The editorial team at China.Table wishes you happy holidays. A few days off with cooking and chilling – a perfect time to catch up on podcasts and movies. Instead of discussing books at the end of the year, this year, we are presenting other media on China.
Today, we also look back at 2023. The death of Li Keqiang, Germany’s China strategy, disputes in the South China Sea, the formal insolvency of Evergrande, and the resumption of dialog with the US – these were just some of the events that shaped the old year.
Between the holidays, we will only publish issues as needed in case of important events. You will receive the next regular issue on the Tuesday after New Year – with our outlook and predictions for 2024.
Wishing you a happy new year and a successful start to the new year
January: The People’s Republic celebrates the first Chinese New Year without coronavirus restrictions on January 21. The official restrictions were abruptly lifted in early December following protests in Beijing and Shanghai. What followed was a massive Coronavirus wave in China. The leadership in Beijing wanted the Year of the Rabbit to return the country’s economy to the pre-Covid era. But the recovery failed to materialize.
February: On February 4, the United States shoot down a Chinese surveillance balloon on the East Coast. Prior to this, photos of the giant white balloon made the rounds on US social media. Beijing rejects accusations of espionage and explains that the flying object is a weather balloon. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postpones his trip to China because of the incident.
March: The National People’s Congress confirms Xi Jinping as President. The head of state and party leader thus becomes the most important leader since Mao. Xi had already paved the way for his third term 2018 by lifting term limits. Li Qiang becomes the new premier. He succeeds Li Keqiang, who did not belong to Xi’s camp and left office after two terms. Li Keqiang dies in October; the cause of death is reported to be a heart attack.
April: Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen travels to the United States. There, she meets the then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. He is the number three in the US government. There had not been such a meeting at this level on US territory since 1979. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy as “collusion.”
May: China’s first domestically developed passenger aircraft, the C919 from Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), takes off on its maiden flight between Shanghai and Beijing. It takes the C919 just over two hours to fly from Shanghai Hongqiao to the capital’s airport. For China, the flight of the Comac aircraft is both a milestone and a prestige project. Beijing aims to make itself independent of Western technology with the C919, but also to break the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus in the long term.
June: On June 25, then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang makes his last public appearance – there has been no trace of him since. In July, he is ousted, and in October he is also removed from office as a member of the Chinese State Council. There has been no public explanation of his whereabouts. It is rumored that disagreements over the direction of Chinese foreign policy and an extramarital affair during his time as ambassador in Washington were the reason for his removal. Qin’s successor will be his predecessor Wang Yi.
July: The German government presents the country’s first China strategy. “China has changed. As a result of this and China’s political decisions, we need to change our approach to China,” the 64-page paper states. One of the core aspects of the strategy is de-risking, i.e., reducing risks in the China business and identifying concentration risks when focusing on a large market.
August: The former property giant Evergrande has to file for creditor protection in the US in the middle of the month. Evergrande’s shares plummet as a result. Evergrande is considered to be the most indebted property company in the world. It has accumulated debts totaling more than 300 billion US dollars. In January 2022, the group announced a restructuring plan, but has since been unable to reach an agreement with its creditors. Most recently, Evergrande was once again able to postpone its liquidation proceedings. The hearing is now scheduled for January 29, 2024.
September: The IAA takes place in Munich – and becomes a super show for Chinese manufacturers. BYD presents its debut car, Seal. XPeng, Nio and AVATR are also there and are well received by the German visitors. Germany’s largest car manufacturer Volkswagen – until last year still the number 1 in China – is knocked off the podium. Its electric division, in particular, is being outpaced by the Chinese competition. To avoid losing ground, the Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer enters into a partnership with the Chinese start-up Xpeng. Until recently, the Chinese partners looked up to Volkswagen. Now, it’s the other way around.
October: Another minister is sacked in October. Li Shangfu is removed from his position as defense minister. There has been much speculation about corruption in the procurement of military equipment ever since. From 2017 to 2022, Li headed the Weapons Development Department of the Central Military Commission, which is also responsible for purchasing foreign weapons and military technology. Li has been on a US sanctions list since 2018 due to arms deals with Russia from that time. The position has been vacant since Li’s ousting.
November: Thaw between Beijing and Washington – US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi meet in San Francisco. Among other things, they agree to resume direct military dialogue. China also agrees to crack down on the export of fentanyl precursor chemicals. At a press conference, Biden again calls Xi a dictator. Xi, in turn, bluntly informs Biden that he plans to integrate Taiwan. Xi only leaves the exact timing open.
