It is quite well known what Macron said during and after his trip to China (for historical purpose: he exposed disunity in Europe over Beijing, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was snobbed by China and Macron did nothing, he handed Chinese President Xi Jinping a propaganda coup, and, for good measure, he threw Taiwan under the bus by suggesting Europeans should not follow the United States in defending the island in the event of a Chinese invasion). He thinks France got too small a piece of pie from China and he wants a bigger part of the pie. So he gave what Xi wanted, and Xi is a master at using economic power for political purposes.
The former executive director of Human Rights Watch sums it up well:
If Macron showed anything with his disastrous visit to China, it was how willing he is to sacrifice democratic and human rights principles to assert his ego-trip third-way approach to foreign policy.
During his visit to China, “by neglecting even to mention the crushing of Hong Kong, threats to Taiwan and the genocide currently being committed against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Macron was spitting in the face of millions.”
So, it is not a surprise that Macron got strong and loud criticism in the West. On the other hand, probably no one is surprised at Macron’s performance, this is so his style, LOL.
Not long after Macron went back to France with deals for Airbus et al for $15 billion (€13.5 billion), Lu Shaye, the Chinese Ambassador to France gave an interview on French TV that basically took the heat off from Macron.
The controversial part of the interview is when the Ambassador was asked about Crimea, he said:
The former Soviet republics like Ukraine have “no effective status in international law”, they are “not sovereign states”.
You can watch the video of the interview (in French).
Some people pointed out that this was not an official shift of China’s foreign policy or a new revelation, because this is not how the Chinese government works. Indeed, the Chinese Embassy to France published a transcript of the interview on its Chinese Wechat account, and then quietly deleted it.
Is the Ambassador in trouble for making such a controversial statement? Apparently not, according to our old friend Hu Xijin, who said this is just part of the learning curve when diplomats started engaging with the foreign press.
The problem is the West oppresses us in their press, and we have to be brave to explore methods of breakthrough. We have to be able to handle conflicts of opinion during the process.
So, even though Lu’s statement was not openly adopted as China’s position yet, Lu was not making a mistake in the interview. Mr. Wu Guoguang, renowned for being a member of the central policy group on political reform during the tenure of Premier Zhao Ziyang (in the 1980s), is now a professor in the Departments of Political Science and History at the University of Victoria in Canada. He observed the career of Lu Shaye, and pointed out that Lu has been promoted in the past for such kind of statements when he was ambassador to Senegal and Canada. And Lu worked closely with Xi in 2015-2016. So, yes, perhaps Xi really thinks that former Soviet republics like Ukraine have “no effective status in international law”, they are “not sovereign states”.
After all, in China, Xi was famous for regretting the collapse of Soviet Union, by saying that “there was not one man” that would save it.
A few days later, Xi made the long-awaited call to Zelensky. There is no real clear plan to end the war, but during the conversation, Taiwan came up. Zelensky promised to respect the “one-China” principle. Hmmmm, to me, that was why Lu Shaye went controversial. It was to make sure Zelensky understand how important Taiwan is to China.
You might ask, Really? Ukraine is being invaded and attacked daily, and Xi cared most about Taiwan? Yes, that is Xi’s ambition and he will do everything to make sure he will be remembered in history as the one that “brings Taiwan back to the arms of the motherland”.
Zelensky also made some very concrete demands:
Ukraine’s Zelensky says asked China’s Xi to help bring back children deported by Russia
A video of Dalai Lama has sparked international debate for weeks. You can watch the video released by the supporters of Dalai Lama. The event took place a month earlier in March, but this clip went viral in April.
Not surprisingly, people in the West found Dalai Lama’s request in the video disturbing: he asked a young boy to “suck my tongue”. Soon the office of Dalai Lama released an “apology”,
“His Holiness the Dalai Lama wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as to his many friends around the world, for the hurt his words may have caused.”
The statement added: “His Holiness often jokes with those around him in a naive and playful way, even in public and in front of the camera. He regrets the incident.”
This apology did not satisfy many: people continued to discuss whether Dalai Lama should make it clear that asking a young boy to “suck my tongue” is not appropriate. It is not a “playful” thing that people have misunderstood.
