This year’s National People’s Congress begins on Saturday. Speaking to Christiane Kuehl, Gu Xuewu, a professor of international relations in Bonn, explains the significance of this major political event. The first point on the agenda is economic policy: The government needs to stimulate the economy while avoiding bubbles and overcapacities. Growth policy remains China’s most important domestic policy.
But the war in Ukraine will also force the People’s Congress to focus more on security matters. Clear words, however, are not to be expected, says Gu. By remaining vague, the Chinese government is holding all options open. He believes that at least “there will be no unequivocal support for ‘Putin’s war’.”
Our analysis also explores the question of China’s position on the war: Did Xi Jinping give his presidential counterpart Vladimir Putin the green light for the invasion? Probably not. Nevertheless, this version of events is currently trending on the Internet. It is probably true that Xi insisted that any action should only be taken after the Olympics. However, it is extremely doubtful whether Putin let his supposed friend in on his plans. After all, China was caught off guard by the scale of the attack. Amelie Richter summarizes all confirmed information about the contacts between China and Russia in the lead-up to the war.
There is more happening in the world than war and geostrategy, and yet hardly any area of life is spared the effects of current events. The Paralympic Games begin in Beijing – and Russia’s athletes are not allowed to participate. Wang Ning spoke with Mark Dreyer of the China Sports Insider about the challenging Paralympics in Beijing.
Professor Gu, what aspects and issues should we pay particular attention to at this year’s National People’s Congress?
The government is extremely concerned about the stability of economic growth. Keeping this at a stable level of at least six percent is likely to be the focus of this year’s National People’s Congress. Expectations are high about what specific measures will be announced to achieve this goal. If I’m not mistaken, the focus this year will be on new investment plans, programs to reduce the gap between urban and rural areas, and an agenda to develop the agricultural sectors – as well as concepts to further boost artificial intelligence, information technology, and the semiconductor industry.
What role will geostrategic matters play – the Ukraine war, a secure supply of raw materials and power, the trade conflict with the USA?
The country is indeed challenged by growing geopolitical problems. But managing relations with the US, minimizing the risks resulting from the Ukraine conflict, and reviving relations with the EU will remain key.
China tends to be rather cryptic about these things, especially at the NPC. Do you expect things to be the same this year?
Remaining cryptic has proven to be a safeguard against any subsequent unexpected changes, and therefore allows Beijing to act flexibly in these turbulent times. It will be the same this year. However, I expect the government to be more specific about how it will prevent the risk of being drawn into a war between Russia and the West as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There will be no unequivocal support for ‘Putin’s war’. On the contrary, I continue to expect a balancing act by China to keep its own room for maneuver as large as possible.
Even if not all sides seem to be one hundred percent satisfied with Beijing’s position, the government has somehow managed that all sides consider China as their ‘strategic asset’ so far: Through its parallel support for Russia’s concern to stop NATO’s eastward expansion, its abstention on the UN resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion in the UN Security Council, its advocacy of the European Normandy format to resolve the Ukraine crisis, and its emphasis on respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Some observers believe that China is beginning to prioritize internal policy and geostrategic interests over its economic interests. Do you have a similar take on this? Or do you believe that the NPC will be dominated by economic policy, as is usually the case?
Economic policy is the most important domestic policy in China. It is no secret that the party always regards economic success as a prerequisite for domestic political stability, and thus as the legitimation of the government. Therefore, any artificial juxtaposition of economic, domestic, and geostrategic interests fails, in my opinion, to account for the inner logic of Chinese politics. Economic policy will continue to be the main theme of the NPC this year. But it will be more strongly flanked or justified by domestic political necessities and foreign policy constraints.
In light of the difficult conditions, provinces have set quite ambitious growth targets, averaging six percent. Do you think these targets are realistic and do believe that Premier Li Keqiang will support them?
Li Keqiang must of course support them. Actually, one must rather assume that Li himself probably arranged for or encouraged the provinces to issue these growth targets. After all, only with growth at or above six percent can the party achieve its goal of developing China into a ‘high-income’ country by 2025. That’s what the 14th Five-Year Plan says, but it’s also in the 2035 Agenda. China’s leaders have to hurry. They don’t have that much time.
One of the most significant figures at the NPC each year is the increase of the official military budget. In 2021, China increased its defense spending by 6.8 percent. The increase was often in the double digits. Given the Ukraine war and recurring Chinese rhetoric about a ‘tense geopolitical environment,’ do you expect a stronger increase now?
At the very least, defense spending will certainly not decrease. In international comparison, China still has room to grow: Germany has so far limited its military spending to 1.5 percent of its GDP, but will soon increase it to two percent or more following Chancellor Scholz’s announcement. The US is at 3.7 percent, which is much higher than China, which has so far spent 1.7 percent of GDP on its defense sector.
Would sharply rising military spending be an indication of an escalation of the situation on the Taiwan Strait?
Washington’s signals of continued support for Taiwan are unlikely to encourage Beijing to spend less on the military. But I do not expect an actual escalation in the sense of an invasion across the Taiwan Strait similar to Putin’s attack on Ukraine. For that, the cost-benefit ratio is not positive enough for Beijing’s strategists. There is a Chinese saying: ‘Victory without war’ (不战而胜). Defeating Taiwan without bloodshed is likely to be the favored form of subjugating Taiwan.
China’s regular military exercises around Taiwan are meant to counter the Americans’ frequent provocations with their own maneuvers and deployments of aircraft carrier formations across the Taiwan Strait. But they also have the purpose of demonstrating the credibility of the ‘victory without war’ strategy. To some extent, this can also be seen as psychological warfare against Taiwan’s ruling elite, which it classifies as ‘rogue’.
