President-elect Joe Biden said on Thursday that China must play by “international norms” when speaking about possible retaliatory action against the country for mishandling the coronavirus pandemic when it first broke out.
 
During Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris's first joint interview since wining the election, CNN host Jake Tapper asked the pair if China should be “punished” for mishandling and hiding information on the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in Wuhan. Biden has said that he will not immediately lift the tariffs on China that President Trump put in place.
 
“The president's approach to China has been backwards,” said Biden. “I met with [President] Xi [Jinping] more times than anybody had up until the time we left office that I’m aware of.”
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Biden said his goal would be to make it “real clear to China there are international rules that if you want to play by, we'll play with you. If you don't, we're not going to play.”
 
“It's not about punishing them for COVID virus; it's about insisting that there be international norms that are established that they play by,” Biden said.
 
Biden said that he would insist on stopping the theft of national secrets and “artificial intelligence capacity.” He added that the requirement on tech companies to have 51 percent of their partners be Chinese in order to conduct business in the country was “not going to happen in our administration.”

Le gouvernement américain discute avec la directrice financière du géant Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, pour l’autoriser à rentrer en Chine, mais en échange de certains aveux. C’est ce qu’a rapporté jeudi soir le Wall Street Journal. La signature d’une entente mettrait fin à une longue saga diplomatique entre Pékin et Ottawa.

Si cette entente est signée, la cadre du géant chinois des télécommunications serait tenue d’admettre que certaines allégations contre elle sont fondées. L’objectif serait de parvenir à un compromis avant le départ de l’administration Trump, le 20 janvier prochain.

Mais il y a un hic : la principale intéressée ne souhaiterait pas signer cet accord pour le moment, réitérant qu’elle n’a rien fait de mal dans ce dossier. Huawei ainsi que les autorités américaines et canadiennes n’avaient toujours pas répondu aux questions qui leur avaient été adressées à ce sujet, jeudi en fin de soirée. Le Wall Street Journal affirme que Mme Meng a aussi refusé de commenter la nouvelle.

Norway Central Bank Deputy Governor Resigns Over China Ties
The deputy governor of Norway’s central bank, which oversees the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, is stepping down immediately after failing to get security clearance due to his ties to China.
 
Jon Nicolaisen, who’s had the role of deputy at the Oslo-based bank since 2014, said he “will not receive a renewed security clearance,” because his wife is a Chinese citizen and resides in China, “where I support her financially.”
 
Nicolaisen had his tenure extended in April, when he was asked to focus on the central bank’s role managing Norway’s $1.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund. Among his most recent public statements relating to the fund was a decision to hand a larger chunk of its portfolio to external managers.
 
Nicolaisen said the Norwegian Civil Security Clearance Authority told him it “determined that there are no circumstances regarding me personally that give rise to doubt about my suitability for obtaining a security clearance.” However, he said that alone “does not carry sufficient weight” in guiding the authority’s decision.

China's WeChat blocks Australian PM in doctored image dispute
 
China’s WeChat social media platform blocked a message by Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison amid a dispute between Canberra and Beijing over the doctored tweeted image of an Australian soldier.
 
Morrison took to WeChat on Tuesday to criticise the “false image”, while offering praise to Australia’s Chinese community.
 
In his message, Morrison defended Australia’s handling of a war crimes investigation into the actions of special forces in Afghanistan, and said Australia would deal with “thorny issues” in a transparent manner.
 
But that message appeared to be blocked by Wednesday evening, with a note appearing from the “Weixin Official Accounts Platform Operation Center” saying the content was unable to be viewed because it violated regulations, including distorting historical events and confusing the public.

U.S. Tightens Visa Rules for Chinese Communist Party Members
 
New guidelines mean that China’s 92 million party members will be limited to one-month, single-entry U.S. permits — if the State Department can figure out who they are.
The Trump administration on Wednesday issued new rules to curtail travel to the United States by members of the Chinese Communist Party and their immediate families, a move certain to further exacerbate tensions between the two countries.
 
The new policy, which took immediate effect, limits the maximum duration of travel visas for party members and their families to one month, according to a State Department spokesman.  
 
That means the Chinese recipient must use the visa to enter the United States within one month of it being issued. Based on standard procedure, U.S. border officials would determine at the point of entry how long the visitor can stay. The officials could still permit a multi-month visit.
 
A visa also does not guarantee entry into the United States; it only allows for consideration of entry by U.S. border officials.
 
Previously, party members, like other Chinese citizens, could obtain visitor visas for the United States that were valid for up to 10 years.
 
Travel visas for party members will also be limited to a single entry rather than multiple entries as was possible before, according to two people familiar with the changes.

La Chine veut faire tomber de la pluie et de la neige artificielles sur la moitié du pays d'ici 2025
 
La production de pluie et de neige artificielles est en principe assez simple. La vaporisation de produits chimiques comme l'iodure d'argent ou l'azote liquide dans les nuages peut faire condenser les gouttelettes d'eau et les faire tomber sous forme de pluie ou de neige.

Beijing should be most worried about the increasingly widespread acceptance among key trading and diplomatic partners that interdependence with China is dangerous because it leaves them vulnerable to political pressure. Akira Igata, a colleague who also serves as economic security advisor for the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), argues that countries must “address the structural issue at hand — reducing strategic dependence on China. China has a clear track record of engaging in economic coercion by exploiting economic dependence. Just as regions prone to natural disasters are considered to be potential risks, conducting business with actors prone to using politically-motivated economic coercion should also be considered a substantial risk.”
 
