CHINA WATCHU.S. Creates ‘China House’ to Better Track Beijing’s Global Reach

By Liyuan Lu

Published 15 June 2022

The U.S. State Department is creating a new entity known as “China House” to better track what China is doing around the world. A State Department spokesperson declined to provide details about the status of China House, describing it as “a department-wide integrated team that will coordinate and implement our policy across issues and regions.”

Amid tensions in bilateral relations, the U.S. State Department is creating a new entity known as “China House” to better track what China is doing around the world.

At a just-concluded security conference in Singapore, Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said it’s up to the United States to improve bilateral relations.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin noted the “alarming” increase in unsafe and unprofessional encounters between Chinese planes and vessels and those of other countries.

The China House project reflects U.S. concern about what Secretary of State Antony Blinken described last month as Beijing’s emergence as “the most serious long-term challenge to the rules-based order.”

A State Department spokesperson declined to provide details about the status of China House, describing it as “a department-wide integrated team that will coordinate and implement our policy across issues and regions.”

“We will continue and accelerate efforts to integrate PRC expertise and resources in this new central policy coordination hub,” the spokesperson, who declined to be named, told VOA last week.

We Are Watching’
In an email to VOA Mandarin, Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said, “The key for the China-U.S. relationship to walk out of the predicament is for the U.S. side to abandon its mania for zero-sum games, give up its obsession with encircling and containing China and stop undermining China-U.S. relations.

“We have noted that Secretary Blinken said in his speech that the U.S. is not looking for conflict or a new Cold War with China; it doesn’t seek to block China from its role as a major power, nor to stop China from growing its economy; and it wants to coexist peacefully with China. We are watching what the U.S. will do.”

Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of the Global Times and an influential special commentator for the publication, downplayed the China House with a signed piece that boiled down to “so what?”

The new entity will track Beijing’s activities by adding 20 to 30 additional regional China “watch” officers, “a category of officials first created during the Trump administration to track Beijing’s activities around the world under the State Department’s regional bureaus,” according to an article published in Foreign Policy last September, before the China House initiative became official.

China House was officially announced on May 26 amid a U.S. ramp up in its diplomatic efforts to address growing rivalry with China.