December: The first in-person EU-China summit since the end of the Covid pandemic takes place at the beginning of the month. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU Council President Charles Michel and EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Josep Borrell travel together to Beijing. Their message: The growing trade imbalance with China must be reduced. Beijing tried to appease with small concessions: As of December 1, citizens from five EU countries, including Germany and France, will be able to enter the country for 15 days without a visa.
“Chi ku,” “eating bitterness,” is a Chinese expression used to describe a life of hardship. The eponymous documentary by directors Pascale Appora-Gnekindy and Ningyi Sun tells the story of two men who each have to taste some of it in their own way.
The film is set in the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries. Thomas is a worker who dives for sand and sells it as building material to the Chinese builder Luan, who is expected to use it for the construction of a Chinese bank branch in the capital, Bangui. Their paths do not often cross. And yet both are caught in a spiral of self-exploitation in pursuit of a better life.
“Eat Bitter” breaks Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road down to a microcosm. It shows: People are too complex to be mere human capital in a global success story – a story from which only one person can emerge as the successful winner anyway. fpe
The documentary “Total Trust” shows in an impressive and depressing way how China uses AI to surveil the population. Chinese director Zhang Jialing follows the struggle of the wife and son of imprisoned human rights lawyer Chang Weiping, among others. The film takes his story and others to illustrate how China’s virtual surveillance can develop into a very real threat, from psychological terror to physical violence.
The largely secretly filmed footage shakes up the viewer and raises awareness of the increasing use of AI for alleged security purposes, including in other countries. The homepage for Total Trust features a list of current film screenings. ari
It takes a deep insight into China to find independent and critical documentary films, texts and books outside of state control. On 13 December, a treasure trove of such contemporary documents was launched: the China Unofficial Archive.
The platform contains numerous books, many issues of underground magazines and almost 20 documentary films – all in Chinese, but some films also have English subtitles. The films cover a wide range of topics, such as feminism, the Cultural Revolution, experiences in a labor camp or the lives of homeless people in Beijing.
The man behind the project is Ian Johnson, former journalist and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The idea for the China Unofficial Archive came to him when he was writing his book “Sparks: China’s Underground. Historians and Their Battle for the Future”. The platform’s goal is to provide access to the most important documents, films, blogs and publications of a movement of Chinese people reclaiming their country’s history.
Johnson sees a demand for an independent, reliable and impartial home for this material. Johnson: “Many people outside China believe that independent thought inside the country has been crushed. This archive shows that this is not the case.” jul
As China.Table has its roots in Germany, we also include three recommendations exclusively available in German. If you speak some German yourself or have German colleagues, these are worth checking out.
The ideal podcast for China experts. At the end of every month, Klaus Mühlhahn, Anja Blanke and Julia Haes share detailed information about what’s happening in China in their podcast “China ungschminkt.”
Muehlhahn is a professor of sinology, but the style is definitely podcast-esque, including the first-name basis, even if some parts do sound a little read from script. The podcast mostly covers the latest hot topics, such as electromobility, the military, Xinjiang and China’s relationship with Russia. The trio also discusses issues such as anti-Asian racism. fin
“Im Rachen des Drachen,” or in English “in the Maw of the Dragon.” The documentary by German public broadcaster ZDF is well worth watching despite its somewhat corny title. It is exciting, informative and looks at the complicated relationship between China and Germany from different angles. After all, what does the much-debated idea of “de-risking” actually mean? Is Germany truly so dependent on China?
In the one-hour film, cautious politicians, as well as entrepreneurs who continue to bet on China, have a say. And ordinary citizens who are horrified to discover that vital medicines are in short supply – if China does not deliver. For many years, penicillin and germanium were produced in Germany. Not anymore.
Germany is indeed dependent on China in many areas. That’s what the Germans wanted. Because the relationship between the two countries was mutually beneficial and the prices in China were unbeatable. Now the question is: Does Germany want this to keep it that way? The ZDF documentary helps viewers to form their own opinion. rad
China concerns us all. The podcast “Welt.Macht.China“, which is produced on average once a month, has been showing this for 30 episodes now. Each episode is dedicated to a specific topic, such as China’s role in the Middle East. How Chinese researchers are siphoning off knowledge from German universities. Whether we will soon all be driving Chinese EVs. Or how the shopping apps Temu and Shein flood Europe with cheap goods from the People’s Republic. Vivid, realistic and thought-provoking.
