TikTok & Internet’s Future | Fears of Chinese Surveillance | Chinese Expats & Espionage, and more

Trump’s TikTok and WeChat Bans Could Shatter the Global InternetRobert Muggah and Rafal Rohozinski, Foreign Policy)
Trump’s new restrictions on Chinese apps and technology are so far-reaching that the future of the open internet is at stake.

TikTok Given Little Room to Maneuver as Broad Fears of Chinese Surveillance Prevail (Vincent Chow, Law.com)
The case against TikTok is the latest example of growing U.S. scrutiny of the overseas operations of Chinese companies amid worsening relations between the two countries. The U.S. is especially concerned about potential Chinese access to the personal data of U.S. citizens.

Trump’s Hypocrisy on China(Ian Buruma, Project Syndicate)
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently called Richard Nixon’s opening to China almost 50 years ago a failure, and went on to declare a virtual cold war against the Chinese. But Trump’s blustering unilateralism and contempt for democratically elected leaders have left the US unable to forge the alliances Pompeo rightly says it needs.

America’s Unholy Crusade Against China(Jeffery D. Sachs, Project Syndicate)
Many white Christian evangelicals in the United States have long believed that America has a God-given mission to save the world. Under the influence of this crusading mentality, US foreign policy has often swerved from diplomacy to war. It is in danger of doing so again.
Last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched yet another evangelical crusade, this time against China. His speech was extremist, simplistic, and dangerous – and may well put the US on a path to conflict with China.
Pompeo himself is a biblical literalist who believes that the end time, the apocalyptic battle between good and evil, is imminent. Pompeo described his beliefs in a 2015 speech while a Congressman from Kansas: America is a Judeo-Christian nation, the greatest in history, whose task is to fight God’s battles until the Rapture, when Christ’s born-again followers, like Pompeo, will be swept to heaven at the Last Judgment.

Biden’s China Policy Can’t Help but Be Incoherent (Van Jackson, Foreign Policy)
Liberal internationalism is full of contradictions on how to handle Beijing.
In word and deed, the United States’ response to China has been at best ham-fisted. The tariff war is an avoidable self-inflicted wound. The ongoing process of economic decoupling is happening without any real debate about its strategic merits. President Trump tried to parlay his perceived personal chemistry with President Xi Jinping into China colluding with him to get reelected, until Beijing turned him down and he decided instead to go all out with a series of unprecedented sanctions in the span of only a few weeks. And lest we forget, Trump gave Xi a green light both to crack down on Hong Kong’s political autonomy and continue with internment camps for Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang—two issues that catalyzed the recent sanctions and that the administration routinely advertises as proof of China’s villainy.
Enter the anti-Trump, former vice president Joe Biden. One of Biden’s virtues is the promise of consistency and prudence where Trump delivers mainly chaos and incompetence. But despite his deserved reputation as a rational statesman, Biden is set to pursue a China policy full of contradictions, just not in the uniquely self-serving and incoherent way that Trump has. That’s not just because politics surrounding China issues today all but ensures strategic inconsistency. The problem is intrinsic to the ideological core evident in Biden’s understanding of how to deal with China and everything else in foreign policy—liberal internationalism. China’s assertive, anti-democratic conduct at home and abroad is throwing the political and economic aspects of Biden’s restorationist worldview into sharp relief, and when it comes to China, the biggest strategic issue in a generation, those conflicts are going to be particularly painful.
Biden has made a successful career out of rational mainstream calculations. That may be just what the country needs to nurse a post-Trump hangover. But it accentuates the conflicts within U.S. policy on China. A vanguard politician might drag the country to clearly prioritize political or economic liberalism. A pragmatic politician will try to satisfice among competing interests.

There’s No Cold War with China (Zachary Karabell, Foreign Policy)
Applying 20th-century analogies to the U.S.-Chinese relationship is a misuse of history—and shows a misunderstanding of the present.

The United States Can’t Handle China Alone (Doug Bandow, CATO Institute)
After an initially fractious allied response to China’s COVID-19 failures and Hong Kong crackdown, Western nations appear to be acting with greater unity in presenting a response to Beijing. The best hope to restrain the misbehavior of a rising power grown confident, even arrogant, is consistent and coordinated pressure, designed with an off‐ramp to encourage negotiation and compromise.
Normally one would look to the United States for leadership. However, in the short term at least, that may prove difficult. The Trump administration has squandered American credibility, and its own. Washington has gone out of its way to offend natural allies, especially in Europe. So bad is the trans‐Atlantic relationship that European leaders have continued to lean toward Tehran rather than Washington in response to the latter’s demands that they join its so‐far failed campaign of maximum pressure on Iran. In mid‐July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expanded sanctions on Germany—an extraordinary assault on a longtime ally—in an attempt to halt the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump has also ostentatiously turned relations with Beijing into a campaign issue, designed to aid his reelection. Few American allies are eager to see that prospect, and they are unlikely to subordinate their policies to someone widely seen as willing to wreck the international order to advance his electoral prospects.
Still, although Trump administration credibility remains minimal, many Asian and European states increasingly share the U.S. criticism of China.

Former CIA Officer Arrested and Charged with Espionage for China (Rashaan Ayesh, Axios)
Former CIA officer Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, a naturalized U.S. citizen who worked for the CIA from 1982 to 1989 and maintained a “Top Secret” clearance, has been arrested and charged with allegedly sharing classified information with China, the Justice Department announced Monday. Justice Department official John Demers said:

The trail of Chinese espionage is long and, sadly, strewn with former American intelligence officers who betrayed their colleagues, their country and its liberal democratic values to support an authoritarian communist regime.

This betrayal is never worth it. Whether immediately, or many years after they thought they got away with it, we will find these traitors and we will bring them to justice.

To the Chinese intelligence services, these individuals are expendable. To us, they are sad but urgent reminders of the need to stay vigilant.

China Slams U.S. Threat of “Consequences” If Brazil Picks Huawei 5G (AFP / ET Telecom)
Beijing on Thursday slammed US warnings of “consequences” if Brazil chooses Chinese telecoms company Huawei to develop its 5G network, accusing Washington of “unscrupulous oppression” of the country’s tech companies.