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Xi hails Hong Kong’s autonomy but with a major caveat: Beijing has final say

By Karson Yiu
July 01, 2022, 5:35 AM

HONG KONG — In a speech celebrating the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China, Chinese President Xi Jinping strongly reaffirmed the territory’s autonomy under the promise of “One Country, Two Systems” but with one very strong caveat: Beijing has full jurisdiction and Hong Kong must respect that.

“One Country, Two Systems is an unprecedented great initiative of historical significance,” Xi declared in a victory lap of a speech now that the opposition in the city has either been silenced or behind bars. “There is no reason to change such a good system, and it must be maintained for a long time.”

Xi’s words run counter to the view of many in the city who supported the now-silenced pro-democracy activists and Western politicians around the world who view Beijing’s increasing direct influence in the city as reneging on the agreement made between the United Kingdom and China that led to the handover on July 1, 1997.

Also marking the occasion, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a video statement on Twitter saying, “We made a promise to the territory and its people and we intend to keep it, doing all we can to hold China to its commitment”

“We simply cannot avoid the fact that for some time now, Beijing has been failing to comply with its obligations. It’s a state of affairs that threatens both the rights and freedoms of Hong Kongers and the continued progress and prosperity of their home.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken added, “it is now evident that Hong Kong and Beijing authorities no longer view democratic participation, fundamental freedoms, and an independent media” as a part of its promise.

In Xi’s view, the Chinese government is fulfilling its obligations in allowing the former British colony to choose its path and thrive economically, if not politically, over the past quarter century.

“Hong Kong will maintain the original capitalist system unchanged for a long time and enjoy a high degree of autonomy” Xi, who is on a two-day visit to the city, told a 1,300-strong gathering of Hong Kong’s political and business elite at the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Center. But he warned that residents must “consciously respect” the rule of Chinese Communist Party and its socialist system in the mainland.

Having implemented a far-reaching security law two years ago to silence dissent, Xi mostly sidestepped security and political concerns and focused on Hong Kong’s economic development, signaling an intention to turn the page on the turmoil of the last decade.

The Chinese government has long believed that the vast chasm of economic inequality in the city, exacerbated by unaffordable housing costs, was the chief reason for popular discontent which, in Beijing’s telling of events, were then exploited by “foreign forces” to foment anti-government protests.

“Hong Kong cannot afford more chaos,” Xi told the newly inaugurated administration led by Hong Kong’s former security official John Lee.

“The public has good expectations to have better livelihoods, that they can live in a wider and bigger home, with more job opportunities, better education for the children, and can be better taken care of when they are old,” Xi continued.

“The new government should not disappoint them and should place these expectations as top priorities,” stressed the Chinese leader.

“The major issue for John Lee is to deliver better housing and relieve economic inequality and poverty and if possible, find new engines for economic growth,” David Zweig, Professor Emeritus at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, told ABC News.

“Economic problems that Hong Kong has faced for past 20 years were due largely to the [real estate] tycoons who would not allow [the Hong Kong leader and legislature] to resolve these core issues,” Zweig explained, which led to the younger generation insisting on a more representative system which, in Beijing’s eyes, threatened to shift the power in the legislature.

In the wake of the 2019 protests, Zweig believed that when the popular opposition was positioned to take over the legislature and replace Beijing’s “executive-led government” with a de-facto parliamentary one, the Chinese government was unwilling to take that risk.

In response, Beijing reformed the electoral system to ensure “only patriots can govern Hong Kong.”

“Our mistake as observers was not to realize that, while China could support a more open system, under ‘One country, Two systems’ it would never let the opposition take over,” said Zweig.

At an event earlier this week, the last British governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten recalled a pro-Beijing businessman explaining this dynamic to him as the two governments were hashing out the final details before the handover. “You don’t understand the Chinese,” Patten remembered the individual telling him, “they don’t want to rig the elections, they just want to know the result in advance. Well, yes, I see that, but it’s not what’s called democracy.”

“John Lee and Beijing, having established an authoritarian regime, must deliver on the core economic issues,” Zweig told ABC News.

After spending less than 10 hours in the city over two days, Xi and his wife left Hong Kong via the high speed rail link that physically ties the center of Hong Kong to the mainland.

The new Hong Kong chief executive has his work cut for him. Hong Kong’s strict COVID measures and sealed borders over the past two years has endangered Hong Kong’s status as an aviation hub and international financial center. Its economy contracted 4% in the first quarter of this year — one of the worst performances in 30 years.