The idea for this podcast came from former China correspondents Astrid Freyeisen and Ruth Kirchner, the current correspondent for German public broadcaster ARD in Shanghai, Eva Lamby-Schmitt, and Ciu Mu from Deutsche Welle. However, the entire China expertise from the ARD network is also involved. According to internal sources, the program management itself is surprised by the high number of subscribers.
This success is no coincidence. It is one of the best German public broadcasting podcasts. And: concentrated China expertise at its best! flee
Zhao Lei, Vice President of the Institute for International Strategic Studies at the Central Party College of the Central Committee (中央党校), has apparently learned from foreign correspondents in Beijing: Whenever they despair at the ideological gibberish of Xi Jinping’s lengthy speeches, they count which term he uses most often. That is probably what matters.
Zhao Lei discovered that Xi repeated the word security (安全) 91 times in his 30,000-character speech, with which he opened the twentieth Party Congress at the end of 2022, and referred to national security 29 times (国家安全 “一词出现29次). The researcher came to the razor-sharp conclusion that this issue will be of “even greater importance” in the future (国家安全工作被摆在更加突出的位置).
The party leader has long been known to have a reputation for sensing crises and enemies everywhere who are bent on regime change or, like the US, want to stop China’s rise as a global power. However, Xi has now turned this into an obsession. Since he established the Central Commission for State Security (中央国家安全委) in 2014, which he still chairs today, he has introduced a dozen laws to protect China against subversion, espionage, sabotage, terrorism and external sanctions. Beijing also imposed a National Security Law on Hong Kong.
At the very first meeting of his Commission, Xi identified 16 security-related areas where the People’s Republic was vulnerable. He called for a nationwide security concept to ensure a “secure China” (平安中国). This was on April 15, 2014, and the date is now celebrated annually as “National Security Education Day.”
At the most recent session of his Commission in May 2023, Xi warned that the security problems had become “even more complex and difficult.” He called on the authorities to “take care of it.” Two months later, the Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin (陈一新), announced that action had been taken. “We have increased in scope, technical capabilities and resources” because China is under threat and must “proactively” defend itself against spies. On the occasion of the newly expanded “anti-espionage law” introduced on July 1, he called for an upgrade with more “big data, blockchain and AI.”
In China’s “new era of socialism,” as Xi calls his rule since his third re-election at the twentieth Party Congress, everything now has to be subordinated to the protection of national security. The responsible state security agency is gaining political influence.
Mao once staffed China’s key positions of party power with old revolutionaries, reformer Deng Xiaoping with technocrats. According to the China Leadership Monitor’s new winter analysis 2023, Xi is apparently bringing more and more security functionaries on board who were once his loyal, long-standing followers. It found that 10 of the 15 members of the Politburo have such a background, as do almost half of the officials on the State Council. New ministers of the security authorities or the Central Committee’s political and legal commissions are confidently showing their faces.
I was reminded of this when I recently flipped through the book “Man Without a Face” (隐面人), a Chinese translation of the memoirs of Markus Wolf, the former head of foreign espionage in the former German Democratic Republic. In October 2000, Wolf gifted me the book in Beijing, published by China’s International Publishing House for China’s Culture. Its director, Zhang Guilai, had dared to invite Wolf to the book launch and allowed me to attend. China purchased the rights from a US publisher, who printed the book, while Wolf’s West German publisher waited before publishing it under the title “Chief of Spies in the Secret War.”
Wolf was highly controversial in Germany. Many did not believe his critical reflections on the GDR system. In China, where such a book would no longer be allowed to be published today under Xi’s censorship, Wolf’s “Man without a Face” and later his book “Troika” met with “curious approval,” publishing director Zhang told me at the time. “Because he wrote so differently from what readers expected.” They praised Wolf for “hiding his face” but showing his “personality and courage to think outside the box.”
Wolf grew up in Moscow in a German family of artists, full of idealistic enthusiasm for Soviet power and also felt a connection to China. His role model was the Soviet-German spy Richard Sorge. The latter had secretly organized a spy ring in Shanghai and warned Stalin of Hitler’s invasion. Wolf’s lifelong friends also included Eva Xiao, a German from Moscow who lived in Beijing with her husband, the poet Emi Xiao. She visited Wolf in Berlin on June 5, 1989, the day after the Tiananmen massacre, which left him horrified. By then, he had long since been relieved of his duties in the GDR.
