Editor’s note for May 12, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
Our top story today is about China’s first arrest for a crime involving the use of ChatGPT, a glimpse, perhaps, into our coming brave new world.
Not so new: the ongoing tensions between China and the U.S., and Europe’s ongoing struggle to work out its own position.
As I write this, various foreign ministers are meeting in Stockholm, Sweden, to discuss the EU’s China policy. Judging from the comments tweeted by Brussels-based journalist Finbarr Bermingham, European governments don’t like the concept of decoupling from China, but are increasingly wary of the potential security risks China presents to the world, from support for Russia to interference in the domestic affairs of European countries, from human rights abuses to hacking.
The EU meeting comes just after China’s most senior foreign policy official Wáng Yì 王毅 met White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Vienna, Austria for more than 10 hours on Wednesday and Thursday this week. In Beijing, meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qín Gāng 秦刚 and Commerce Minister Wáng Wéntāo 王文涛 this week.
As the Wall Street Journal puts it, the “unexpected burst of diplomacy between the U.S. and China this week points to a growing desire in both capitals to begin stabilizing relations after months of free fall.”
‘Tis new to thee!’
But it’s hard to imagine much improvement in relations between China and the U.S. and other Western countries in the near future. Trust in Beijing has broken down in European capitals, and despite the meetings between Chinese and American officials this week, there does not seem to be any real alignment between Beijing and Washington.
According to an “anonymous official” cited by state-owned nationalist rag the Global Times, the Vienna meeting between Sullivan and Wang comprised mostly a series of demands from China that the U.S. should “establish a correct understanding of China…abandon the Cold War mentality, stop containment and suppression, stop engaging in zero-sum games, return to rationality and pragmatism, and meet China halfway.”
And in Washington D.C., the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party meets next week Wednesday to discuss “How to counter the CCP’s economic aggression.”
Meet the new world. Same as the old world.
Our Phrase of the Week is: Turning a blind eye (睁一眼，闭一眼 zhēng yì yǎn, bì yì yǎn).