Coupled with the security crackdown, Hong Kong residents have been voting with their feet. Since the beginning the year there has been 154,000 net departures from the city, the highest rate since Hong Kong returned to China.

“We won’t let President Xi down,” Lee told the press after the Chinese president’s departure. “We won’t let the people down.”

Click here to view this article on ABC News website.

March 14, 2022 4:02 am
By David Zweig

David Zweig is professor emeritus at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

If Xi Jinping was thinking of making a move on Taiwan, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he’ll likely be thinking again. For the Chinese president, the war in Europe is playing out like a cautionary tale. The use of brutal military force in the 21st century, he won’t have failed to notice, comes with considerable risk.

Ukrainians have demonstrated that people fight hard when their backs are against a wall, and the same would likely hold true for the Taiwanese, who value their democracy and independence from their larger neighbor just as much — if not more — than Ukrainians. Taiwan’s military may be rightly criticized for its poorly coordinated forces, and its government has been hesitant to invest in its own defense, but a Taiwanese people united by a common threat could fight a lot harder than anticipated.

True, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would be more motivated than the Russian forces — national reunification is a mantra buried deep in its core — but an amphibious invasion across 100 miles of sea would also be much harder to pull off than Russia’s current land invasion. And while the United States has rejected a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine, as it would risk nuclear confrontation, American planes flying from U.S. aircraft carriers off the eastern coast of Taiwan could easily create a form of “no-sail zone” between Fujian and Taiwan.

The Russian invasion has also demonstrated how apparently modest leaders can rise to the occasion and rally an outgunned society into resisting an invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has emerged as an unlikely hero. Why expect any less from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, whose tough stance against China already earns her strong praise? One can easily envision the support she would garner around the world when facing off against a macho PLA and Chinese Communist Party leadership.

U.S. President Joe Biden, too, would have little trouble mobilizing his allies and partners to support America’s defense of Taiwan, leading to a very different dynamic than the one currently playing out in Eastern Europe. These would include the United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Australia and perhaps even India — the U.S.’s partner in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.

The West’s solidarity during the Ukraine crisis so far will not be wasted on Xi either. The European Union is China’s major trading partner. Running afoul of it, as well as the U.S. and Japan, would be dangerous for a leader who knows he must raise living standards at home. China’s deep integration into the global economy and the leverage of Beijing’s $1,068 billion in treasury bonds would make Western sanctions more painful to implement, but these could not be ruled out, preceding, or after, a Taiwan invasion.

With Putin wreaking havoc in Ukraine, an attack on Taiwan now would risk appearing coordinated with Moscow. Such an attack would quickly be seen as an effort by the Sino-Russian authoritarian alliance to undermine democratic forces, rolling back years of Beijing’s soft power efforts, such as the Belt and Road Initiative — China’s massive global transport and infrastructure project

Moreover, at the 20th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party late this year, Xi will be asking the party leadership to entrust him with supreme control for at least another five years. Already, his willingness to wed China to Putin by declaring Sino-Russian relations a “friendship without limits” may have led some to question his leadership. A full scale invasion of Taiwan would further highlight the risks of empowering an unfettered dictator.

The situation is unlikely to get better for Xi after the war, when the U.S. government, heeding its own lessons from Ukraine, will likely reinforce Taiwanese defenses, strengthen its commitment to defend democracies and challenge the expansion of “authoritarian bullies.”

But if Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a warning to Xi, whether he will heed it remains to be seen. If he does, however, choose to mimic his Russian counterpart’s attempt at empire rebuilding through his own war of reunification against Taiwan, he will likely discover that even absolute dictators are limited in what they can accomplish.

Click to view this article on Politico

Information on “talent programs” that drew U.S. scrutiny has disappeared

Dennis Normile
Science (magazine) A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 375, Issue 6578.
20 January 2022, 2:30pm:

Article contains quotes from Dr. David Zweig

The criminal charges against Harvard University chemist Charles Lieber—and dozens of others ensnared in the U.S. Department of Justice’s China Initiative—have put a spotlight on the Thousand Talents Program (TTP), a Chinese government effort that brought Lieber and other scientists from overseas to China’s universities and research institutes. U.S. authorities have portrayed the program as an effort to pilfer know-how and innovation, a claim many scientists dispute. But as the scrutiny of the TTP grew, the program slipped out of sight.

Official mentions of the TTP have disappeared, and lists of TTP awardees once posted on government and university websites are no longer available. But experts say the TTP has simply been folded into other programs, and recruitment is continuing. More than ever, the effort focuses on scientists of Chinese origin, and part-time appointments of the type that Lieber had have become rare.

