and less from France. What’s been interesting to observe in German politics, is the more vocal voices when it comes to the war in Ukraine. When it comes to China, the voices have actually come from Baerbock and the Greens, so that’s an interesting domestic dynamic to observe as well. Vik: Can you elaborate a little bit on that? On the [inaudible] question?Tirziu: Sure, so Baerbock has made several trips. Scholz has not visited Kyiv. He hasn’t visited Ukraine yet. Baerbock has made several trips. Two for sure. if I’m not mistaken, perhaps more. Baerbock is also meeting with Zelensky and voicing support for Ukraine. She and the Greens have been the driving force in actually pressuring Scholz and his party to provide more weapons and to provide more support for Ukraine. On China, she’s been quite vocal. For the Green agendas, it’s the environmental kind of focus, but also very vocal on human rights, very vocal on Xinjiang, and the issue of the Uighurs, trying to convince with little luck so far, to put pressure on the larger German sectors, particularly manufacturing that is still engaged quite heavily in the Chinese market, trying to at least pressure them to rethink their position. Of course she can only do so much on her own, and the buck stops with Scholz, but it’s been interesting to see her really come into the [inaudible] as a foreign Minister. At the beginning, I confess I was quite skeptical of what she would be able to accomplish, but it’s interesting to see her maneuver and the Greens being the ones that are actually the driving impetus for more of the encouraging signs that have been coming out of Germany.Lipsky: How did Henry Kissinger’s remarks go over in Europe? You know he gave that interview where he called for a negotiated settlement. He called for Ukraine to sue for peace basically.Tirziu: It had a great deal of blowback not surprisingly. It wasn’t well received. Let me put it this way. I think that view is held to an extent, by Germany and France. If you skimmed the French press, they more just reported on it, that such and such event was held, and this was the comment that Henry Kissinger made, and on we go. Among the Estonians, the Latvians, and the Poles there is significant pushback against Kissinger’s remarks. Also Kissinger, in particular Eastern Europe, doesn’t necessarily have the best reputation to begin with given some of his prior dealings during the Cold War Era. Lipsky: Kissinger being Kissinger you mean?Tirziu: So it was, exactly so. The sentiment was that Kissinger, being Kissinger, and it wasn’t well-received by those countries, but perhaps a little bit more neutrality received in France and Germany. Also in Switzerland. The leading newspapers here just reported on it but didn’t stake a position on that case.Lipsky: Right. I thought Benny Avni’s column on that was very interesting. He compared the current situation to the 1973 War in Israel where Ariel Sharon trapped the Egyptian Third Army and was going to destroy it. Kissinger intervened and blocked him from doing that and he saved the Egyptian Third Army. The Israelis were very upset, but the result of it was a peace treaty between Sadat and Israel. That might not have happened had Sharon been permitted to wipe out the Third Army. Benny saw a lot of parallels to that in the idea that Ukraine ought to compromise in favor of a larger strategy. Benny was not endorsing that compromise. He was just pointing out that an analogy exists. I thought that was a good column.Tirziu: It was. I enjoyed it as well. Absolutely.Vik: So you mentioned that Xi and Scholz were close. Can you talk a little bit more about the relationship and what his approach towards China has been so far? Tirziu: Scholz, when he was the Mayor of Hamburg, a position that he held for quite a while, he played quite a role in bringing in Chinese investment into Hamburg. He was quite vocal about the need for Germany to be more welcoming toward Chinese finance and Chinese investment. He was a pretty significant driver of bringing Germany a bit closer to China. In that context, he had several encounters with Xi and they’ve maintained relations since. This was around 2015 or so. They have kept contact. If you look at it now, we hear quite a good deal about the close ties between Germany and Russia, but the other component there is very close ties between Germany and China, particularly from an industrial perspective. Just yesterday or the day prior, Merck, the German chemical company, announced that they are opening a semiconductor plant in China which will be one of the largest outlays there. German industry is also very bound up with Beijing, particularly when it comes to energy technologies and energy adjacent manufacturing, part of that is driven by the push that we’ve seen in Germany over the last year is for green energy solutions. The problem being that the Germans can’t keep up with demand quickly enough so a great deal of batteries for electric vehicles and so on have started to come from China. In many cases now, you have a problem or a challenge in Europe where Chinese companies are setting up battery production plants in Germany as well. I think the challenge for Germany in a way, is moving away to some extent, from Russia, but falling on the other side more squarely into Beigjing’s lap. Sholz was an early driver of that. He was very encouraging and welcoming of Chinese investments and it seems that’s a modus operandi. He