Tag Archives: China

Many key China issues still ‘under review’ at Biden’s first 100 days

By Michael Martina and Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – As U.S. President Joe Biden’s first 100 days come to a close this week, a number of key policy positions and contentious issues remain “under review,” to use the White House’s terminology.

They stretch from deep-seated economic issues a generation in the making to controversial policies introduced by Republican President Donald Trump’s government, which preceded the Democratic Biden administration.

Many relate to China, the United States’ strategic competitor, a rivalry that Biden has starkly defined, most recently in a speech to Congress on Wednesday, as a struggle between democracy and autocracy for control of the global economy in the 21st century.

The Biden administration has begun to flesh out an overarching strategy to compete with China that relies on renewing relations with partners like India and allies like Japan and South Korea, and heavy domestic investment.

But critics say slow reviews of specific policies could cost U.S. companies and the economy.

After Biden’s speech, Republican Senator Mitt Romney told reporters, “I don’t believe we yet have as a nation a comprehensive strategy to deal with a China intent on dominating the world, eventually.”

“We don’t have the luxury of time to sit around and marvel at the problem,” said one Republican aide in the House of Representatives, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We need action and specific policies in place.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the Republican criticism of their policy reviews. Democrats argue privately, however, that the administration is still racing to get crucial jobs filled.

Biden has yet to name an ambassador to China and many other countries, or to fill a key post at the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees exports of critical U.S. technology to China.

Administration officials have said they will look to add “new targeted restrictions” on some sensitive technology exports to China in cooperation with allies, but have not offered further details.

TARIFFS ON CHINESE GOODS

The Biden administration has said it will conduct a thorough review of U.S. tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on nearly $400 billion worth of Chinese goods, but it has not given a deadline.

U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said in a recent interview that the United States was not ready to lift the duties, in part because of the leverage it gives American negotiators.

The tariffs cost U.S manufacturers $80 billion, the Tax Foundation think tank reported last September. China has fallen short of pledges to buy U.S. goods made in a January 2020 trade deal.

SUPPLY CHAIN REVIEW

Biden launched a 100-day review of risks to critical supply chains in February, citing the United States’ need for secure, diverse, dependable goods in sectors such as pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, electric vehicle batteries, and rare earth minerals.

The Defense, Commerce, Energy, Agriculture, Transportation, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services departments are expected to submit reports addressing supply chain resiliency due one year after the February order.

INVESTMENT BAN

The Biden administration also has not addressed how it will use a tough sanctioning tool introduced by Trump that would prohibit U.S. investments in Chinese companies that the previous administration said were owned or controlled by the Chinese military.

NORTH KOREA

The Biden administration has signaled for weeks it is finalizing a broad review of North Korea (Successive U.S. administrations have sought to persuade the Stalinist country to part with its nuclear weapons.) A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday the administration was “closer to the end of that review than we are to the beginning,” but offered no details.

The White House has shared little about the review and whether it will offer concessions to get Pyongyang to return to talks. It has simultaneously signaled a hard line on human rights, denuclearization and sanctions, while making diplomatic overtures that officials say have been rebuffed by Pyongyang, which has long demanded economic sanctions relief.

CUBA, VENEZUELA

Biden promised during the 2020 presidential campaign to reverse parts of Trump’s harsh measures against Cuba, and aides have said they are looking especially at Trump’s last-minute decision to designate Havana as a state sponsor of terrorism.

But the new administration appears to be in no rush. And any significant move of this type would risk a political backlash in the crucial swing state of Florida ahead of the 2022 congressional midterm elections. Trump’s hardline approach was popular among the Miami area’s large Cuban-American population, helping him win the state in November though he lost the presidential election.