China launched the TTP in 2008, aiming to boost the country’s research output and quality. At the time, more than 90% of Chinese who earned Ph.D.s in the United States remained there for at least 5 years after completing their studies, according to a May 2020 report by David Zweig and Siqin Kang of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The TTP offered returnees—and foreign researchers willing to relocate—competitive salaries and funding to establish labs. Although some half-time appointments were allowed, the program aimed for full-time researchers.

There were few takers. So in 2010 the part-time option was expanded, allowing recruits to maintain their jobs overseas if they spent at least part of the year in China. In 2011, close to 75% of 500 TTP scholars Zweig and Kang identified were on part-time agreements. (A 2019 U.S. Senate report claims the TTP had attracted more than 7000 “high-end professionals” by 2017 but didn’t specify how many were part time.)

The program has paid off for China. A 2020 study by Cong Cao, a China science policy specialist at the University of Nottingham’s campus in Ningbo, China, showed scholars in China with overseas experience published more papers, and with higher impact, than stay-at-home peers. Universities also benefited from the association with star scientists. Lieber’s presence, for example, may have helped the little-known Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) attract prospective students, says Futao Huang, a higher education scholar at Hiroshima University.

But part-time options like Lieber’s also facilitated “double dipping,” Zweig says, where researchers with full-time posts abroad were also getting handsomely paid for time supposedly spent in China. Lieber’s contract, for example, called for him to work “at or for” WUT “not less than nine months a year,” according to the indictment against him, in return for a monthly fee of up to $50,000 and $1.7 million to set up a lab at WUT. Some Chinese academics complained that nonresident scientists got big salaries and research support for little in return. In 2017, the government clarified that part-timers were to be in China “for no less than 2 months a year,” Huang says.

U.S. authorities took a dim view of the deals for different reasons. “China pays scientists at American universities to secretly bring our knowledge and innovation back to China,” then–FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a July 2020 speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C.

Such claims are “simply wrong and false,” Yigong Shi, a molecular biologist who left Princeton University in 2008 to head the life sciences department at Tsinghua University, told Science in 2020. “The TTP recruited people to build up academic programs, not to steal ideas,” says Jay Siegel, a U.S. chemist who left the University of Zurich in 2013 to head a new pharmacy program at Tianjin University with TTP support. Of 23 academics targeted under the China Initiative, only two have been charged with intellectual property theft. Lieber was found guilty of lying to federal authorities about his Chinese ties and failing to report the resulting income.

China has responded to the criticism as it often does: by becoming increasingly secretive. Information on the talents programs “seemed to start disappearing around the time that the China Initiative was launched” in 2018, says Emily Weinstein, an analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). In 2019, the TTP and its spinoffs were absorbed into a High-End Foreign Expert Recruitment Plan, one of 27 currently active national plans, according to CSET, which gleans the information from fleeting mentions on Chinese websites. (Ministries and agencies have their own specialized programs.) “No relevant statistics” are publicly available about recruiting success, says Lu Miao, a policy analyst at the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank.

Still, the continued existence of the programs “indicates their usefulness to the country,” Cao says. Although most programs are open to non-Chinese, the number moving to China “is probably still insignificant,” he adds.

Siegel, now a Switzerland-based educational consultant, says China’s talent programs have gotten so much bad publicity that U.S. universities “have become reluctant to work with anyone who has any connection to TTP.” Doing so may become illegal as well: The U.S. Congress is considering legislation prohibiting federally funded researchers from participating in China’s talent programs. Siegel and many others think such a step would be misguided. Participation by Americans “brought a lot of U.S. influence into China and Chinese understanding back to the U.S.,” Siegel says.

Dennis Normile is a contributing correspondent to Science in Shanghai, China.

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David Zweig
South China Morning Post
18 January 2021, 1:00am:

• By putting Taiwan’s status regarding the United States and China at the top of President-elect Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda, he has introduced a serious roadblock to improved relations between the incoming administration and Beijing

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is probably strutting around and feeling his oats, having accomplished several goals simultaneously with his decision to lift all unofficial constraints on US-Taiwan relations in effect as of 2021.

No doubt he wanted to go out in glory, supporting those in the US Congress and US citizens who favour even stronger ties with Taiwan. Such a move, he hopes, will position him if he makes a run for the presidency in 2024. I am sure he also took great pleasure in poking China in the eye one more time on his way out the door.

But by putting Taiwan’s status regarding the United States and China at the top of President-elect Joe Biden’s foreign policy agenda, he has introduced a serious roadblock to improved relations between the incoming administration and the government in Beijing.