has continued to voice and echo that now in his role as Chancellor. As much as we have the telephone diplomacy in the hotline to Moscow, the other hotline has been the one to Beijing. Both he and Macron speak quite frequently with Xi about the “New World Order,” however we want to understand that, in some cases, trying to encourage Beijing to broker a kind of “ceasefire,” they have since stepped back from that. The other conversations that are happening between both gentlemen, driven a little bit more in this case by Sholz, is with Xi Jinping, which is interesting and concerning depending on your vantage point.Vik: Well I’m actually very startled to hear that they’re building a new semiconductor factory at a time when I think there’s been so much concern over China’s control over the market. So they’re not on the same page.Tirziu: Absolutely. In Europe, the other concern with the battery plan, before the war started, there was quite a push, it was a bit of a naysay in the battery industry to meet the growing demand. In some cases it was policy-driven, in some cases, bottom-up for electric vehicles, clean technologies, etc. It was creeping slowly, slowly, slowly, but then the German industry wasn’t able to keep pace, so now whatever efforts were beginning to emerge have more or less been now completely undermined by the Chinese. Whatever there was of a European battery industry has more or less been completely sidelined, which I think is also an important point similar to the semiconductors. Vik: So you’re a major watcher for the broader, strategic competition. What are the key points you’re watching on the China side?Tirziu: One of the points that gets overlooked when we consider influence in the world is the role of ideology. That’s what I write about and harp on quite a bit. We speak about technological capabilities. We speak about the economy. We speak about time significant flashpoints. I think the other point that gets overlooked is the role of ideology. Sometimes you mention the word “ideology” and folks go running in the opposite direction, but it underpins every move and every decision that the CCP, the Chinese Communist Party, makes. Since Xi came to power, maybe since 2019 or 2020, he’s really been making a pretty protracted effort to close China off ideologically from Western thought and from Western influence. Just last month in May, I wrote about how Xi made a push for education with Chinese characteristics, making the point that universities need to serve the revolutionary purpose and bring back the redlines so to speak. In several Chinese universities, there are standards that have been set for digital textbooks. Some of these will be rolled out in November. There’s this steady kind of closing off which is interesting and significant. Also we think that China doesn’t think, perhaps as we do, in the last or next five to ten, but what the implications of this will be in ten to thirty years down the line. The other dynamic that I’m watching is the increasing engagement in other regions of the world. When we think about the US-China competition, there’s a tendency to just think about both actors. I think we really need to step back, roll out the map, and look at China’s engagement in the Africa region, which is something that I’ve been looking at for a while. Also in Latin America. I wrote about Jamaica earlier this year. It decided that it no longer wanted to be part of the Commonwealth. It wanted to be a sovereign country, fair enough, but if you observe the volumes of financing that Beijing has been pumping into Jamaica, that starts to raise some questions and concerns around the Panama Canal where China has been building quite a lot of port infrastructure and other infrastructure, so it’s not necessarily a flashpoint, but a mapping of Beijing’s engagements around the world which, I think, plays directly to this broader issue of geostrategic competition or great power competition however we want to phrase that. The tendency at the moment is to look at Ukraine, which makes sense, and focus on Taiwan, and more recently the Pacific Islands, but there’s really a wider play that’s being executed and that doesn’t receive sufficient attention. I also try to bring that a little bit to light in some of my work and some of my writing.Vik: Very interesting. Have you been tracking this emigration crackdown that is supposedly happening within China? That they are really tightening controls on who’s able to leave, passports, visas, and other mechanisms?Tirziu: I haven’t been tracking it so carefully, so more of a peripheral eye on it let’s say, but I think that is definitely part of this idea of closing off to foreigners and cracking down on foreign influence. I’ve alluded to it several times, Document No. 9, that was written by the CCP, underpins a good deal of its activities. I haven’t been looking directly at what lies beneath, but it certainly feeds into this idea of closing off. Also, the CCP has historically been guided by the idea that its approach and its mode of governance is superior to all others, so then if you begin to open up and bring in others, other voices, that starts to challenge that.Vik: Absolutely, but I also think that it was about restricting the ability of Chinese citizens to travel or move abroad. I read something about the growing concern about the Chinese diaspora, and really trying to prevent large communities of Chinese citizens, or maybe