Beijing’s new foreign relations law consolidates resources to retaliate against Washington. India asks China to abide by the 2016 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea or UNCLOS ruling on Scarborough Shoal. Veteran China watcher Cheng Li leaves the US for Hong Kong. Chinascope examines what’s new and not so new in Beijing’s foreign relations law and much more.
China over the week
A new foreign affairs law is set to enhance coordination between Beijing’s existing foreign relations legislations and departments working on foreign affairs to “safeguard China’s national sovereignty”, according to an explainer by State media.
On 28 June, the National People’s Congress passed the new Law on Foreign Relations, which will further legalise President Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy.
Chinese State media argued that it has 52 existing foreign affairs laws and 150 laws containing foreign affairs clauses, but a “gap exists in laws concerning safeguarding national sovereignty, security and development interests.”
Conforming to the trend in the Xi era, the law advocates for national security-driven foreign affairs rather than economic interests. The law will enshrine Xi’s signature campaigns, such as the Global Security Initiative, Global Development Initiative and Global Civilisation Initiative, into its foreign policy schemes by extending the legal arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outside of China.
In the text of this law, ‘national security’ appears seven times, but ‘economy’ is mentioned only twice. Article 26 of the law says Beijing will advance high-standard economic opening-up, but the new-foreign affairs legislation is heavily loaded with language, which will extend the long arm of the national security apparatus outside of the country.
But the law — for the first time — clarifies that China’s foreign policy decision-making is led by the Central Foreign Affairs Commission (CFAC), chaired by Xi. CCP director and former foreign minister Wang Yi is the director of the commission. In fact, this author has previously mentioned the central role of CFAC in China’s foreign policy under Xi.
An explainer in Xinhua argued that China’s foreign relations law will be “completely different from certain countries’ long-arm jurisdiction of their domestic laws” – indirectly criticising the US’ sanctions against other nations. With this, Beijing also hinted toward developing its own long-arm jurisdiction along the lines of US acumen to target entities beyond its physical territory.
“The law on foreign relations provides a long-lasting rule of law weapon for safeguarding national interests, enriches the legal ‘toolbox’ for foreign struggle and rights protection, and helps play the role of law as a ‘stabiliser’ of the international order,” wrote Liu Ying from Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.
Beijing has been frustrated by the US and EU targeting Chinese companies through sanctions and other tools. The law will strengthen Beijing’s lawfare strategy to protect its interests against US sanctions imposed on its people and companies.
Beijing has started taking actions against US companies as a countermeasure against Washington’s sanctions – but with limited effect.
Realistically, Chinese financial institutions don’t have the type of authority the US enjoys through the dollar’s dominance. Ultimately, CCP is in-charge in China, and the new law is merely an attempt to forge a legal rationale for Beijing’s countermeasures against countries like Australia and Canada in the past two years.
The lesson for India may be that the law clarifies that Beijing wouldn’t hesitate to use harsh economic tools to target New Delhi if their relations take a turn for the worst.
Also read: China evicting last Indian journalist a new low in ties. A bridge has been burnt for now
China in world news
Cheng Li, Washington’s most prominent China watcher, will soon leave the US for Hong Kong to take up a new position. Cheng has said ‘McCarthyism’ has taken over Washington as he has been increasingly asked to clarify which side he ‘represented’ despite being a US citizen of Chinese heritage.
Cheng’s work has informed the work of anyone working on the power politics at the top of CCP hierarchy. Cheng is leaving his coveted post at the Brookings Institution to lead a new think tank called the Centre on Governance of China and the World.
Cheng’s departure is symptomatic of a new type of Cold War unfolding between the US and China as experts are being increasingly asked to pick their side.
The US expects India’s cooperation in the South China Sea, according to Daniel Kritenbrink, a top US diplomat assigned to East Asia. The expectation for India to cooperate with the US in the South China Sea has grown with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US.
This week, India may have started tweaking its South China Sea policy. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar asked Beijing to abide by the 2016 ruling by UNCLOS, which has ruled in favour of Manila over the South China Sea territorial dispute. Jaishankar asserted this in the joint statement he issued during the Philippines’ Foreign Minister Enrique Manalo’s visit to the Indian capital last month. The statement would be India’s first clear articulation on the South China Sea dispute, as New Delhi has merely paid lip service following UNCLOS’ arbitration ruling.
The 2016 UNCLOS ruling clearly rejected Beijing’s nine-dash line, land reclamation, and activities in the waters near the Philippines.
New Delhi’s support for Manila’s territorial dispute against Beijing will now set a precedent for discussing India’s role in East Asia – especially in a Taiwan contingency. New Delhi has maintained relative silence on Taiwan, but Washington will likely clarify its expectations.
Meanwhile, India’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Pankaj Saran was seen participating at the World Peace Forum in Beijing on a panel titled ‘Security in the Asia Pacific: Challenges and Solutions’. High-level exchanges between India and China remain limited, but the former Deputy NSA Saran may have been in Beijing in his personal capacity.
During a recent visit to Beijing, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had said the US needs to ‘de-risk’ from China and not ‘de-couple’. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns has now repeated Blinken’s comment about de-risking.
“The answer to that is not to decouple from an economy like China’s, which would be foolish, but to sensibly de-risk and diversify by securing resilient supply chains, protecting our technological edge and investing in industrial capacity,” said Burns at a lecture in Oxfordshire, England.
‘De-risking’ is Washington’s new buzzword for managing relations with China, but Beijing has already expressed its antipathy for it. China will view the Joe Biden administration’s actions as containment, no matter how much Washington tries to spin the narrative.
Also read: Odisha train crash grabbed eyeballs in China as disengagement issue with India took a backseat
Must read this week
How China’s Overseas Security Forces Differ From Wagner – James Areddy and Austin Ramzy
The Return of the Warlords – Rana Mitter
PodWorld
The lives of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin greatly impacted their thinking about the world. Stephen Kotkin, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Orville Schell, Director of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York, discuss the lives of Xi and Putin to deconstruct their politics in the contemporary context. Chinascope recommends listening to the conversation.
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He is currently a MOFA Taiwan Fellow based in Taipei and tweets @aadilbrar. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)