• Nebraska governor’s remarks about Chinese reporter spark outrage
• China“s nuclear arsenal at more than 500 warheads -Pentagon report
• California governor Newsom heads to China for climate-focused meetings
• China’s Country Garden risks default after ‘missing bond payment’
• Rebuffed by China, Philippines’ Marcos toughens line on contested waters
• Undiplomatic impunity: Chinese embassy leaves New Zealand landlord with $900 bill
• How China’s Belt and Road Initiative is changing | The Economist explains
• California governor Newsom to visit China next week to discuss climate action
• Nikki Haley misleads town hall audience on Chinese land acquisitions

Nebraska governor’s remarks about Chinese reporter spark outrage

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/19/nebraska-governor-chinese-reporter-remarks-outrage

The Nebraska governor, Jim Pillen, is under fire for his dismissal of an investigative article into his family business, saying he didn’t read the piece because the reporter was “from Communist China”.

The reporter, 27-year-old Yanqi Xu, spoke out against Pillen’s comments on social media and thanked other journalists for their support in light of the governor’s remarks.

“Being a reporter, I never wanted to make myself the story. But this time, I thought there’s more at stake than myself,” Xu said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I think about the community I represent, and who might find the governor’s comment hurtful.”

Xu, a reporter with Nebraska’s Flatwater Free Press, wrote an investigative article in September about nitrate levels on hog farms owned by Pillen. She found that water tested at 16 farms had nitrate levels “higher” than the amount “the federal government says is safe to drink”. Higher nitrate levels on the farm also posed a possible contamination risk to other freshwater sources, Xu reported.

Consuming increased levels of nitrate has been linked to several health conditions, including cancer and thyroid disease.

Pillen, a Republican who took office in 2023, was later asked about the article’s findings during a September interview with Nebraska radio station KFAB, the New York Times reported.

When asked to comment on the piece, Pillen responded: “Number one, I didn’t read it and I won’t … Number two, all you’ve got to do is look at the author. [The] author’s from Communist China. What more do you need to know?”

The Guardian reached out to Pillen’s office for comment, but did not hear back.

Matt Wynn, executive director of the Flatwater Free Press, condemned the governor’s comments in an article published by the Flatwater on Tuesday.

“Yanqi has been in the United States since 2017. She has lived in four states and Washington DC. This, she said, is the first time anyone has written her off based on her origin. And it was broadcast, over the air, by the governor of Nebraska,” Wynn wrote.

“As an employer, that infuriates me. As a believer in democracy and a free press, it saddens me. As a Nebraskan, it embarrasses me.”

Wynn added that the Flatwater newsroom reached out to Pillen several times for an apology, but the governor never responded.

Wynn also noted that Pillen declined to respond to Xu’s piece before it ran.

Journalists and press advocacy groups have also criticized Pillen’s comments as xenophobic.

The Asian American Journalists Association published a statement in support of Xu to X.

“Journalists play an indispensable role in holding power to account and informing the public,” read the statement.

“Having an independent and diverse press corps is essential to democracy, and Xu deserves to do her job without being judged because of her nationality or where she grew up.”

China“s nuclear arsenal at more than 500 warheads -Pentagon report

https://reuters.com/article/usa-china-military/chinas-nuclear-arsenal-at-more-than-500-warheads-pentagon-report-idUSKBN31J1GV

China has more than 500 operational nuclear warheads in its arsenal and will probably have over 1,000 warheads by 2030, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Beijing's military that was released on Thursday.

Despite the growing number of China's nuclear weapons, they are still much lower than what Russia and the United States have.

The United States has a stockpile of about 3,700 nuclear warheads, of which roughly 1,419 strategic nuclear warheads were deployed. Russia has about 1,550 nuclear weapons deployed and according to the Federation of American Scientists, a stockpile of 4,489 nuclear warheads.

In the wide ranging report, the Pentagon said China's more than 500 warheads as of May 2023 were on track to exceed projections.

In a previous report, the Pentagon estimated that Beijing had more than 400 operational nuclear warheads in 2021.

"We see the PRC (People's Republic of China) continuing to quite rapidly modernize and diversify and expand its nuclear forces," a senior U.S. official told reporters during a briefing on the report.

"What they're doing now if you compare it to what they were doing about a decade ago, it really far exceeds that in terms of scale and complexity," the official said.

The report added that China's Navy had more than 370 ships and submarines, up from the 340 ships they had last year.