There are concerns he hoped to trigger a military confrontation with China, but the US is ill-prepared today for war with China because of the current crisis within the US body politic. President Donald Trump has abdicated the responsibilities of office except for trying to overturn the election he lost.

He has decimated his national security establishment, and communications between the outgoing Department of Defence officials and the incoming Biden team has been poor. In fact, the timing of this statement could not have been worse as it gives the People’s Liberation Army a reason to consider launching an attack on Taiwan precisely when the US is internally distracted and institutionally weak.

Fortunately, moderate foreign policy commentators in China are calling for patience in response to this provocation. They hope the incoming Biden administration will be amenable to a more positive relationship with China.

Yet they do so in the belief that Biden will undo Pompeo’s Taiwan initiative once he comes into power. Some also believe that once Biden is in office, “he needs to fully overturn the Trump legacy, which would include certain adjustments to current China and Taiwan policies”.

In China’s eyes, such a step has become a political necessity if Washington and Beijing are to improve ties. China’s hardline media outlet Global Times says China must push the incoming Biden administration to overthrow the decisions made by the Trump administration and “invalidate the incumbent government’s actions that stepped out of line”.

Will Biden take the steps China is expecting? It is unlikely. According to Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution, the best China can expect is an internal study by the Biden administration about the appropriate self-constraints that should be maintained. Even before Pompeo’s statement, the US government has taken many informal steps that strengthen US-Taiwan ties.

In particular, after the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis which brought the US and China close to war, the US and Taiwan have engaged in what the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington has called a “dense architecture of dialogues”.

Biden’s foreign policy planning reflects these trends. According to Hass, while US policy in the past emphasised that the peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue must be “consistent with the wishes of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait”, the Biden policy says the peaceful resolution of cross-straits issues must be “consistent with the wishes and best interests of the people of Taiwan” while still upholding the one-China principle.

This shift in wording takes the possibility of peaceful reunification off the table and reflects the dramatic change in US policy towards Taiwan since the days when former president Barack Obama was in the White House and Joe Biden was his vice-president.

Do not expect Taiwan to go away as a source of potential military conflict between the US and China. In the past, China’s leaders might have felt military intimidation would pressure the Taiwanese government to accept Beijing’s terms for political dialogue. US policy pronouncements aside, Taiwan could not feel fully confident that, if attacked, the US would come to the rescue in part because most Americans did not favour sending US forces to protect Taiwan.

However, as America’s view of China’s threat to US security has intensified and created a bipartisan agreement for a more hostile policy towards China, US policy on Taiwan has evolved as well. Today, if China chooses to be more aggressive in its efforts to use the threat of force to pressure Taiwan, the US will respond much more forcefully with an array of political and military steps.

Whatever his original motivation, Pompeo has brought the changed nature of American policy on Taiwan out of the shadows, where it was quietly getting much tougher, and into the limelight for all to see. Thus, the Biden administration could soon find itself under pressure from Beijing to articulate how its policies on cross-straits relations differ from those of the Trump administration.

How will China respond when it finds that Biden’s underlying views on Taiwan’s international status are similar to those of the Trump administration and that Biden is willing to take postures that will undoubtedly antagonise relations between the world’s two most powerful countries?

David Zweig is Professor Emeritus at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and director of Transnational China Consulting Limited (HK)

Click to view this article on the South China Morning Post (SCMP) website with supporting images and videos.

David Zweig
South China Morning Post
19 December 2020, 6:45am:

David Zweig and Kang Siqin
South China Morning Post
26 August 2020, 8:45am:

Dear Friends, colleagues and others interested in China,

I just passed another milestone in my career!

In 2015, at the request of my former university, HKUST, I worked for several months with a great team to video two courses on China, Part 1, on domestic politics, called “China and Political Science,” and Part 2, on “China and the World.”

Well, two weeks ago I taught my 20,000^th student! As of today, 14,564 students have heard me lecture on domestic China and 6,132 have attended China and the World.

The feedback is quite positive (83.6% rank it 5 of 5) and although some things have changed since 2015, the contours of Xi Jinping’s centralization of power, his plans related to the China Dream and the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation,” his Belt and Road Initiative, his problems with Southeast Asia in the South China Sea, the use of economic power to expand China’s influence, and troubles with the US, were already in play.  (The biggest gap is probably Trump’s challenge to China)

There are 19 hours of lectures in Part 1 which can be found at: https://www.coursera.org/learn/chinesepolitics1  and 14 hours in Part 2, found at: https://www.coursera.org/learn/chinese-politics-2 

Check it out!