Wolf died in 2006 but was still experiencing a China searching for its way in 2000. He got the message when the publisher gave him a scroll painting of a meihua snowflake bush after his book presentation: “The meihua flower does not allow itself to be told to wait for spring. It gives off its scent when it chooses to …”
Like Richard Sorge, Wolf belonged to a species of secret agents that many Chinese activists of the 1940s also counted themselves among. China historian Stephen R. MacKinnon calls them “romantic revolutionaries” and has dedicated his new book “China’s Last Romantic Revolutionary” to a legend in their ranks.
In it, he writes about the Chinese master spy Chen Hansheng (1897-2004). With his field studies on China’s farmers, he became world-famous as a social scientist and agricultural researcher. After studying at the universities of Pomona and Harvard, Chen earned his Ph.D. as a historian in Berlin in 1924. In Beijing, the educational reformer Cai Yuanpei appointed him the youngest professor at Beijing National University. But Chen was also the most successful international agent of influence. In 1926, he was brought into the Comintern by the co-founder of the Communist Party of China, Li Dachao. Together with Richard Sorge, Chen established a broad spy network in Beijing and Shanghai. He became friends with the progressive German journalist Agnes Smedley.
The networks of willing spies and agents with unknowing supporters and sympathizers from Moscow to Beijing, Tokyo and the USA have yet to be systematically studied. The British historian Owen Matthews recently unearthed one example in his new book “Stalin’s Master Spy – Richard Sorge.” Before Sorge left Berlin for Shanghai, he was helped by the Marxist China researcher Karl August Wittfogel. Wittfogel earned his PhD at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. One of his reviewers was the influential sinologist Richard Wilhelm, who had just founded his Frankfurt Institute for Chinese Studies. Wittfogel is said to have persuaded him to give Sorge a letter of recommendation for sinological studies in Shanghai. This helped Sorge gain a foothold and opened many doors.
Chen Hansheng’s contacts extended from Sun Yat-sen’s widow, Soong Qingling, deep into the circle of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Between 1945 and 1950, he was allowed to teach at renowned US universities. He used his influence to persuade talented Chinese scientists to return to China, including researchers who would later become important nuclear and rocket scientists in the People’s Republic.
After 1950, Chen refused to take on high government offices in Beijing, deeply disappointed by Mao’s first Stalinist and later feudalistic rule. Chen passed away blind as a late result of brutal persecution during the Cultural Revolution, in which his wife was killed in 1968.
Almost all “romantic” agents later fell out with the regimes they served so loyally. Today’s intelligence apparatchiks, on the other hand, are blanketing China with virtual campaigns. In July, the Ministry of State Security launched its first public Weixin website with the slogan: “The Ministry of State Security is the foundation for China’s national rejuvenation.”
The 80 analyses and commentaries on the website so far are based on what Xi Jinping considers to be China’s most pressing problem in his agenda to keep its superpower development on track. This can also be gleaned from the words in his speeches. In November, it was the protection of China’s monopoly on strategic minerals such as rare earths. This is “the new arena of competition between the world powers,” reported State Security.
The priority changed in mid-December. Now, the danger is looming because China’s economic situation is currently being denigrated and slandered by hostile forces. The state security authorities “must erect economic protective barriers against this” (国家安全机关坚决筑牢经济安全屏障) was the headline on the website: “The current economic situation is increasingly becoming an important battleground in the competition between the major powers.”
Bloggers reacted to the intelligence services’ campaign to mobilize against anyone who badmouths China’s economic situation under Xi: “Other countries are relying on three horses to pull the economic cart out of the mud – investment, foreign trade and consumption. China, on the other hand, is harnessing three new horses to its cart: the statistics office (to embellish the figures), propaganda (to lie) and the security ministry (to threaten).” Markus Wolf and Chen Hansheng would probably have laughed at that.
Kids in Hong Kong at the Christmas market. Christian traditions from 156 years of British rule have left their mark on the southern port city. As has the pandemic: The wave of colds is rolling in, masks are supposed to prevent infection in groups.
The editorial team at China.Table wishes you happy holidays. A few days off with cooking and chilling – a perfect time to catch up on podcasts and movies. Instead of discussing books at the end of the year, this year, we are presenting other media on China.