China was hit by a major power crisis last summer. Will concerns about the country’s power security, coupled with the uncertain geopolitical situation, mean that climate protection will now have a lower priority at the NPC?
President Xi and his provincial governors have solemnly sworn to commit to climate protection. They have pledged to achieve emissions reversal in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060. The performance of officials will now actually be evaluated based on whether, and to what extent the climate targets in their respective areas of responsibility are gradually achieved. Against this backdrop, I see little reason for them to put climate protection on hold because of the geopolitical turmoil. Especially since more oil and gas could probably flow from Russia to China in the future. This would tend to increase the country’s power security, not reduce it.
I see China’s problem regarding climate protection elsewhere. The country is under enormous pressure to quickly develop sufficient and reliable renewable energy capacity to replace its massive array of coal-fired power plants. It’s a race against time. None of the responsible parties can afford to postpone climate targets further.
What role will pandemic control still play?
The country is slowly being forced to adjust its zero-covid policy. Because the situation in the outside world is changing, and we have to respond to that. I assume that pandemic control will also be an issue at the NPC. I do not expect a total departure from the zero-covid policy. But a new approach to preparing people for a possible limited change in strategy might be announced there.
Xuewu Gu holds the Chair of Political Science with a focus on International Relations and is Director of the Center for Global Studies at the University of Bonn. Chinese economic and financial policy as well as the domestic, foreign and security policy of the People’s Republic are among Gu’s main fields of research. He answered the questions in writing.
The pressure was too high. The escalation has put the IPC “in a unique and impossible position” said IPC President Andrew Parsons on Thursday when he announced the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Paralympics. Does Russia’s Ukraine war overshadow the Paralympics opening?
The Paralympics are always overshadowed by the Olympic Games, but this time it’s all about Russia and the Russian and Belarusian athletes. The situation in the athletes’ villages has escalated, the safety of the athletes could no longer be guaranteed. Athletes from Russia and Belarus had to leave the Paralympic Village. Initially, the International Paralympic Committee discussed whether the athletes would be allowed to compete. At first the decision was yes, but only under a neutral flag. Also, they should not be included in the medal table. Then on Thursday, the IPC revised that decision and excluded the athletes. It’s a messy situation that completely overshadows the Paralympics.
Does that put the Paralympics for Beijing in a different light?
While it is not China’s fault that a negative light is being cast on the Paralympics, they are still being overshadowed in the eyes of the world. The world would have focused on how the other athletes reacted to the Russian athletes and what would have been said during the Games. All of this puts the focus on things that Beijing may not want the world to look at.
How did the preparations for the Paralympics go?
As far as I have heard, everything went smoothly. Many of the volunteers stayed in the Olympic bubble. So they are well prepared for the Paralympics. The weather in Beijing is pretty warm, though.
The infamous Olympic bubble that everyone had to navigate during the Winter Olympics also exists at the Paralympics. What impact will this have?
I am a huge fan of the Paralympics. Every single athlete who participates in the Paralympics has a unique personal story to tell. The fact that basically no audience is allowed is a great shame. For the Olympics, 150,000 spectators were promised, but then it turned out to be only 90,000 – at least that’s the official number from state media. Yes, we have seen that the bubble works, but it is a stark contrast to the rest of the world, where athletes compete in front of their fans, families, and friends. A concrete example is ice hockey – at the Olympics, stadiums were only at four to five percent capacity. There were great matches, but no one was there to see them. There will be even fewer at the Paralympics. I haven’t heard from anyone yet who said they will be there to watch them. As for the Olympics – it didn’t even feel like they were happening in Beijing because of the bubble, they could have been literally anywhere.
What about the image boost Beijing hopes to gain from the Paralympics?
That’s a difficult question. 90 percent of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are focused on the main event. That’s unfortunate, but China could really have the opportunity to present people with disabilities at home. China has never had a good track record at the Winter Paralympics. A good performance here could be a turning point. You can see a stark contrast between the Summer and Winter Games: In the last five Summer Paralympics, China topped the medal table and also finished first in gold medals. In contrast, at the last five Winter Paralympics, they won only one gold medal: In 2018 in Pyeongchang, in curling. But I would expect them to do much better this year. Just looking at the number of athletes, 96 will participate this time, while five years ago in Pyeongchang there were only 26.
Are athletes with disabilities promoted in China?
In everyday life, i.e. in the cities and on the streets, you hardly see people with disabilities. There is hardly any information about how the government supports athletes with disabilities.
Mark Dreyer is the author of Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best (January 2022). He hosts the China Sports Insider podcast and runs the website of the same name. He also covers major sporting events on five continents for Sky Sports, Fox Sports, AP Sports and other media. Dreyer has lived in China since 2007.
Partnership ‘without borders’? Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, one particular question was the elephant in the room: Was Beijing aware of Moscow’s plan for a full-scale invasion? In early February, China and Russia issued a joint statement on a “no-limits” partnership. Was Xi Jinping aware at the time of what he was getting into?
A New York Times report now suggests that China was aware of Russia’s plans. Senior Chinese officials reportedly insisted to Russian counterparts in early February that they should not invade Ukraine until after the end of the Winter Olympics.
In the report, the Times cites US government officials and a European official who point to Western intelligence. These suggested that Beijing had “some level of intelligence” about Russia’s intentions before the Ukraine invasion. The report, however, leaves some questions unanswered: Did China assume that Russia was “merely” seeking to seize territory in the Donbas, or did it have information about a large-scale attack, including on the capital, Kyiv? And was the Russian plan also the subject of high-level discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping?
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the report about an alleged collusion between China and Russia before the attack. Such reports were “fake news,” spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press conference in Beijing. “Such practice of diverting attention and blameshifting is despicable,” Wang said.