Among the other issues still being decided are how to craft a new policy on Venezuela, where Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions failed to dislodge socialist President Nicolas Maduro, and how to close the internationally condemned U.S. military prison for foreign suspects at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

(Reporting by Michael Martina, Matt Spetalnick, David Brunnstrom, Andrea Shalal, Trevor Hunnicutt and Patricia Zengerle in Washington; Editing by Heather Timmons and Jonathan Oatis)

Crews start cleaning up oil spill off China’s Qingdao port

By Martin Quin Pollard, Muyu Xu and Roslan Khasawneh

QINGDAO, China (Reuters) – Clean-up crews worked on Wednesday to contain an oil spill in the Yellow Sea near the Chinese port city of Qingdao, a day after a collision between a tanker carrying around a million barrels of bitumen mix and a bulk vessel in thick fog.

A preliminary study estimated about 500 tonnes (3,420 barrels) of oil had been spilled but this needs to be assessed further, a Shandong Maritime Safety Administration official who declined to be identified told Reuters by phone.

The safety administration had said on its Weibo account on Wednesday morning that the collision caused a “minor” spill.

“We need to see how much oil has leaked (into the sea),” fisherman Zhao Changjiang, 36, told Reuters.

Zhao added that if the spill turned out to be serious “This would obviously hugely affect people’s earnings. This would also seriously damage the maritime ecology.”

The Shandong official said 12 vessels have been dispatched to deal with the accident and cleanup but did not say whether the leak had been contained.

The Liberia-flagged tanker A Symphony, which was at anchor off Qingdao port, was involved in the collision with shipping vessel Sea Justice on Tuesday. The impact caused a breach in its cargo tanks and ballast tanks.

“The accident took place about 11 nautical miles south-east of Qingdao port and so far there has been no direct impact on the operation of Qingdao port,” said the Shandong official.

“There are oil spill experts on the scene that have started clean-up operations,” a spokesman for Goodwood Ship Management, manager of the A Symphony, said on Wednesday.

The two ships were in stable condition, there were no casualties and a probe into the accident was under way, the safety administration said.

An official from the Ministry of Ecology and Environment told Reuters on Wednesday that they had sent experts to Qingdao to check the spill but did not give further details.

Hong Kong-based fuel trading company Run Cheng International Resource (HK) Co has said it was the owner of the 150,000-tonne cargo of bitumen blend on board the A Symphony.

Bitumen mix, a blend of heavy crude oil and residue, is used by China’s independent refiners as an alternative refining feedstock as it often incurs a lower import tax than crude oil. It is also used for road surfacing and roofing.

The Shandong official said samples of the oil have been sent to a laboratory for assessment.

“The first thing to focus (on) is stop the leaking…if this is normal crude oil it will float and there are relatively effective measures to contain its spread and recover the spilled materials,” said Ma Jun, director of the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs.

But heavier oil may sink if not recovered quickly.

“In that case it will be more difficult to collect and could have more serious and lasting pollution.”

Oil tanker safety has improved in recent decades – partly due to the introduction of double-hulled ships – and major spills are rare, though there are still risks with the transport of oil by sea, which has the potential to cause major environmental damage.

The 272 meter-long, 46 meter-wide oil tanker was sold in May 2019 to its new owners Symphony Shipholding SA and NGM Energy, Equasis data showed.

NGM Energy, the vessel’s commercial manager, declined to comment. The registered owner, Symphony Shipholding, has the same postal address as NGM Energy in Greece, according to Equasis data.

(Reporting by Martin Pollard and Carlos Garcia in Qingdao, Muyu Xu in Beijing, Aizhu Chen, Florence Tan, Roslan Kaswaneh and Gavin Maguire in Singapore, Lefteris Papadimas in Athens, Jonathan Saul in London and Beijing newsroom; Writing by Shivani Singh; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Kim Coghill)

Russia, China sow disinformation to undermine trust in Western vaccines, EU report says

By Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russian and Chinese media are systematically seeking to sow mistrust in Western COVID-19 vaccines in their latest disinformation campaigns aimed at dividing the West, a European Union report said on Wednesday.