even their descendants from amassing outside China’s borders, so it seems like it might be an interesting batten down the hatches kind of action that maybe we haven’t seen. Tirziu: Well I think it would be a bit of a stretch, but Xi’s challenge, among several or many, is he’s gone down this rabbit hole of intense lock downs and the Zero Covid policy, which of course, is backfiring on him. He can’t, for legitimacy purposes, uphold the notion of an infallible and superior party, he can’t really admit that that’s backfiring.Vik: What are the signs of it backfiring?Tirziu: We can just look at Shanghai and the humanitarian crisis that’s unfolding. You have elderly people who are being transported to what are effectively camps, Covid camps in Xinjiang, one version in Shanghai. There’s others who can’t access food for extended periods of time. Vik: Has there been pushback?Tirziu: No, not so directly. The pushback has come from Li Keqiang, the Prime Minister, and the CCP. The CCP has several internal factions. One of them is called the “Shanghai Gang,” and it formed under the former Premier, Jiang Jemin, and they have been quite vocal against Xi and the Zero Covid policy and the lockdowns in Shanghai. But no, he hasn’t addressed them in any particular way other than to say that Covid must be eliminated. It’s a bit of a stretch analogy, but during the Great Leap Forward, Mao was intent on killing all the sparrows for purposes of agriculture and peasantry which is of course, impossible. I think in the same tragic way, Xi is now intent on eliminating all cases of Covid, and that’s why we’re seeing the tragedy unfold, or one of the many reasons I think that we’re seeing the tragedy unfold. To your point Caroline, people wanting to leave, whether it was from Shanghai or elsewhere, if you’re Xi Jinping, you can’t have that because that starts to suggest that people want to escape your mode of governance.Lipsky: In a way, it reminded me a little bit of the Maoists when they wanted to end drug addiction in China which they did by murdering all the addicts. I mean, it’s just breathtaking what they do when they get their mind to it. Tirziu: You know there’s a debate. Some people point to Xi Jinping as being at the heart of China’s, let’s say, contemporary problems. In my view, it’s the Communist ideology which under Mao, it was the drug addicts and the sparrows and others. If you map the trajectory of Chinese leaders, they’ve all had their, some more or less extreme, of wanting to accomplish or purify China of X, Y, and Z, which has almost always ended in disaster and catastrophe.Lipsky: In your column on Document No. 9, you seem to take a kind of a dim view of the American policymakers. How would you characterize your assessment of say Blinken or Biden on that?Tirziu: Blinken’s speech was disappointing. He started out well insofar as he identified China as a significant threat and then proceeded to elucidate and enunciate all the different ways in which the US can think about engaging with China. Either there’s some policy plan that I’m not privy to, or there’s just a fundamental lack of understanding from US policy makers as to who China is, who the CCP is, what their aims and ambitions are. I think we are, the US and the West, more broadly maybe with some exceptions, terribly ill equipped to contend with the threat which is in essence, it’s economic, it’s military, it’s also as I keep repeating, it’s also ideological. There’s a study of core Western concepts and refashioning them with Chinese characteristics. When Blinken, in his more recent speech or on other occasions, speaks about bringing China into a rules-based global order that’s all fine and well, but the rules-based global order that currently exists is not in the rules-based order that Beijing or for that matter, Moscow, if we want to bring it back to the beginning, envisions or cares to be a party of. Both, maybe more China now, are going to great lengths to usurp and undermine and redefine it. The current administration in particular seems to be either throw back or stuck in the late 1990s or early 2000s appeasement mode that if we just bring China into a world order that caters, also in some way to its interests, it will return to a mirage of peaceful coexistence which was also never particularly the case. That’s what I think many still miss and don’t understand which is why, to my earlier point, I think that ideological component is interesting and important because it just underpins so much.Vik: All right. Well, thank you so much Aleksandra. This is super fascinating and I look forward to reading along as you continue to make such sharp observations.Tirziu: Thanks so much.Sages of the Sun is a weekly podcast produced by The New York Sun. The Sun is committed to upholding the finest journalistic traditions and staying true to our motto, “It Shines For All.”Seth Lipsky is a seasoned veteran of the news business, and among the most revered American editors. He previously spent 20 years at the Wall Street Journal, launched the Jewish Daily Forward, and first revived the Sun back in 2002.Caroline Vik has more than a decade of experience in policy-making, with years spent on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, at the Department of Defense, and on the National Security Council.

Inside China’s Quest for Global Influence: ‘Sages of the Sun’ (Episode #10)

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