However, in the same press conference, Wang also said that the reasons for the Ukraine crisis were well known. He added that the NATO expansion was a wrong decision. The Chinese Embassy in Washington also denied the New York Times report, saying, “The claims mentioned in the relevant reports are speculations without any basis, and are intended to blame-shift and smear China.”
Some interpretations of events, however, show that Beijing may have been deliberately preparing for a crisis and trying to boost Russia’s finances in advance. Less than a week before the Russian attack, Moscow announced a $20 billion, years-long coal deal with China. And just hours before the Russian attack, China lifted export restrictions on Russian wheat despite lingering concerns about plant diseases (China.Table reported).
Russia also moved military units from its border to China and other parts of the East toward Ukraine and into Belarus during the winter. These troop transfers indicated a high level of trust between Russia and China, as the number of border troops is now at an all-time low since 1922, observers noted. The joint communiqué in early February also marked the first time China explicitly sided with Russia and openly opposed NATO expansion.
That China assumed Russia would make a quick advance all the way to Kyiv is also evident from the slow evacuation of Chinese citizens, which began only slowly, argues Katsuji Nakazawa, a veteran China correspondent for the Japanese daily Nikkei Asia. Beijing’s leadership had believed that the roughly 6,000 Chinese living in Ukraine could leave the country on charter flights from airports under the full control of Russian forces. Beijing’s assumption, according to Nakazawa, was that after a quick invasion, Russia would gain air supremacy and the Chinese nationals’ departure could be safely accomplished by the end of February. The Japanese journalist cites, among other things, conversations with Chinese officials.
However, the fact that Chinese citizens were asked to seek safety and leave Ukraine at a relatively late stage compared to EU and US citizens suggests that Beijing assumed that Kyiv and western Ukraine were not in Russia’s interest – and Beijing was thus surprised by the full extent of Russia’s plan. Only after the Ukraine invasion began, did China announce evacuation plans.
Until Thursday, more than 3,000 Chinese nationals were able to reach safe neighboring countries, according to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. One Chinese national had been injured earlier in the week during an evacuation operation during an exchange of fire between Russian and Ukrainian troops, according to officials. A plea for help to the Chinese embassy by Chinese students stuck in the heavily embattled city of Kharkiv was shared on Weibo.
Bonny Lin, a China expert at the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unclear how much Xi knew about Putin’s plans in light of the failure to evacuate early. The fact that China moved too slowly suggests that it was not fully prepared. “Given the facts we have so far, I don’t think we can definitively rule out either possibility – that Xi didn’t know, which is bad, and that Xi may have known, which is also bad,” Lin said.
Many of the People’s Republic’s leading foreign policy experts had publicly dismissed American warnings of war by February 24. Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Washington’s warning of an invasion was based on “inferior” intelligence. Until the eve of the attack, Chinese state media dubbed US warnings as disinformation. Officials in Beijing largely portrayed Putin’s military buildup on the border as a bluff and negotiating tactic.
The NYT article also reports that Chinese officials had dismissed the US warnings and stressed that they did not believe an invasion on Ukraine was imminent. US intelligence even revealed that Beijing had shared this information with the Kremlin as well. Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the US think tank Stimson Center, argued that Beijing did not believe Russia would invade Ukraine – and may now feel played by the Kremlin.
It is clear that Putin lied straight to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s and France’s leader Emmanuel Macron’s faces during meetings at his giant white table about the attack on Ukraine. But how was it with Xi? It was obvious that what the Chinese understood in early February was very different from what actually followed, NYT quotes a source as saying. However, it would be wrong to assume that Putin lied to Xi or played him.
It will probably never be fully answered how much who knew at what point. What matters now, however, is where Beijing will draw the red line for the “limitless” partnership. China is facing some strategically important decisions.
But China has probably already learned one lesson from the Ukraine crisis, says Tong Zhao. It cannot allow itself to suffer economically as a result of sanctions. The analyst is certain: Xi’s efforts to decouple from the West and external dependencies will now only be fueled even more with regard to Russia.
Disasters like the Ukraine war crowd out all other news, including that of everyday repression in China. On March 1, for example, China’s new “Measures on the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services” went into effect almost unnoticed, further eroding China’s constitutional right to freedom of belief. With rigorous surveillance, Party leader Xi Jinping aims to close or narrow all online outlets for religious content. Only five party-sanctioned, state-loyal church communities of Protestants, Catholics, Daoists, Buddhists and Muslims are allowed to practice their faith – in a manner strictly controlled by the party.
This leads to increasingly absurd incidents. On the occasion of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing wanted to present itself to the outside world as cosmopolitan and tolerant. It had the cathedral of a diocese loyal to the Pope restored, which is located in the middle of the Olympic ski area. But that was just a mere calculation. When the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for Olympic participants to visit the cathedral, China’s authorities had the church, which had become useless, closed, and hidden from public view.
Something similar happened at the 2008 Summer Olympics, when Beijing had Bibles printed for all international participants. But that, too, was just for show. After the end of the Olympics, these Bibles were withdrawn from the market.
Even more grotesque: In the old imperial city of Kaifeng, all visible relics of the former Jewish community have been wiped off the face of the earth in recent years. Beijing wanted to prevent that their existence could potentially revive the Jewish faith in China. All three cases, as well as the horrific repression of the Uyghur Muslim minority, reflect a grotesque fear of the party losing control over beliefs and ethnicities.
