A public political provocation

Here’s what else you need to know about China today:

U.S. President Joe Biden called Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 a “dictator” a day after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Xi for talks in Beijing to try to stabilize bilateral relations.

“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset, in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it, was he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said yesterday at a California fundraiser. “That’s a great embarrassment for dictators — when they didn’t know what happened.”

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Máo Níng 毛宁, called Biden’s remarks “extremely absurd and irresponsible” at a regularly scheduled press conference today. “It is against the basic facts and diplomatic protocols, seriously violates China’s political dignity, and amounts to public political provocation,” she added. These remarks, however, were not included in the official readout of the press conference.

The Chinese aircraft carrier Shandong and a group of naval vessels sailed through the Taiwan Strait earlier today, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry.

Chinese Premier Lǐ Qiáng 李强 met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin yesterday, amid Li’s first overseas visit since taking up China’s No. 2 position in March.

Li called for “a pragmatic and open attitude” during the seventh round of German-Chinese government consultations, in an effort to shore up ties with Europe’s most powerful economy. Last week, Germany labeled China as “a partner, competitor, and systemic rival” in its first national security strategy, amid strained relations with its largest trading partner for the past seven years.

“We do not want to close ourselves off to one partner, but rather to establish and expand balanced partnerships throughout Asia and beyond,” Scholz said at a joint press conference yesterday.

“There has been a significant deterioration of business sentiment” amongst the members of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, according to its latest annual China Business Confidence Survey.

Three men were found guilty in the U.S. for harassing a Chinese dissident and his family in the suburbs of New Jersey on behalf of the Chinese government. Michael McMahon, a 55-year-old former New York City police sergeant who now works as a private investigator, was convicted alongside two other men, Zhu Yong, 66, and Zheng Congying, 27, for “acting and conspiring to act…as illegal agents of the People’s Republic of China.”

The verdict concludes a three-week trial during which prosecutors accused the men of acting under Operation Fox Hunt, a decade-long effort by Beijing to repatriate fugitives that some have accused of unjustly targeting Chinese dissidents.

Qatar will ink its second massive gas supply deal with a Chinese company in less than a year. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) announced in a statement (in Chinese) that it had signed a 27-year cooperation agreement with state-backed QatarEnergy yesterday, under which China will purchase 4 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) each year from the Gulf state. CNPC will also take 1.25% of the shares in one of the LNG trains in QatarEnergy’s expansion project in its North Field, the world’s biggest natural gas reservoir, as a joint venture partner.

China’s oil and gas giant, Sinopec, reached a similar 27-year deal with QatarEnergy in November 2022. The two parties signed an equity participation agreement on April 12 for Sinopec to take 1.25% of the shares in Qatar’s North Field East (NFE) expansion project, which is currently the largest LNG project in the world.

Pakistan and China signed a $3.48 billion deal to build a 1,200-megawatt nuclear power plant, known as the Chashma 5, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced on Twitter on June 20, in a sign of deepening cooperation between the two countries. State-owned China National Nuclear Cooperation “did not increase the project cost” despite rising inflation since the original plan was signed in 2017, Sharif stated. Instead, it gave a discount of 750 million yuan ($104 million) on his request.

Chinese state media: The People’s Daily’s print edition highlights “General Secretary Xi Jinping’s repeated emphasis on the importance of urban planning to ensure that the ‘city of the future’ can stand the test of history.” Xinhua News Agency’s top story today is: The deep meaning of Chairman Xi Jinping’s meeting with Blinken (English summary here). The main takeaway: “Action speaks louder than words. China is looking forward to the U.S. actions…the ball is now in the U.S. court.”