Today, we also look back at 2023. The death of Li Keqiang, Germany’s China strategy, disputes in the South China Sea, the formal insolvency of Evergrande, and the resumption of dialog with the US – these were just some of the events that shaped the old year.
Between the holidays, we will only publish issues as needed in case of important events. You will receive the next regular issue on the Tuesday after New Year – with our outlook and predictions for 2024.
Wishing you a happy new year and a successful start to the new year
January: The People’s Republic celebrates the first Chinese New Year without coronavirus restrictions on January 21. The official restrictions were abruptly lifted in early December following protests in Beijing and Shanghai. What followed was a massive Coronavirus wave in China. The leadership in Beijing wanted the Year of the Rabbit to return the country’s economy to the pre-Covid era. But the recovery failed to materialize.
February: On February 4, the United States shoot down a Chinese surveillance balloon on the East Coast. Prior to this, photos of the giant white balloon made the rounds on US social media. Beijing rejects accusations of espionage and explains that the flying object is a weather balloon. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postpones his trip to China because of the incident.
March: The National People’s Congress confirms Xi Jinping as President. The head of state and party leader thus becomes the most important leader since Mao. Xi had already paved the way for his third term 2018 by lifting term limits. Li Qiang becomes the new premier. He succeeds Li Keqiang, who did not belong to Xi’s camp and left office after two terms. Li Keqiang dies in October; the cause of death is reported to be a heart attack.
April: Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen travels to the United States. There, she meets the then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. He is the number three in the US government. There had not been such a meeting at this level on US territory since 1979. The Chinese Foreign Ministry condemned Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy as “collusion.”
May: China’s first domestically developed passenger aircraft, the C919 from Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), takes off on its maiden flight between Shanghai and Beijing. It takes the C919 just over two hours to fly from Shanghai Hongqiao to the capital’s airport. For China, the flight of the Comac aircraft is both a milestone and a prestige project. Beijing aims to make itself independent of Western technology with the C919, but also to break the duopoly of Boeing and Airbus in the long term.
June: On June 25, then-Foreign Minister Qin Gang makes his last public appearance – there has been no trace of him since. In July, he is ousted, and in October he is also removed from office as a member of the Chinese State Council. There has been no public explanation of his whereabouts. It is rumored that disagreements over the direction of Chinese foreign policy and an extramarital affair during his time as ambassador in Washington were the reason for his removal. Qin’s successor will be his predecessor Wang Yi.
July: The German government presents the country’s first China strategy. “China has changed. As a result of this and China’s political decisions, we need to change our approach to China,” the 64-page paper states. One of the core aspects of the strategy is de-risking, i.e., reducing risks in the China business and identifying concentration risks when focusing on a large market.
August: The former property giant Evergrande has to file for creditor protection in the US in the middle of the month. Evergrande’s shares plummet as a result. Evergrande is considered to be the most indebted property company in the world. It has accumulated debts totaling more than 300 billion US dollars. In January 2022, the group announced a restructuring plan, but has since been unable to reach an agreement with its creditors. Most recently, Evergrande was once again able to postpone its liquidation proceedings. The hearing is now scheduled for January 29, 2024.
September: The IAA takes place in Munich – and becomes a super show for Chinese manufacturers. BYD presents its debut car, Seal. XPeng, Nio and AVATR are also there and are well received by the German visitors. Germany’s largest car manufacturer Volkswagen – until last year still the number 1 in China – is knocked off the podium. Its electric division, in particular, is being outpaced by the Chinese competition. To avoid losing ground, the Wolfsburg-based car manufacturer enters into a partnership with the Chinese start-up Xpeng. Until recently, the Chinese partners looked up to Volkswagen. Now, it’s the other way around.
October: Another minister is sacked in October. Li Shangfu is removed from his position as defense minister. There has been much speculation about corruption in the procurement of military equipment ever since. From 2017 to 2022, Li headed the Weapons Development Department of the Central Military Commission, which is also responsible for purchasing foreign weapons and military technology. Li has been on a US sanctions list since 2018 due to arms deals with Russia from that time. The position has been vacant since Li’s ousting.