It only took Friedrike Böge, the correspondent of the German newspaper FAZ in Beijing, 55 minutes to reach Taiji station, which is 250 kilometers away, by high-speed train at the end of December. From there, it takes 20 minutes by cab to reach the winter sports center of Chongli. Locals also call the eponymous town with 60,000 inhabitants in the mountains of northwest China Xiwanzi (崇礼西湾子). This is also the name of its Catholic diocese. For the 2022 Olympics, however, Chongli is the name of the world-famous venue for all ski disciplines.
But journalist Böge was not drawn to the artificial snow. She was on her way to track down the history of the mighty Chongli Cathedral. With its twin spires, it once became the landmark of the diocese founded 200 years ago. Built between 1923 and 1926, the magnificent Catholic building could accommodate up to 2,000 believers. Urban building historians Luo Wei and Lu Haiping (罗微, 吕海平) rated the cathedral in 2019 (塞北天主教圣地西湾子教堂建堂始末) as the most important, Chinese church building of the “Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” This was the name of the missionaries of the Belgian Scheut Order who began to evangelize Xiwanzi in the mid-19th century and made it the center of the Catholic faith in northern China. But in December 1946, Mao’s soldiers of the “Eighth Route Army” 八路军 bombed and burned the cathedral during the civil war with the Kuomintang.
But the diocese of Xiwanzi has remained a bastion of the underground church loyal to the Pope to this day. Nevertheless, atheist Beijing seemed willing to jump over its shadow to promote the 2022 Winter Olympics. It supported the reconstruction of the cathedral, begun privately by the congregation. When Beijing won the bid to host the 2015 Olympics, the entire structure was faithfully restored, as was the missionary cemetery devastated during the Cultural Revolution. China’s Olympic planners calculated that, eventually, all winter athletes coming to Chongli would be interested in visiting. Beijing would score.
But then COVID-19 changed everything. The Winter Olympics could only be held in a cordoned-off, isolated bubble. The Cathedral was located outside of it, and so Beijing lost interest. Journalist Boege found the cathedral was “closed until further notice due to Covid and the Olympics.” She learned from the church’s faithful that “no services have been allowed to be held in the church since October.”
The cathedral faded back into obscurity. As a correspondent, I had first heard about the reconstruction in 2016. Catholic friends gave me a 74-page color photo volume officially printed at Easter 2016 under the Chinese-English title “Church Album.” It includes advertising posters bearing the logo of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with the cathedral as Chongli’s new landmark. For the picture book’s foreword, priest Paul Zhang (张保禄) writes: “With the 2022 Games, Xiwanzi will become the platform for the re-encounter of Eastern and Western culture.” 随着2022年冬奥会的到来，西湾子将再度成为中西文化交汇的平台. His pious wish was not to come true.
As early as 2008, Beijing pretended to uphold religious freedom at the Summer Olympics, which were awarded to China for the first time. It commissioned the National Committee of the Protestant State Church “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” to print a Chinese-English edition of the New Testament specifically as the “Olympia 2008 Edition.” Each athlete found it in the closet drawer of his or her room in the Olympic Village, with the addresses, phone numbers, and Sunday services of 13 Protestant churches in the capital. Beijing even had five worship rooms set up in the Olympic Village for Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus.
This had nothing to do with a new position on religion. Immediately after the Olympics, authorities had the Bibles confiscated and destroyed. A church employee secretly sent me a copy. At that time, the bishop and president of the China Christian Council, K.H. Ting (丁 光 訓), had hopefully written in the New Testament: “The Bible unites us.”
China’s fear of losing control has led the communist leadership to crack down even harder on all religious groups, sects and house churches that are not recognized by the state since 2008. Beijing did not even stop at the mere 200 members of a Mosaic community whose ancestors had migrated from India, Iraq or Persia via the Silk Road a thousand years ago. The Jewish weavers and merchants settled in the former Song-era imperial city of Kaifeng on the Yellow River with imperial privilege. But the People’s Republic of China never recognized the Jewish religion as an independent faith within China.
The trigger for today’s absurd persecution of the descendants was a Passover festival celebrated by Jewish families of Kaifeng and surrounding villages in a hotel in the spring of 2015. The New York Times wrote a report about it, whose translation alarmed officials in Beijing. Even though they actually read harmless things about revived old Jewish traditions and customs. They also read about plans to promote a Jewish cultural center with a museum and the reconstruction of the synagogue, which was last destroyed in 1851. Because Jewish NGOs from the US and Israel were in attendance and sympathetic local Chinese officials were among the guests at the festival, Beijing even put the issue on the agenda of a Politburo meeting led by Xi Jinping. At issue were potential threats to the party from the proliferation of religions.
Such fears led security authorities in Kaifeng to interrogate all 70 participants of the Passover festival, I was told at the time. All were warned to celebrate religious festivals only in private and at home. At the same time, Kaifeng authorities demanded that all visible evidence of Jewish culture and religion on the streets and in the city had to disappear. A historic fountain that had once belonged to the synagogue destroyed by the floods was filled in. Two still preserved memorial stones with inscriptions on the development of the Jewish community from 1489 to 1663 were removed. Even a memorial plaque erected by the city only in 2008 was removed. It had commemorated the first synagogue of Kaifeng, built in 1163.
The fact that a community that immigrated to China 1,000 years ago and is so small today can provoke such strong reactions in Beijing is one of the grotesques of communist politics, as is Beijing’s treatment of the hidden cathedral in Chongli.
A health worker checks the ear canal of an elderly lady in Qinglong village, Guizhou province. The check-up is one of many activities to mark National Ear Care Day. The aim is to educate people in classrooms – or, as here, out in the fresh air – about how to protect their hearing. According to China’s Disabled Persons’ Association, about 20 million individuals in the country suffer from hearing loss.