From December to April, the two countries’ state media outlets pushed fake news online in multiple languages sensationalizing vaccine safety concerns, making unfounded links between jabs and deaths in Europe and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior, the EU study said.

The Kremlin and Beijing deny all disinformation allegations by the EU, which produces regular reports and seeks to work with Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft to limit the spread of fake news.

Russian and Chinese vaccine diplomacy “follows a zero-sum game logic and is combined with disinformation and manipulation efforts to undermine trust in Western-made vaccines,” said the EU study released by the bloc’s disinformation unit, part of its EEAS foreign policy arm.

“Both Russia and China are using state-controlled media, networks of proxy media outlets and social media, including official diplomatic social media accounts, to achieve these goals,” the report said, citing 100 Russian examples this year.

The EU and NATO regularly accuse Russia of covert action, including disinformation, to try to destabilize the West by exploiting divisions in society.

Vaccine supply issues with AstraZeneca, as well as very rare side effects with Astra and the Johnson & Johnson vaccines have been seized upon, the report said.

“Both Chinese official channels and pro-Kremlin media have amplified content on alleged side-effects of the Western vaccines, misrepresenting and sensationalizing international media reports and associating deaths to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in Norway, Spain and elsewhere,” the report said.

“VACCINE CHAOS”

Russia denies any such tactics and President Vladimir Putin has accused foreign foes of targeting Russia by spreading fake news about coronavirus.

Last year, China sought to block an EU report alleging that Beijing was spreading disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Reuters investigation.

While the EU has not vaccinated its 450 million citizens as fast as Britain, which is no longer a member of the bloc, shots are now gaining speed, led by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer’s shots and its German partner BioNTech.

But Russian media reported that “Brexit saved the UK from the ‘vaccine chaos’ engulfing the EU,” the EU said. “Such narratives indicate an effort to sow division within the EU,” it added.

In the report, released online, the EU said Russia’s official Sputnik V Twitter account sought to undermine public trust in the European Medicines Agency.

China meanwhile promoted its vaccines as a “global public good” and “presenting them as more suitable for developing countries and also the Western Balkans,” the report found. Western Balkan countries are seen as future EU members.

(Reporting by Robin Emmott; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Philippines tells China to mind its own business over maritime drills

MANILA (Reuters) -China has no business telling the Philippines what it can or cannot do within its waters, Manila’s defense ministry said on Wednesday, rejecting Beijing’s opposition to its ongoing coastguard exercises.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, where about $3 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes each year. In 2016, an arbitration tribunal in The Hague ruled that claim, which Beijing bases on its old maps, was inconsistent with international law.

Philippines Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters that Beijing had “no authority or legal basis to prevent us from conducting these exercises” in the South China Sea because “their claims… have no basis”.

The Philippine coastguard and fisheries bureau started maritime exercises on Saturday inside the country’s 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), following an announcement of a boosting of its presence to counter the “threatening” presence of Chinese boats.

Responding to the exercises, China’s foreign ministry on Monday said the Philippines should “stop actions complicating the situation and escalating disputes”.

The Philippine defense ministry in a statement responded saying: “China has no business telling the Philippines what it can and cannot do.”

The Philippines has taken a tough tone in recent weeks over the lingering presence of hundreds of Chinese boats in its EEZ, reviving tensions that had eased due to President Rodrigo Duterte’s embrace of Beijing.

While the Philippines owed China a “huge debt” of gratitude for many things, including free COVID-19 vaccines, Duterte said on Wednesday he would not compromise on his country’s sovereignty in the South China Sea.

“So China, let it be known, is a good friend and we don’t want trouble with them, especially a war,” Duterte said in a late night address. “But there are things that are not really subject to a compromise … I hope they will understand but I have the interest of my country also to protect.”

On Wednesday, Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin ordered the filing of another diplomatic protest, one of more than a dozen recently, this time over China’s rebuke.