November: Thaw between Beijing and Washington – US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi meet in San Francisco. Among other things, they agree to resume direct military dialogue. China also agrees to crack down on the export of fentanyl precursor chemicals. At a press conference, Biden again calls Xi a dictator. Xi, in turn, bluntly informs Biden that he plans to integrate Taiwan. Xi only leaves the exact timing open.
December: The first in-person EU-China summit since the end of the Covid pandemic takes place at the beginning of the month. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU Council President Charles Michel and EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Josep Borrell travel together to Beijing. Their message: The growing trade imbalance with China must be reduced. Beijing tried to appease with small concessions: As of December 1, citizens from five EU countries, including Germany and France, will be able to enter the country for 15 days without a visa.
“Chi ku,” “eating bitterness,” is a Chinese expression used to describe a life of hardship. The eponymous documentary by directors Pascale Appora-Gnekindy and Ningyi Sun tells the story of two men who each have to taste some of it in their own way.
The film is set in the Central African Republic, one of the world’s poorest countries. Thomas is a worker who dives for sand and sells it as building material to the Chinese builder Luan, who is expected to use it for the construction of a Chinese bank branch in the capital, Bangui. Their paths do not often cross. And yet both are caught in a spiral of self-exploitation in pursuit of a better life.
“Eat Bitter” breaks Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road down to a microcosm. It shows: People are too complex to be mere human capital in a global success story – a story from which only one person can emerge as the successful winner anyway. fpe
The documentary “Total Trust” shows in an impressive and depressing way how China uses AI to surveil the population. Chinese director Zhang Jialing follows the struggle of the wife and son of imprisoned human rights lawyer Chang Weiping, among others. The film takes his story and others to illustrate how China’s virtual surveillance can develop into a very real threat, from psychological terror to physical violence.
The largely secretly filmed footage shakes up the viewer and raises awareness of the increasing use of AI for alleged security purposes, including in other countries. The homepage for Total Trust features a list of current film screenings. ari
It takes a deep insight into China to find independent and critical documentary films, texts and books outside of state control. On 13 December, a treasure trove of such contemporary documents was launched: the China Unofficial Archive.
The platform contains numerous books, many issues of underground magazines and almost 20 documentary films – all in Chinese, but some films also have English subtitles. The films cover a wide range of topics, such as feminism, the Cultural Revolution, experiences in a labor camp or the lives of homeless people in Beijing.
The man behind the project is Ian Johnson, former journalist and Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. The idea for the China Unofficial Archive came to him when he was writing his book “Sparks: China’s Underground. Historians and Their Battle for the Future”. The platform’s goal is to provide access to the most important documents, films, blogs and publications of a movement of Chinese people reclaiming their country’s history.
Johnson sees a demand for an independent, reliable and impartial home for this material. Johnson: “Many people outside China believe that independent thought inside the country has been crushed. This archive shows that this is not the case.” jul
As China.Table has its roots in Germany, we also include three recommendations exclusively available in German. If you speak some German yourself or have German colleagues, these are worth checking out.
The ideal podcast for China experts. At the end of every month, Klaus Mühlhahn, Anja Blanke and Julia Haes share detailed information about what’s happening in China in their podcast “China ungschminkt.”
Muehlhahn is a professor of sinology, but the style is definitely podcast-esque, including the first-name basis, even if some parts do sound a little read from script. The podcast mostly covers the latest hot topics, such as electromobility, the military, Xinjiang and China’s relationship with Russia. The trio also discusses issues such as anti-Asian racism. fin
“Im Rachen des Drachen,” or in English “in the Maw of the Dragon.” The documentary by German public broadcaster ZDF is well worth watching despite its somewhat corny title. It is exciting, informative and looks at the complicated relationship between China and Germany from different angles. After all, what does the much-debated idea of “de-risking” actually mean? Is Germany truly so dependent on China?
In the one-hour film, cautious politicians, as well as entrepreneurs who continue to bet on China, have a say. And ordinary citizens who are horrified to discover that vital medicines are in short supply – if China does not deliver. For many years, penicillin and germanium were produced in Germany. Not anymore.
Germany is indeed dependent on China in many areas. That’s what the Germans wanted. Because the relationship between the two countries was mutually beneficial and the prices in China were unbeatable. Now the question is: Does Germany want this to keep it that way? The ZDF documentary helps viewers to form their own opinion. rad
China concerns us all. The podcast “Welt.Macht.China“, which is produced on average once a month, has been showing this for 30 episodes now. Each episode is dedicated to a specific topic, such as China’s role in the Middle East. How Chinese researchers are siphoning off knowledge from German universities. Whether we will soon all be driving Chinese EVs. Or how the shopping apps Temu and Shein flood Europe with cheap goods from the People’s Republic. Vivid, realistic and thought-provoking.