This year’s National People’s Congress begins on Saturday. Speaking to Christiane Kuehl, Gu Xuewu, a professor of international relations in Bonn, explains the significance of this major political event. The first point on the agenda is economic policy: The government needs to stimulate the economy while avoiding bubbles and overcapacities. Growth policy remains China’s most important domestic policy.
But the war in Ukraine will also force the People’s Congress to focus more on security matters. Clear words, however, are not to be expected, says Gu. By remaining vague, the Chinese government is holding all options open. He believes that at least “there will be no unequivocal support for ‘Putin’s war’.”
Our analysis also explores the question of China’s position on the war: Did Xi Jinping give his presidential counterpart Vladimir Putin the green light for the invasion? Probably not. Nevertheless, this version of events is currently trending on the Internet. It is probably true that Xi insisted that any action should only be taken after the Olympics. However, it is extremely doubtful whether Putin let his supposed friend in on his plans. After all, China was caught off guard by the scale of the attack. Amelie Richter summarizes all confirmed information about the contacts between China and Russia in the lead-up to the war.
There is more happening in the world than war and geostrategy, and yet hardly any area of life is spared the effects of current events. The Paralympic Games begin in Beijing – and Russia’s athletes are not allowed to participate. Wang Ning spoke with Mark Dreyer of the China Sports Insider about the challenging Paralympics in Beijing.
Professor Gu, what aspects and issues should we pay particular attention to at this year’s National People’s Congress?
The government is extremely concerned about the stability of economic growth. Keeping this at a stable level of at least six percent is likely to be the focus of this year’s National People’s Congress. Expectations are high about what specific measures will be announced to achieve this goal. If I’m not mistaken, the focus this year will be on new investment plans, programs to reduce the gap between urban and rural areas, and an agenda to develop the agricultural sectors – as well as concepts to further boost artificial intelligence, information technology, and the semiconductor industry.
What role will geostrategic matters play – the Ukraine war, a secure supply of raw materials and power, the trade conflict with the USA?
The country is indeed challenged by growing geopolitical problems. But managing relations with the US, minimizing the risks resulting from the Ukraine conflict, and reviving relations with the EU will remain key.
China tends to be rather cryptic about these things, especially at the NPC. Do you expect things to be the same this year?
Remaining cryptic has proven to be a safeguard against any subsequent unexpected changes, and therefore allows Beijing to act flexibly in these turbulent times. It will be the same this year. However, I expect the government to be more specific about how it will prevent the risk of being drawn into a war between Russia and the West as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There will be no unequivocal support for ‘Putin’s war’. On the contrary, I continue to expect a balancing act by China to keep its own room for maneuver as large as possible.
Even if not all sides seem to be one hundred percent satisfied with Beijing’s position, the government has somehow managed that all sides consider China as their ‘strategic asset’ so far: Through its parallel support for Russia’s concern to stop NATO’s eastward expansion, its abstention on the UN resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion in the UN Security Council, its advocacy of the European Normandy format to resolve the Ukraine crisis, and its emphasis on respecting Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Some observers believe that China is beginning to prioritize internal policy and geostrategic interests over its economic interests. Do you have a similar take on this? Or do you believe that the NPC will be dominated by economic policy, as is usually the case?
Economic policy is the most important domestic policy in China. It is no secret that the party always regards economic success as a prerequisite for domestic political stability, and thus as the legitimation of the government. Therefore, any artificial juxtaposition of economic, domestic, and geostrategic interests fails, in my opinion, to account for the inner logic of Chinese politics. Economic policy will continue to be the main theme of the NPC this year. But it will be more strongly flanked or justified by domestic political necessities and foreign policy constraints.
In light of the difficult conditions, provinces have set quite ambitious growth targets, averaging six percent. Do you think these targets are realistic and do believe that Premier Li Keqiang will support them?
Li Keqiang must of course support them. Actually, one must rather assume that Li himself probably arranged for or encouraged the provinces to issue these growth targets. After all, only with growth at or above six percent can the party achieve its goal of developing China into a ‘high-income’ country by 2025. That’s what the 14th Five-Year Plan says, but it’s also in the 2035 Agenda. China’s leaders have to hurry. They don’t have that much time.
One of the most significant figures at the NPC each year is the increase of the official military budget. In 2021, China increased its defense spending by 6.8 percent. The increase was often in the double digits. Given the Ukraine war and recurring Chinese rhetoric about a ‘tense geopolitical environment,’ do you expect a stronger increase now?
At the very least, defense spending will certainly not decrease. In international comparison, China still has room to grow: Germany has so far limited its military spending to 1.5 percent of its GDP, but will soon increase it to two percent or more following Chancellor Scholz’s announcement. The US is at 3.7 percent, which is much higher than China, which has so far spent 1.7 percent of GDP on its defense sector.
Would sharply rising military spending be an indication of an escalation of the situation on the Taiwan Strait?
Washington’s signals of continued support for Taiwan are unlikely to encourage Beijing to spend less on the military. But I do not expect an actual escalation in the sense of an invasion across the Taiwan Strait similar to Putin’s attack on Ukraine. For that, the cost-benefit ratio is not positive enough for Beijing’s strategists. There is a Chinese saying: ‘Victory without war’ (不战而胜). Defeating Taiwan without bloodshed is likely to be the favored form of subjugating Taiwan.
China’s regular military exercises around Taiwan are meant to counter the Americans’ frequent provocations with their own maneuvers and deployments of aircraft carrier formations across the Taiwan Strait. But they also have the purpose of demonstrating the credibility of the ‘victory without war’ strategy. To some extent, this can also be seen as psychological warfare against Taiwan’s ruling elite, which it classifies as ‘rogue’.