The expanding naval force is central to President Xi Jinping's bid to make China the preeminent military power in the region and Beijing already has the largest Navy in the world.

The report reiterated concern about pressure by Beijing on self-ruled Taiwan, an island China sees as a breakaway province.

Relations between China and the United States have been tense, with friction between the world's two largest economies over everything from Taiwan and China's human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.

But Washington has been eager to revive military-to-military communications with China.

Last week the Pentagon said it had accepted an invitation to attend China's top annual security forum in late October, the latest sign of potentially warming ties between the two countries' militaries.

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California governor Newsom heads to China for climate-focused meetings

https://reuters.com/article/usa-china-california/california-governor-newsom-heads-to-china-for-climate-focused-meetings-idUSKBN31J1K0

The governor of California - the largest U.S. state economy and one of the top economies in the world - will travel to China next week for meetings with national and provincial leaders to discuss climate action and other key partnerships.

Gavin Newsom's trip comes after a series of China visits by top Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, special envoy on climate John Kerry and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

The week long visit will include stops in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, as well as Guandong and Jiangsu provinces, where he is expected to sign memoranda of understanding to cooperate on climate initiatives.

"As two of the world’s largest economies, our partnership is essential to delivering climate action for our communities and beyond," Newsom said in a statement on Wednesday.

Newsom has been building up a national profile as a voice for stringent climate action, most recently gaining applause at the United Nation's Climate Ambition Summit last month for a speech railing against oil companies' climate policy obstruction.

California has gained international attention for two recent policies that could have implications for global trading partners: a ban on the sale of new gas engine vehicles by 2035 and strict climate disclosure rules for companies operating in California.

Newsom will discuss clean energy transition and methane reduction in Beijing. These were central topics discussed between Kerry and his counterparts during his July visit.

China, the world's largest methane emitter, has yet to release details of its planned methane reduction strategy despite encouragement from Kerry's team to do so.

The governor also plans to tour Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory, which produces the largest number of electric vehicles in the world.

China’s Country Garden risks default after ‘missing bond payment’

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/19/china-country-garden-default-bond-payment

The crisis in China’s property sector deepened as Country Garden, the country’s biggest developer by sales, reportedly missed its final deadline for an interest payment on a dollar bond, putting it at risk of default.

The troubled company, which has about $200bn (£163bn) in liabilities and nearly $11bn in dollar-denominated offshore bonds, was due to make a $15.4m coupon repayment this week, but failed to do so, according to reports. Its share price fell 4% in Hong Kong on Thursday, and is down 74% since the beginning of the year.

Country Garden rejected reports that its founder and chair had both left China. It said in a statement that its founder, Yang Guoqiang, and his daughter Yang Huiyan, who chairs the company and is its majority owner, were “working as normal” in China.

Yang Guoqiang was born into a peasant family and his rags-to-riches tale led to nicknames for him and his company such as “the most grassroots tycoon and the “Universe’s No 1 property developer”. He spent years building up his fortune and worked as a farmer and on construction sites before turning to property development. His daughter was the richest woman in Asia with an estimated $29.6bn fortune just two years ago, before China’s property bubble burst.

Country Garden has been battling to avoid a default on its international debts. Earlier this month, it said that it “expects that it will not be able to meet all of its offshore payment obligations when due or within the relevant grace periods”. It said at the time that its sales were “under remarkable pressure”, while its available funds had continued to decline.

Creditors are seeking urgent talks with the debt-laden developer, Reuters reported. Two bondholder groups have emerged seeking discussions about a potential debt restructuring package. One group holds about $2bn of the developer’s offshore bonds, and is made up of international and fund manager investors.

The credit rating agency Moody’s said it could downgrade Country Garden’s “corporate family rating” if the recovery prospects for its creditors weaken further. Moody’s said Country Garden’s senior unsecured rating of C was already at the bottom of its scale.

The crisis in China’s property industry was sparked by a clampdown by authorities on developers’ high debt levels, which resulted in the default of Evergrande on parts of its $300bn debt pile in late 2021. As property accounts for more than a quarter of China’s economy, the construction delays and slump in housing sales have dragged down growth.

Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer with a burden of $340bn, faces a winding-up hearing in Hong Kong at the end of the month. Its debt restructuring plan was derailed in September because of an investigation.

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Rebuffed by China, Philippines’ Marcos toughens line on contested waters

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/19/philippines-china-marcos-sea-barrier/2023-10-02T19:23:07.436Z

MANILA — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was visiting a province outside the capital Manila last month when his national security adviser urgently contacted him: China had installed a floating barrier in part of the sea claimed by the Philippines. Should it be removed?