The idea for this podcast came from former China correspondents Astrid Freyeisen and Ruth Kirchner, the current correspondent for German public broadcaster ARD in Shanghai, Eva Lamby-Schmitt, and Ciu Mu from Deutsche Welle. However, the entire China expertise from the ARD network is also involved. According to internal sources, the program management itself is surprised by the high number of subscribers.
This success is no coincidence. It is one of the best German public broadcasting podcasts. And: concentrated China expertise at its best! flee
Zhao Lei, Vice President of the Institute for International Strategic Studies at the Central Party College of the Central Committee (中央党校), has apparently learned from foreign correspondents in Beijing: Whenever they despair at the ideological gibberish of Xi Jinping’s lengthy speeches, they count which term he uses most often. That is probably what matters.
Zhao Lei discovered that Xi repeated the word security (安全) 91 times in his 30,000-character speech, with which he opened the twentieth Party Congress at the end of 2022, and referred to national security 29 times (国家安全 “一词出现29次). The researcher came to the razor-sharp conclusion that this issue will be of “even greater importance” in the future (国家安全工作被摆在更加突出的位置).
The party leader has long been known to have a reputation for sensing crises and enemies everywhere who are bent on regime change or, like the US, want to stop China’s rise as a global power. However, Xi has now turned this into an obsession. Since he established the Central Commission for State Security (中央国家安全委) in 2014, which he still chairs today, he has introduced a dozen laws to protect China against subversion, espionage, sabotage, terrorism and external sanctions. Beijing also imposed a National Security Law on Hong Kong.
At the very first meeting of his Commission, Xi identified 16 security-related areas where the People’s Republic was vulnerable. He called for a nationwide security concept to ensure a “secure China” (平安中国). This was on April 15, 2014, and the date is now celebrated annually as “National Security Education Day.”
At the most recent session of his Commission in May 2023, Xi warned that the security problems had become “even more complex and difficult.” He called on the authorities to “take care of it.” Two months later, the Minister of State Security, Chen Yixin (陈一新), announced that action had been taken. “We have increased in scope, technical capabilities and resources” because China is under threat and must “proactively” defend itself against spies. On the occasion of the newly expanded “anti-espionage law” introduced on July 1, he called for an upgrade with more “big data, blockchain and AI.”
In China’s “new era of socialism,” as Xi calls his rule since his third re-election at the twentieth Party Congress, everything now has to be subordinated to the protection of national security. The responsible state security agency is gaining political influence.
Mao once staffed China’s key positions of party power with old revolutionaries, reformer Deng Xiaoping with technocrats. According to the China Leadership Monitor’s new winter analysis 2023, Xi is apparently bringing more and more security functionaries on board who were once his loyal, long-standing followers. It found that 10 of the 15 members of the Politburo have such a background, as do almost half of the officials on the State Council. New ministers of the security authorities or the Central Committee’s political and legal commissions are confidently showing their faces.
I was reminded of this when I recently flipped through the book “Man Without a Face” (隐面人), a Chinese translation of the memoirs of Markus Wolf, the former head of foreign espionage in the former German Democratic Republic. In October 2000, Wolf gifted me the book in Beijing, published by China’s International Publishing House for China’s Culture. Its director, Zhang Guilai, had dared to invite Wolf to the book launch and allowed me to attend. China purchased the rights from a US publisher, who printed the book, while Wolf’s West German publisher waited before publishing it under the title “Chief of Spies in the Secret War.”
Wolf was highly controversial in Germany. Many did not believe his critical reflections on the GDR system. In China, where such a book would no longer be allowed to be published today under Xi’s censorship, Wolf’s “Man without a Face” and later his book “Troika” met with “curious approval,” publishing director Zhang told me at the time. “Because he wrote so differently from what readers expected.” They praised Wolf for “hiding his face” but showing his “personality and courage to think outside the box.”