“They can say what they want from the Chinese mainland; we continue to assert from our waters by right of international law what we won in The Hague. But we must not fail to protest,” Locsin said in a Tweet.

The exercises took place near a Philippine-held island in the disputed Spratly archipelago and at the heavily contested Scarborough Shoal, which the tribunal in 2016 said was a traditional fishing spot for several countries.

Lorenzana said it was China that was complicating matters by illegally occupying reefs it turned into artificial islands.

“It is they who are encroaching and should desist and leave,” he said.

(Reporting by Karen Lema; Editing by Martin Petty and Alison Williams)

Parties to Iran nuclear talks to speed up efforts for Iranian, U.S. compliance

VIENNA (Reuters) -The parties negotiating a revival of the Iran nuclear deal agreed on Tuesday to speed up efforts to bring the United States and Iran back into compliance, diplomats said.

Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia began a third round of meetings in Vienna on Tuesday to agree yo steps that would be needed if the 2015 agreement is to be revived.

The main differences are over what sanctions the United States will need to remove, what steps Iran will need to take to resume its obligations to curb its nuclear program, and how to sequence this process to satisfy both sides.

“The discussions proved that participants are guided by the unity of purpose which is full restoration of the nuclear deal in its original form,” Mikhail Ulyanov, Moscow’s ambassador to the U.N. atomic watchdog, said on Twitter after senior diplomats met in the Austrian capital.

“It was decided to expedite the process.”

A U.S. delegation is in a separate location in Vienna, enabling representatives of the five powers to shuttle between both sides because Iran has rejected direct talks.

Three expert working groups have been tasked with unravelling the most important issues and drafting solutions.

At the end of talks last week, the United States and its European allies said serious differences still persisted despite making some progress in their latest indirect talks.

“We hope all parties will sustain the momentum we have already reached in their efforts towards an earliest resolution of this issue before us,” Wang Qun, China’s envoy to the U.N. watchdog, told reporters, adding that senior diplomats would reconvene on Wednesday to take stock.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Writing by John Irish; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Timothy Heritage)

China could rule world’s technology, UK cyber spy chief says

By Guy Faulconbridge

LONDON (Reuters) -The West must urgently act to ensure China does not dominate important emerging technologies and gain control of the “global operating system,” Britain’s top cyber spy said on Friday.

In an unusually blunt speech, Jeremy Fleming, director of the GCHQ spy agency, said the West faced a battle for control of technologies such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology and genetics.

“Significant technology leadership is moving East,” Fleming said at Imperial College London. “The concern is that China’s size and technological weight means that it has the potential to control the global operating system.”

“We are now facing a moment of reckoning,” he said.

World powers will compete to shape the future by developing the best technology, hiring the people with the best brains and dominating the global standards that will govern the technologies, Fleming said.

GCHQ, which gathers communications from around the world to identify and disrupt threats to Britain, has a close relationship with the U.S. National Security Agency and with the eavesdropping agencies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand in a consortium called “Five Eyes”.

Fleming said that if Britain wished to remain a global cyber power then it would have to develop “sovereign” quantum technologies, including cryptographic technologies, to protect sensitive information and capabilities.

Fleming said quantum computing, which uses the phenomena of quantum mechanics to deliver a leap forward in computation, was getting closer and posed huge opportunities but also risks.

The West should forge ahead with developing quantum-proof algorithms, he said, “so we’re also prepared for those adversaries who might use a quantum computer to look back at things that we currently think are secure”.

He called for better fostering of market conditions to enable innovation, and create a diversity of supply in a broader set of technologies.

Fleming said China was “bringing all elements of state power to control, influence design and dominate markets” while trying to dominate debates about global standards.

He said digital currencies held significant promise to revolutionize the finance sector but posed a potential threat to liberties if abused by illiberal states as they could enable “significant intrusions into the lives of citizens and companies”.

Russia remains the biggest immediate threat to the West but Communist China’s long-term dominance of technology poses a much bigger problem, he said.

