China Threat to Rare Earth Supply: "Strategic Pitfall" | The Risk of China Appeasement — Redux | China’s Cyber Threats Are “Made in America,” and more

China’s Soft Power Push Attracts Scrutiny in U.K.  (Lionel Barber, Nikkei Asia)
University ties and ‘dual-use’ technology at issue.

U.S. Moves to Support Australian Push to Tackle China’s “Human and Labor Rights Abuses”  (Daniel Hurst, Guardian)
U.S. offers qualified support for Australian bill that would prohibit importation of goods from Xinjiang province and other areas using forced labor.

The Risk of China Appeasement — Redux  (Michael Sobolik, The Hill)
When it comes to China, President Joe Biden has proven himself something of a wild card. During the Democratic primaries, then-candidate Biden publicly dismissed China as a threat to the U.S., pointing mainly to its economic challenges and geographic limitations. After securing his party’s nomination, however, his tone shifted. In a statement on China’s abuses in Hong Kong last spring, Biden characterized Xi as an “autocrat.” Later, he characterized Uyghur oppression in Xinjiang as genocide, and detailed how he would push back against Beijing’s authoritarianism in Tibet.
Given the broader context of Chinese foreign policy, Biden’s apparent shift is prudent — and at least partially aligns with the assessments of the previous administration.
Even so, two interrelated factors could complicate Biden’s recent rhetoric and strengthen Beijing’s hand: the president-elect’s policy priorities, and his advisors’ mixed perceptions of China.

How China’s Most Dangerous Cyber Threats Are “Made in America”  (Zak Doffman, Forbes)
There’s a certain artistry to China’s cyberwarfare tactics, as disclosed in a new report published today. A mix of wily pragmatism and realpolitik. Why invest in your own attack tools when you can steal someone else’s? And if America is your target, whose weaponry could be more effective than those developed for its own spy agency? But there’s also a reminder of the stark principles at play here. If your adversary across the chess board will likely mirror your own moves, you might want to bear that in mind.

Biden Picks Up Where Trump Left Off in Hard-Line Stances at WTO  (Bryce Baschuk, Bloomberg)
President Joe Biden’s administration dashed hopes for a softer approach to the World Trade Organization by pursuing a pair of his predecessor’s strategies that critics say risk undermining the international trading system.
The U.S. delegation to the WTO, in a statement Monday obtained by Bloomberg, backed the Trump administration’s decision to label Hong Kong exports as “Made in China” and said the WTO had no right to mediate the matter because the organization’s rules permit countries to take any action to protect their “essential security interests.”

The Communist Party’s Grip Threatens Academic Cooperation  (Queenie K. H. Lam, University World News)
‘China’ has become the elephant in the room that we, in the field of international higher education, can no longer ignore. What exactly this elephant looks like is still in dispute between those who prefer to ‘engage’ with the rising superpower in the East and those who propose to ‘contain’ an emerging adversary that challenges established Western norms.
The ‘China Threat’ school is not new. What is new is that the China Threat is not just a fear promulgated by the so-called China bashers or alarmists, but by all those threatened for criticizing China or interfering with the internal affairs of the ‘One Country’ (Taiwan and Hong Kong included).
Western terminology such as human rights, law and order, freedom of speech and assembly, international cooperation, diversity, multilateralism, etc., in official rhetoric, all these terms have been adopted and redefined in Beijing’s doublespeak. It may sound the same to Western ears, but it carries an almost completely opposite meaning when it comes to domestic application.

COVID Conspiracy Disinformation Campaign Has Had Vast Reach, Study Finds  (AP / VOA)
It took just three months for the rumor that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was engineered as a bioweapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese internet and take root in millions of people’s minds.
By March 2020, belief that the virus had been human-made and possibly weaponized was widespread, multiple surveys indicated. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally.
This chaos was, at least in part, manufactured.
Powerful forces, from Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, have battled to control the narrative about where the virus came from. Leading officials and allied media in all four countries functioned as super-spreaders of disinformation, using their stature to sow doubt and amplify politically expedient conspiracies already in circulation, a nine-month Associated Press investigation of state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found.
The analysis was based on a review of millions of social media postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram, and other platforms.
As the pandemic swept the world, it was China — not Russia — that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about COVID-19 virus’s origins.

Factors Shaping China’s Use of Force Calculations Against Taiwan  (Mark Cozad, RAND Corporation, Testimony before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission)
The People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) primary modernization and planning priority since 1993 has been Taiwan. That year, the Central Military Commission (CMC) approved the Military Strategic Guidelines for the New Era, a document that served as the PLA’s baseline military strategy until 2015. In the last few years, the PLA has expanded its operational focus by developing systems and capabilities that will enable it to more effectively assert the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), intimidate rival maritime claimants, and defend against challenges to China’s territorial claims around its extensive periphery. Despite these developments and a growing recognition that the PLA must be capable of supporting China’s increasing international interests and presence, Taiwan remains the PLA’s main strategic direction—a designation that dictates its priority relative to other potential planning scenarios and hot spots.

Rethinking the U.S.-China Fight: Does China Really Threaten American Power Abroad?  (Andrew Latham, The Conversation)
President Joe Biden is so far maintaining his predecessor’s tough China policy, which aims to curb China’s international power both economically and politically.
In the U.S. and Europe, China is widely recognized as a rising star that threatens Western power.But my research on the country suggests China may no longer see itself that way.