China was hit by a major power crisis last summer. Will concerns about the country’s power security, coupled with the uncertain geopolitical situation, mean that climate protection will now have a lower priority at the NPC?
President Xi and his provincial governors have solemnly sworn to commit to climate protection. They have pledged to achieve emissions reversal in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060. The performance of officials will now actually be evaluated based on whether, and to what extent the climate targets in their respective areas of responsibility are gradually achieved. Against this backdrop, I see little reason for them to put climate protection on hold because of the geopolitical turmoil. Especially since more oil and gas could probably flow from Russia to China in the future. This would tend to increase the country’s power security, not reduce it.
I see China’s problem regarding climate protection elsewhere. The country is under enormous pressure to quickly develop sufficient and reliable renewable energy capacity to replace its massive array of coal-fired power plants. It’s a race against time. None of the responsible parties can afford to postpone climate targets further.
What role will pandemic control still play?
The country is slowly being forced to adjust its zero-covid policy. Because the situation in the outside world is changing, and we have to respond to that. I assume that pandemic control will also be an issue at the NPC. I do not expect a total departure from the zero-covid policy. But a new approach to preparing people for a possible limited change in strategy might be announced there.
Xuewu Gu holds the Chair of Political Science with a focus on International Relations and is Director of the Center for Global Studies at the University of Bonn. Chinese economic and financial policy as well as the domestic, foreign and security policy of the People’s Republic are among Gu’s main fields of research. He answered the questions in writing.
The pressure was too high. The escalation has put the IPC “in a unique and impossible position” said IPC President Andrew Parsons on Thursday when he announced the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Paralympics. Does Russia’s Ukraine war overshadow the Paralympics opening?
The Paralympics are always overshadowed by the Olympic Games, but this time it’s all about Russia and the Russian and Belarusian athletes. The situation in the athletes’ villages has escalated, the safety of the athletes could no longer be guaranteed. Athletes from Russia and Belarus had to leave the Paralympic Village. Initially, the International Paralympic Committee discussed whether the athletes would be allowed to compete. At first the decision was yes, but only under a neutral flag. Also, they should not be included in the medal table. Then on Thursday, the IPC revised that decision and excluded the athletes. It’s a messy situation that completely overshadows the Paralympics.
Does that put the Paralympics for Beijing in a different light?
While it is not China’s fault that a negative light is being cast on the Paralympics, they are still being overshadowed in the eyes of the world. The world would have focused on how the other athletes reacted to the Russian athletes and what would have been said during the Games. All of this puts the focus on things that Beijing may not want the world to look at.
How did the preparations for the Paralympics go?
As far as I have heard, everything went smoothly. Many of the volunteers stayed in the Olympic bubble. So they are well prepared for the Paralympics. The weather in Beijing is pretty warm, though.
The infamous Olympic bubble that everyone had to navigate during the Winter Olympics also exists at the Paralympics. What impact will this have?
I am a huge fan of the Paralympics. Every single athlete who participates in the Paralympics has a unique personal story to tell. The fact that basically no audience is allowed is a great shame. For the Olympics, 150,000 spectators were promised, but then it turned out to be only 90,000 – at least that’s the official number from state media. Yes, we have seen that the bubble works, but it is a stark contrast to the rest of the world, where athletes compete in front of their fans, families, and friends. A concrete example is ice hockey – at the Olympics, stadiums were only at four to five percent capacity. There were great matches, but no one was there to see them. There will be even fewer at the Paralympics. I haven’t heard from anyone yet who said they will be there to watch them. As for the Olympics – it didn’t even feel like they were happening in Beijing because of the bubble, they could have been literally anywhere.
What about the image boost Beijing hopes to gain from the Paralympics?
That’s a difficult question. 90 percent of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are focused on the main event. That’s unfortunate, but China could really have the opportunity to present people with disabilities at home. China has never had a good track record at the Winter Paralympics. A good performance here could be a turning point. You can see a stark contrast between the Summer and Winter Games: In the last five Summer Paralympics, China topped the medal table and also finished first in gold medals. In contrast, at the last five Winter Paralympics, they won only one gold medal: In 2018 in Pyeongchang, in curling. But I would expect them to do much better this year. Just looking at the number of athletes, 96 will participate this time, while five years ago in Pyeongchang there were only 26.
Are athletes with disabilities promoted in China?
In everyday life, i.e. in the cities and on the streets, you hardly see people with disabilities. There is hardly any information about how the government supports athletes with disabilities.
Mark Dreyer is the author of Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best (January 2022). He hosts the China Sports Insider podcast and runs the website of the same name. He also covers major sporting events on five continents for Sky Sports, Fox Sports, AP Sports and other media. Dreyer has lived in China since 2007.
Partnership ‘without borders’? Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, one particular question was the elephant in the room: Was Beijing aware of Moscow’s plan for a full-scale invasion? In early February, China and Russia issued a joint statement on a “no-limits” partnership. Was Xi Jinping aware at the time of what he was getting into?
A New York Times report now suggests that China was aware of Russia’s plans. Senior Chinese officials reportedly insisted to Russian counterparts in early February that they should not invade Ukraine until after the end of the Winter Olympics.
In the report, the Times cites US government officials and a European official who point to Western intelligence. These suggested that Beijing had “some level of intelligence” about Russia’s intentions before the Ukraine invasion. The report, however, leaves some questions unanswered: Did China assume that Russia was “merely” seeking to seize territory in the Donbas, or did it have information about a large-scale attack, including on the capital, Kyiv? And was the Russian plan also the subject of high-level discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s leader Xi Jinping?
The Chinese Foreign Ministry rejected the report about an alleged collusion between China and Russia before the attack. Such reports were “fake news,” spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a press conference in Beijing. “Such practice of diverting attention and blameshifting is despicable,” Wang said.