“Russia is affecting the weather, whilst China is shaping the climate,” he said.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Michael Holden, Kate Holton and Timothy Heritage)

U.S. lawmakers back $100 billion science push to compete with China

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday introduced legislation calling for $100 billion in government spending over five years on basic and advanced technology research and science in the face of rising competitive pressure from China.

The measure, sponsored by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Republican Senator Todd Young and others, would also authorize another $10 billion to designate at least 10 regional technology hubs and create a supply chain crisis response program.

The bill, called the “Endless Frontier Act,” represents a significant effort by the government to shore up private sector and university research efforts in advanced technologies with federal funding.

“There is a bipartisan consensus that the United States must invest in the technologies of the future to out-compete China,” Schumer said, adding “whichever nation develops new technologies first – be they democratic or authoritarian – will set the terms for their use.”

Republican Representative Mike Gallagher, another sponsor, said U.S. superiority in science and technology “is at risk. The Chinese Communist Party has used decades of intellectual property theft and industrial espionage to close this technological gap in a way that threatens not only our economic security, but also our way of life.”

The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to mark up the bill next week as Schumer looks to fast-track approval.

Schumer said separately he will push for “emergency spending” to implement the semiconductor manufacturing provisions in last year’s defense bill.

In February, President Joe Biden said he would seek $37 billion in funding for legislation to boost chip manufacturing in the United States as a shortfall of semiconductors has forced U.S. automakers and other manufacturers to cut production.

Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure and jobs bill calls for $50 billion for semiconductor manufacturing and research.

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called the bill a “seminal piece of legislation taking definitive steps to restore American competitiveness in 10 key advanced-technology industries of the future, such as biotech, clean energy, and semiconductors.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson, Editing by Franklin Paul and Sonya Hepinstall)

U.S. lawmakers look to advance sweeping bid to counter China

By Patricia Zengerle and Michael Martina

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. lawmakers expect to boost the country’s ability to push back against China if a Senate panel approves sweeping legislation on Wednesday as expected, even as they voiced a need to do far more to counter Beijing.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee members were debating the “Strategic Competition Act of 2021” and considering amendments, before voting on whether to send it for a vote in the 100-member Senate.

The measure has strong support from both political parties and was co-sponsored by Senators Bob Menendez, the panel’s chairman, and Jim Risch, its top Republican, making it a rare major bipartisan initiative in the deeply divided Senate.

“This is a challenge of unprecedented scope, scale and urgency, and one that demands a policy and strategy that is genuinely competitive,” Menendez said.

Risch said the bill is “truly bipartisan.”

The 280-page measure, details of which were first reported by Reuters on April 8, addresses economic competition with China, but also humanitarian and democratic values, such as imposing sanctions over the treatment of the minority Muslim Uighurs and supporting democracy in Hong Kong.

The bill is part of a fast-track effort announced in February by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pass a wide range of legislation to counter China.

A separate bill calling for $100 billion in government spending over five years on basic and advanced technology research and science in the face of competition from China, was introduced on Wednesday.

“Having something that is embedded into the statutory framework, that is durable and enduring, is really important, particularly if you’re looking at the sort of competition that we envisage with the People’s Republic of China in the years and decades ahead,” a Democratic congressional aide told reporters on a conference call before the committee meeting.

But committee members said they want to do more.

“I don’t believe anyone would think that this legislation is going to change China’s march toward a global hegemony of autocracy and repression,” Republican Senator Mitt Romney said. “…I would suggest we have a lot more work to do.”

The legislation calls for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, much of which still must be arranged.

“We are acutely aware of the need to make sure that the resources are aligned with the enormity and scale of the challenge that we face across every dimension of power,” the aide said.