Acknowledging that danger is a first step. More alarming still for China should be the growing call for coordination to reduce that vulnerability. Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the foreign policy committee in Britain’s House of Commons, called on his country to “stand side by side” with Australia, and urged other countries to join together to prevent Beijing’s “divide and conquer” tactics against countries that defy it.
 
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump administration is considering a plan to create an informal alliance of countries that would, when China attempts economic coercion, respond by purchasing the target country’s goods or provide compensation. They might also retaliate with tariffs on Chinese exports to offset the losses. (If you just heard a popping noise that was me patting myself on the back: I suggested a similar “insurance arrangement” in a column a few months ago for just this type of pressure.)
 
The Trump administration may be on its last legs, but an emphasis on coordinated action by democracies looks to be a pillar of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. It’s a topic that I will revisit in future articles.
 
Regional governments must be more strategic in their national economic statecraft. Japan is making progress, but it is only beginning the work. Policy makers are still surveying the landscape and mostly focusing on defensive measures for the domestic economy. The Japanese government was going to produce a National Economic Statecraft strategy earlier this year but that is now reportedly going to be a pillar of the revised National Security Strategy that is scheduled to be released this month. A key lesson is that international cooperation and coordination is just as if not more important given China’s size and position in the regional and global economy. Australia is the proverbial canary in the coal mine — and wolves eat canaries in one bite.

Australia’s parliament on Thursday passed legislation giving the federal government power to veto any agreement struck with foreign states, a move likely to anger China and intensify a bitter diplomatic spat between the two countries.
 
The law allows the Commonwealth to block any agreement between Australian states, councils or institutions and a foreign government, such as a controversial 2018 deal between the state of Victoria and China.
 
“Australia’s policies and plans, the rules that we make for our country are made here in Australia according to our needs and our interests,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.
 
Morrison has stressed the law is not aimed at any country but it is widely seen by analysts as directed at China.

Under the terms of the new law, the foreign minister can veto any agreements with foreign governments if they “adversely affect Australia’s foreign relations” or are “inconsistent with Australian foreign policy”.
 
One deal expected to come under the spotlight is Victoria’s participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which Morrison said weakens the federal government’s ability to control foreign policy.

European Union condemns China over 'irresponsible' tweet about Australian military  
 
The European Union has blasted China over an “irresponsible, insensitive” tweet about Australian military personnel as the regional bloc revealed it has raised the issue directly with a Chinese vice-foreign minister.
 
A senior EU official told the Guardian the EU regretted the recent deterioration in ties between China and Australia – which has seen Beijing take a series of trade actions against Australian exports – and called on the two sides to “re-engage in dialogue, avoid escalation and unilateral pressure”.
 
Japan’s embassy in Canberra also reiterated on Friday that “trade should never be used as a tool to apply political pressure”, and Japan would “duly consider how to exercise our third party rights if Australia proceeds with their case” at the World Trade Organization against China’s barley tariffs.
 
The statements from the EU and Japan come after the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France and New Zealand criticised the actions of a Chinese foreign ministry official official in tweeting a digitally created image depicting an Australian soldier cutting the throat of a child in Afghanistan.
 
“We consider the deliberate dissemination of a fabricated image via social media accounts affiliated with China’s ministry of foreign affairs to be irresponsible, insensitive and not at all constructive, particularly given the subject in question,” Nabila Massrali, the EU’s spokesperson for foreign affairs and security policy, told the Guardian on Friday

NATO Huddles With Asia-Pacific Democracies to Talk China
 
NATO members, along with Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, gathered virtually to discuss the rise of China.
 
The report has a dedicated section on China, which opens with a stark warning: “The scale of Chinese power and global reach poses acute challenges to open and democratic societies, particularly because of that country’s trajectory to greater authoritarianism and an expansion of its territorial ambitions.” It classifies China as a “full-spectrum systemic rival,” and notably cautions against viewing China as “a purely economic player or an only Asia-focused security actor.” Indeed, the report notes that NATO members are directly feeling the impact of China’s rise, with cyberattacks traced to Chinese actors targeting NATO states, Chinese infrastructure being built in NATO members, and China’s direct military reach expanding “into the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Arctic” – NATO’s traditional areas of focus.

In another step in that direction, on December 2, the foreign ministers of the NATO members, along with delegations from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea, gathered virtually to discuss the rise of China and the implications for the global balance of power. Ahead of the meeting, the U.S. Mission to NATO made its stance clear, tweeting that China’s “infrastructure grab & use of predatory lending has global implications, including in #Europe.”

Stoltenberg also pointed out that “China does not share our values. It does not respect fundamental human rights and tries to intimidate other countries.” He concluded, “We must address this together, both as NATO Allies, and as a community of like-minded countries.”

When asked about the new NATO report, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying rebutted the idea that China posed a threat to the transatlantic alliance. “China has never practiced anything like ‘coercive diplomacy’ or ‘intimidating diplomacy,’” Hua told reporters at the daily press briefing on December 1. “As for ‘threats’ or ‘challenges’, can anyone give us an example of any security threat posed by China to other countries? China has always been a builder of world peace and defender of the international order.”