However, in the same press conference, Wang also said that the reasons for the Ukraine crisis were well known. He added that the NATO expansion was a wrong decision. The Chinese Embassy in Washington also denied the New York Times report, saying, “The claims mentioned in the relevant reports are speculations without any basis, and are intended to blame-shift and smear China.”
Some interpretations of events, however, show that Beijing may have been deliberately preparing for a crisis and trying to boost Russia’s finances in advance. Less than a week before the Russian attack, Moscow announced a $20 billion, years-long coal deal with China. And just hours before the Russian attack, China lifted export restrictions on Russian wheat despite lingering concerns about plant diseases (China.Table reported).
Russia also moved military units from its border to China and other parts of the East toward Ukraine and into Belarus during the winter. These troop transfers indicated a high level of trust between Russia and China, as the number of border troops is now at an all-time low since 1922, observers noted. The joint communiqué in early February also marked the first time China explicitly sided with Russia and openly opposed NATO expansion.
That China assumed Russia would make a quick advance all the way to Kyiv is also evident from the slow evacuation of Chinese citizens, which began only slowly, argues Katsuji Nakazawa, a veteran China correspondent for the Japanese daily Nikkei Asia. Beijing’s leadership had believed that the roughly 6,000 Chinese living in Ukraine could leave the country on charter flights from airports under the full control of Russian forces. Beijing’s assumption, according to Nakazawa, was that after a quick invasion, Russia would gain air supremacy and the Chinese nationals’ departure could be safely accomplished by the end of February. The Japanese journalist cites, among other things, conversations with Chinese officials.
However, the fact that Chinese citizens were asked to seek safety and leave Ukraine at a relatively late stage compared to EU and US citizens suggests that Beijing assumed that Kyiv and western Ukraine were not in Russia’s interest – and Beijing was thus surprised by the full extent of Russia’s plan. Only after the Ukraine invasion began, did China announce evacuation plans.
Until Thursday, more than 3,000 Chinese nationals were able to reach safe neighboring countries, according to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing. One Chinese national had been injured earlier in the week during an evacuation operation during an exchange of fire between Russian and Ukrainian troops, according to officials. A plea for help to the Chinese embassy by Chinese students stuck in the heavily embattled city of Kharkiv was shared on Weibo.
Bonny Lin, a China expert at the US think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was unclear how much Xi knew about Putin’s plans in light of the failure to evacuate early. The fact that China moved too slowly suggests that it was not fully prepared. “Given the facts we have so far, I don’t think we can definitively rule out either possibility – that Xi didn’t know, which is bad, and that Xi may have known, which is also bad,” Lin said.
Many of the People’s Republic’s leading foreign policy experts had publicly dismissed American warnings of war by February 24. Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said Washington’s warning of an invasion was based on “inferior” intelligence. Until the eve of the attack, Chinese state media dubbed US warnings as disinformation. Officials in Beijing largely portrayed Putin’s military buildup on the border as a bluff and negotiating tactic.
The NYT article also reports that Chinese officials had dismissed the US warnings and stressed that they did not believe an invasion on Ukraine was imminent. US intelligence even revealed that Beijing had shared this information with the Kremlin as well. Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the US think tank Stimson Center, argued that Beijing did not believe Russia would invade Ukraine – and may now feel played by the Kremlin.
It is clear that Putin lied straight to Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s and France’s leader Emmanuel Macron’s faces during meetings at his giant white table about the attack on Ukraine. But how was it with Xi? It was obvious that what the Chinese understood in early February was very different from what actually followed, NYT quotes a source as saying. However, it would be wrong to assume that Putin lied to Xi or played him.
It will probably never be fully answered how much who knew at what point. What matters now, however, is where Beijing will draw the red line for the “limitless” partnership. China is facing some strategically important decisions.
But China has probably already learned one lesson from the Ukraine crisis, says Tong Zhao. It cannot allow itself to suffer economically as a result of sanctions. The analyst is certain: Xi’s efforts to decouple from the West and external dependencies will now only be fueled even more with regard to Russia.
Disasters like the Ukraine war crowd out all other news, including that of everyday repression in China. On March 1, for example, China’s new “Measures on the Administration of Internet Religious Information Services” went into effect almost unnoticed, further eroding China’s constitutional right to freedom of belief. With rigorous surveillance, Party leader Xi Jinping aims to close or narrow all online outlets for religious content. Only five party-sanctioned, state-loyal church communities of Protestants, Catholics, Daoists, Buddhists and Muslims are allowed to practice their faith – in a manner strictly controlled by the party.
This leads to increasingly absurd incidents. On the occasion of the 2022 Winter Olympics, Beijing wanted to present itself to the outside world as cosmopolitan and tolerant. It had the cathedral of a diocese loyal to the Pope restored, which is located in the middle of the Olympic ski area. But that was just a mere calculation. When the COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for Olympic participants to visit the cathedral, China’s authorities had the church, which had become useless, closed, and hidden from public view.
Something similar happened at the 2008 Summer Olympics, when Beijing had Bibles printed for all international participants. But that, too, was just for show. After the end of the Olympics, these Bibles were withdrawn from the market.
Even more grotesque: In the old imperial city of Kaifeng, all visible relics of the former Jewish community have been wiped off the face of the earth in recent years. Beijing wanted to prevent that their existence could potentially revive the Jewish faith in China. All three cases, as well as the horrific repression of the Uyghur Muslim minority, reflect a grotesque fear of the party losing control over beliefs and ethnicities.