Meanwhile, CCP trolls were relishing the controversy. For example, our old friend Hu Xijin reminded everyone that Dalai Lama touched Lady Gaga when they met. Of course, Mr. Hu conveniently skipped the part that Lady Gaga has been forever banned in China because she dared to meet Dalai Lama.
Supporters of Dalai Lama were very eager to defend him, denying that there was anything wrong with his demand to the young boy. This made it worse, for weeks people pushed back on the notion that Dalai Lama could do no wrong. Some even started digging up the alleged dark history of Tibetan Buddhism. Some people expressed wishes that the religion can reflect on its tradition and start modernization. Meanwhile, mass demonstrations in support of the Dalai Lama were organized all over the world outside China.
To make things more spectacular, the Indian government passed a resolution:
The resolution was unanimously passed by all the members of the Parliament on the proposal of Zahi Gyaltsen, the Mountain Forest Development Officer of Ladakh, India, to stop the media and individuals who defamed His Holiness the Dalai Lama from attending the upcoming G20 Summit in Ladakh without an apology. The resolution also states that Indian actors who have defamed His Holiness will not be allowed to shoot films in Ladakh until they apologize. The resolution was submitted to the Indian Minister of Publicity.
There have been reports in the media in recent years about Chinese police operations outside China (we discussed the report in Newsletter 101). In April, FBI acted:
More than 40 Chinese security officers and their associates wielded thousands of fake social-media personas to discredit American policies and set up a secret police station in New York City to harass China’s critics, U.S. prosecutors charged in three complaints unveiled Monday.
Two American citizens were arrested for “running a covert overseas police operation in New York on behalf of Chinese authorities”.
Their activities often involve harassment of dissidents overseas and “persuading” people wanted by CCP to return to China.
Perhaps as the cases move forward, we will learn more about exactly what they do and how they do it. One thing for sure, as the Guardian report pointed out, “Police stations or no police stations, this is happening everywhere.”
Liu Yazhou is an eminent retired military general in China. He is famous for writing things not strictly along the party line. In the 1980s he wrote a controversial fiction about military officers (that was how I knew him), describing them as flawed human beings, in contrast to superheroes in standard propaganda. He is a son-in-law of a former president of China, that makes him a half-princeling. He is considered pro-west, pro-universal value among the Chinese political elites, advocating that the military should belong to the nation, not the party.
There have been rumours that he was under arrest, since he has not been heard for more than two years, despite being a prolific writer. Lately, he was harshly criticized by official media and all his books were ordered off the shelves. New media in Hong Kong reported that he was sentenced to death with suspension.
You can read some of his writings in English: On Advance Toward the West It’s also sad to note that the links in the notes of ‘A Young Turk in China’s Establishment: The Military Writings of Liu Yazhou’ are dead links (luckily, archive.org has some copies).
In Taiwan, some people are fed up with the tension with the mainland, especially those “Waishengren”, people who came to Taiwan from Mainland in 1949 and their offspring. They don’t see why Taiwan needs to defend itself from China. What happened to Hong Kong does not mean anything to them.
The ex-president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou is one of them. At the end of March, Ma visited Mainland, and made some public display of emotion when he returned to his parents hometown for the first time in his life. For people like Ma, the pull of the ancestors is strong. They are Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), they always want to go back to China, whether by defeating CCP and conquering China or by selling Taiwan to CCP.
But the native Taiwanese and the young generations don’t feel the same pull. They saw what happened to Hong Kong and they want nothing of it. These are the supporters of Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the current ruling party.
Lately, Ma’s identity as president of Taiwan was thrown into doubt. He was invited to give a speech at the Delphi Forum, but the organizer, probably in agony because of fear of angering Beijing, could not decide how to call him.
After Taiwan’s representative office protested the original title of “Former President of Taipei”, the organizers changed it to “Former President of Taiwan”. Now, they have degraded him to the “Former Leader of Taipei”, maybe hinting at his career as Mayor? Who knows…
and later
After the President of Greece @PresidencyGR reportedly apologized and promised a correction, former #Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou is now referred to as “Former President of the Kuomintang party - Chinese Taipei” by the @delphi_forum
And it seems that later they also cut Ma’s part off from the recorded video.
Ma might be pleased, after all, this is what Beijing wants, what more can he say?
More happened in April, wait for part 2…