Wolf grew up in Moscow in a German family of artists, full of idealistic enthusiasm for Soviet power and also felt a connection to China. His role model was the Soviet-German spy Richard Sorge. The latter had secretly organized a spy ring in Shanghai and warned Stalin of Hitler’s invasion. Wolf’s lifelong friends also included Eva Xiao, a German from Moscow who lived in Beijing with her husband, the poet Emi Xiao. She visited Wolf in Berlin on June 5, 1989, the day after the Tiananmen massacre, which left him horrified. By then, he had long since been relieved of his duties in the GDR.
Wolf died in 2006 but was still experiencing a China searching for its way in 2000. He got the message when the publisher gave him a scroll painting of a meihua snowflake bush after his book presentation: “The meihua flower does not allow itself to be told to wait for spring. It gives off its scent when it chooses to …”
Like Richard Sorge, Wolf belonged to a species of secret agents that many Chinese activists of the 1940s also counted themselves among. China historian Stephen R. MacKinnon calls them “romantic revolutionaries” and has dedicated his new book “China’s Last Romantic Revolutionary” to a legend in their ranks.
In it, he writes about the Chinese master spy Chen Hansheng (1897-2004). With his field studies on China’s farmers, he became world-famous as a social scientist and agricultural researcher. After studying at the universities of Pomona and Harvard, Chen earned his Ph.D. as a historian in Berlin in 1924. In Beijing, the educational reformer Cai Yuanpei appointed him the youngest professor at Beijing National University. But Chen was also the most successful international agent of influence. In 1926, he was brought into the Comintern by the co-founder of the Communist Party of China, Li Dachao. Together with Richard Sorge, Chen established a broad spy network in Beijing and Shanghai. He became friends with the progressive German journalist Agnes Smedley.
The networks of willing spies and agents with unknowing supporters and sympathizers from Moscow to Beijing, Tokyo and the USA have yet to be systematically studied. The British historian Owen Matthews recently unearthed one example in his new book “Stalin’s Master Spy – Richard Sorge.” Before Sorge left Berlin for Shanghai, he was helped by the Marxist China researcher Karl August Wittfogel. Wittfogel earned his PhD at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. One of his reviewers was the influential sinologist Richard Wilhelm, who had just founded his Frankfurt Institute for Chinese Studies. Wittfogel is said to have persuaded him to give Sorge a letter of recommendation for sinological studies in Shanghai. This helped Sorge gain a foothold and opened many doors.
Chen Hansheng’s contacts extended from Sun Yat-sen’s widow, Soong Qingling, deep into the circle of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Between 1945 and 1950, he was allowed to teach at renowned US universities. He used his influence to persuade talented Chinese scientists to return to China, including researchers who would later become important nuclear and rocket scientists in the People’s Republic.
After 1950, Chen refused to take on high government offices in Beijing, deeply disappointed by Mao’s first Stalinist and later feudalistic rule. Chen passed away blind as a late result of brutal persecution during the Cultural Revolution, in which his wife was killed in 1968.
Almost all “romantic” agents later fell out with the regimes they served so loyally. Today’s intelligence apparatchiks, on the other hand, are blanketing China with virtual campaigns. In July, the Ministry of State Security launched its first public Weixin website with the slogan: “The Ministry of State Security is the foundation for China’s national rejuvenation.”
The 80 analyses and commentaries on the website so far are based on what Xi Jinping considers to be China’s most pressing problem in his agenda to keep its superpower development on track. This can also be gleaned from the words in his speeches. In November, it was the protection of China’s monopoly on strategic minerals such as rare earths. This is “the new arena of competition between the world powers,” reported State Security.
The priority changed in mid-December. Now, the danger is looming because China’s economic situation is currently being denigrated and slandered by hostile forces. The state security authorities “must erect economic protective barriers against this” (国家安全机关坚决筑牢经济安全屏障) was the headline on the website: “The current economic situation is increasingly becoming an important battleground in the competition between the major powers.”
Bloggers reacted to the intelligence services’ campaign to mobilize against anyone who badmouths China’s economic situation under Xi: “Other countries are relying on three horses to pull the economic cart out of the mud – investment, foreign trade and consumption. China, on the other hand, is harnessing three new horses to its cart: the statistics office (to embellish the figures), propaganda (to lie) and the security ministry (to threaten).” Markus Wolf and Chen Hansheng would probably have laughed at that.
Kids in Hong Kong at the Christmas market. Christian traditions from 156 years of British rule have left their mark on the southern port city. As has the pandemic: The wave of colds is rolling in, masks are supposed to prevent infection in groups.