It only took Friedrike Böge, the correspondent of the German newspaper FAZ in Beijing, 55 minutes to reach Taiji station, which is 250 kilometers away, by high-speed train at the end of December. From there, it takes 20 minutes by cab to reach the winter sports center of Chongli. Locals also call the eponymous town with 60,000 inhabitants in the mountains of northwest China Xiwanzi (崇礼西湾子). This is also the name of its Catholic diocese. For the 2022 Olympics, however, Chongli is the name of the world-famous venue for all ski disciplines.
But journalist Böge was not drawn to the artificial snow. She was on her way to track down the history of the mighty Chongli Cathedral. With its twin spires, it once became the landmark of the diocese founded 200 years ago. Built between 1923 and 1926, the magnificent Catholic building could accommodate up to 2,000 believers. Urban building historians Luo Wei and Lu Haiping (罗微, 吕海平) rated the cathedral in 2019 (塞北天主教圣地西湾子教堂建堂始末) as the most important, Chinese church building of the “Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” This was the name of the missionaries of the Belgian Scheut Order who began to evangelize Xiwanzi in the mid-19th century and made it the center of the Catholic faith in northern China. But in December 1946, Mao’s soldiers of the “Eighth Route Army” 八路军 bombed and burned the cathedral during the civil war with the Kuomintang.
But the diocese of Xiwanzi has remained a bastion of the underground church loyal to the Pope to this day. Nevertheless, atheist Beijing seemed willing to jump over its shadow to promote the 2022 Winter Olympics. It supported the reconstruction of the cathedral, begun privately by the congregation. When Beijing won the bid to host the 2015 Olympics, the entire structure was faithfully restored, as was the missionary cemetery devastated during the Cultural Revolution. China’s Olympic planners calculated that, eventually, all winter athletes coming to Chongli would be interested in visiting. Beijing would score.
But then COVID-19 changed everything. The Winter Olympics could only be held in a cordoned-off, isolated bubble. The Cathedral was located outside of it, and so Beijing lost interest. Journalist Boege found the cathedral was “closed until further notice due to Covid and the Olympics.” She learned from the church’s faithful that “no services have been allowed to be held in the church since October.”
The cathedral faded back into obscurity. As a correspondent, I had first heard about the reconstruction in 2016. Catholic friends gave me a 74-page color photo volume officially printed at Easter 2016 under the Chinese-English title “Church Album.” It includes advertising posters bearing the logo of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics with the cathedral as Chongli’s new landmark. For the picture book’s foreword, priest Paul Zhang (张保禄) writes: “With the 2022 Games, Xiwanzi will become the platform for the re-encounter of Eastern and Western culture.” 随着2022年冬奥会的到来，西湾子将再度成为中西文化交汇的平台. His pious wish was not to come true.
As early as 2008, Beijing pretended to uphold religious freedom at the Summer Olympics, which were awarded to China for the first time. It commissioned the National Committee of the Protestant State Church “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” to print a Chinese-English edition of the New Testament specifically as the “Olympia 2008 Edition.” Each athlete found it in the closet drawer of his or her room in the Olympic Village, with the addresses, phone numbers, and Sunday services of 13 Protestant churches in the capital. Beijing even had five worship rooms set up in the Olympic Village for Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus.
This had nothing to do with a new position on religion. Immediately after the Olympics, authorities had the Bibles confiscated and destroyed. A church employee secretly sent me a copy. At that time, the bishop and president of the China Christian Council, K.H. Ting (丁 光 訓), had hopefully written in the New Testament: “The Bible unites us.”
China’s fear of losing control has led the communist leadership to crack down even harder on all religious groups, sects and house churches that are not recognized by the state since 2008. Beijing did not even stop at the mere 200 members of a Mosaic community whose ancestors had migrated from India, Iraq or Persia via the Silk Road a thousand years ago. The Jewish weavers and merchants settled in the former Song-era imperial city of Kaifeng on the Yellow River with imperial privilege. But the People’s Republic of China never recognized the Jewish religion as an independent faith within China.
The trigger for today’s absurd persecution of the descendants was a Passover festival celebrated by Jewish families of Kaifeng and surrounding villages in a hotel in the spring of 2015. The New York Times wrote a report about it, whose translation alarmed officials in Beijing. Even though they actually read harmless things about revived old Jewish traditions and customs. They also read about plans to promote a Jewish cultural center with a museum and the reconstruction of the synagogue, which was last destroyed in 1851. Because Jewish NGOs from the US and Israel were in attendance and sympathetic local Chinese officials were among the guests at the festival, Beijing even put the issue on the agenda of a Politburo meeting led by Xi Jinping. At issue were potential threats to the party from the proliferation of religions.
Such fears led security authorities in Kaifeng to interrogate all 70 participants of the Passover festival, I was told at the time. All were warned to celebrate religious festivals only in private and at home. At the same time, Kaifeng authorities demanded that all visible evidence of Jewish culture and religion on the streets and in the city had to disappear. A historic fountain that had once belonged to the synagogue destroyed by the floods was filled in. Two still preserved memorial stones with inscriptions on the development of the Jewish community from 1489 to 1663 were removed. Even a memorial plaque erected by the city only in 2008 was removed. It had commemorated the first synagogue of Kaifeng, built in 1163.
The fact that a community that immigrated to China 1,000 years ago and is so small today can provoke such strong reactions in Beijing is one of the grotesques of communist politics, as is Beijing’s treatment of the hidden cathedral in Chongli.
A health worker checks the ear canal of an elderly lady in Qinglong village, Guizhou province. The check-up is one of many activities to mark National Ear Care Day. The aim is to educate people in classrooms – or, as here, out in the fresh air – about how to protect their hearing. According to China’s Disabled Persons’ Association, about 20 million individuals in the country suffer from hearing loss.