The foreign relations committee also was due to consider a bill to counter Chinese censorship in the United States, as U.S. officials have complained that Beijing has sought to suppress opposition to its ruling Communist Party by coercing U.S. companies to take pro-Beijing stances and suppressing free speech on U.S. university campuses.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Howard Goller)

China summons Japan ambassador over plans to release contaminated Fukushima water into sea

BEIJING (Reuters) -China on Thursday summoned Japan’s ambassador in protest over Japan’s planned release of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant and said it would assess possible safety threats to food and agricultural products.

According to plans unveiled by Japan on Tuesday, the release of more than a million tonnes of contaminated water into the sea from the plant crippled by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011 will start in about two years after filtering it to remove harmful isotopes.

The plan drew immediate opposition from neighbors South Korea, China and Taiwan.

China is seriously concerned about the unilateral decision to discharge wastewater from Fukushima into the sea, Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng said at a regular press conference.

“We will closely follow the development of the situation and assess possible threats posed to the safety of related food and agricultural products and their trade, to ensure the safety of Chinese consumers,” said Gao.

China’s foreign ministry said it had summoned Japan’s ambassador to Beijing, Hideo Tarumi, and lodged “solemn representations” over Tokyo’s move.

“China expresses its strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, citing Assistant Minister Wu Jianghao as telling Tarumi the decision disregarded the marine environment and the safety of people in neighbouring countries.

The foreign ministry had earlier said China shared a common stance with South Korea opposing Japan’s action.

(Reporting by Xu Jing, Stella Qiu and Ryan Woo; additional reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Toby Chopra, Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie)

U.S. Senate moves ahead with sweeping effort to counter China

By Patricia Zengerle and David Brunnstrom

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a meeting on April 14 to consider major bipartisan legislation to boost the country’s ability to push back against China’s expanding global influence, Senate sources said on Thursday.

The draft measure, seen by Reuters and titled the Strategic Competition Act of 2021, mandates a range of diplomatic and strategic initiatives to counteract Beijing, reflecting hardline sentiment on dealings with China from both Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

The bill is intended to address economic competition with China, but also humanitarian and democratic values, such as the treatment of the minority Muslim Uighurs, suppression of dissent in Hong Kong and aggression in the South China Sea.

It stressed the need to “prioritize the military investments necessary to achieve United States political objectives in the Indo-Pacific.” It called for spending to do so, saying Congress must ensure the federal budget is “properly aligned” with the strategic imperative to compete with China.

It calls for an enhanced partnership with Taiwan, calling the democratic self-governed island “a vital part of the United States Indo-Pacific strategy” and saying there should be no restrictions on the ability of U.S. officials to interact with Taiwanese counterparts. China considers Taiwan to be a breakaway province.

The bill also says Washington must encourage allies to do more to check Beijing’s “aggressive and assertive behavior.” And it calls on every federal department and agency to designate a senior official to coordinate policies with respect to strategic competition with China.

“The United States must ensure that all Federal departments and agencies are organized to reflect the fact that strategic competition with the PRC is the United States top foreign policy priority,” the draft said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Another clause would limit assistance to countries hosting Chinese military installations, saying Beijing uses its so-called Belt and Road Initiative to advance its security interests and facilitate greater military access.

Introduced by Senators Bob Menendez, the committee’s Democratic chairman, and Jim Risch, its ranking Republican, the draft bill is 283 pages long. It was released to committee members overnight to allow a markup, a meeting during which the panel will discuss amendments and vote, in a week.

The measure is the Foreign Relations panel’s contribution to a fast-track effort in the Senate announced in February by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to write legislation to counter China.

The effort is supported by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.

The Senate Commerce Committee announced on Wednesday that it would hold a hearing on April 14 on its bipartisan measure to bolster U.S. technology. That bill, titled the Endless Frontier Act, was first proposed in 2020 and calls for $110 billion over five years to advance U.S. technology efforts.

Separately on Thursday, the U.S. Commerce Department said it was adding seven Chinese supercomputing entities to an economic blacklist for assisting China’s military.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Toby Chopra and Jonathan Oatis)