Marcos’s decision was almost immediate, according to officials in his administration. He ordered the Philippine coast guard to cut the 300-meter-long barrier. They brought its anchor back to Manila for a news conference, calling it a “souvenir.”

The operation, captured on video released to the public by the coast guard, was seen as a surprisingly forceful move even by those who have been monitoring Marcos’s growing assertion of Philippine claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea. But his resolve to push back against China has been hardening over the past 10 months, fueled by continuing Chinese harassment and several instances when Philippine attempts at de-escalation have been rebuffed by Beijing, according to more than a dozen Western, Philippine, and other Asian senior officials and diplomats.

Top aides in the Marcos administration have pursued a campaign to publicly expose Chinese incursions in this strategic part of the Pacific Ocean, which Filipinos call the West Philippine Sea. The response has been outrage domestically and among allies of the Philippines, further reinforcing the president’s approach, political analysts say.

U.S. military poised to secure new access to key Philippine bases

The president’s posture would have been unexpected a year ago, when Marcos rose to power in part by allying himself with former president Rodrigo Duterte, who spent his six-year term seeking closer relations with China while lashing out at the United States and many of the Philippines’ other traditional allies.

In cutting the barrier, which had been installed in an area that an international court says is under Philippine jurisdiction, Marcos took one of his boldest steps yet against China’s claims over waters in the South China Sea, stoking anxiety about escalating tensions.

“There’s a need to cool down,” Philippine Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro acknowledged. “But on whose shoulders lies the burden of de-escalation? Not ours.”

Officially, Chinese officials have brushed off the barrier incident as the Philippines putting on a “farce for their own entertainment.” In a private meeting with the Philippine foreign secretary, the Chinese ambassador to the Philippines, Huang Xilian, was unapologetic, suggesting that it was Manila that had behaved provocatively, according to officials at the Philippine Foreign Ministry. (The Chinese Embassy did not respond to questions on this meeting.)

“The Philippines is not looking for trouble,” Teodoro said in an interview. “But China has stepped into our living room. Before they enter our bedroom, we have to do something.”

Water cannons, unanswered calls

Marcos, the son of a former dictator who has been criticized in the West for his family’s human rights abuses, did not campaign on being tough on China.

In January, he made his first state visit outside Southeast Asia to Beijing, returning with $22 billion of investment pledges, promises from Chinese officials to strike a “compromise” over the contested waters and a new emergency hotline between maritime officers of the two countries.

But less than two months later, a Chinese coast guard ship pointed what the Philippines called a “military-grade laser light” at a Philippine vessel. Although harassment by China was routine in the contested waters, the use of a laser was new. That this happened so soon after his visit infuriated Marcos, officials said.

He summoned the ambassador, Huang, marking the first time in at least a decade that a Philippine president had lodged such a public and high-level complaint. Marcos’s executive secretary, Lucas Bersamin, who attended the meeting, later said in a media interview that the president had been unusually sharp in his remarks. “The ambassador was there, mouthing an official party line. But [Marcos] said, ‘I thought … the Philippines was the friend of China,’” recounted Bersamin. “What we agreed in China with your President, did not go down to lower levels.”

For months, tense encounters between Chinese and Philippine vessels continued. Then one Saturday morning in August, a hulking Chinese coast guard ship bore down on a Philippine coast guard vessel and fired at it with water cannons.

Rattled by China, U.S. and allies are beefing up defenses in the Pacific

About 30 minutes after the Philippine coast guard vessel reported the incident, Philippine officials called their Chinese counterparts on the emergency hotline, said Philippine Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo. For six hours, the Chinese did not pick up, Manalo said.

“How would you feel?” he asked, smiling tightly as he recounted the incident. A soft-spoken career diplomat, he has been known as a voice of restraint and personally signed the agreement creating the hotline.

“Well, we were surprised,” Manalo continued, his smile fading. “Disappointed.”

His ministry has tried for years to address tensions diplomatically, Manalo said, filing more than 450 diplomatic protests to China between 2020 and 2023. Leaders from both countries often have emphasized that maritime disputes do not represent the totality of their bilateral relations. But recent incidents — more “disturbing” than before, Manolo said — have made it harder for Manila to maintain that approach.

New allies, new strategy

The water cannon incident probably went further than any other event this year in galvanizing anti-China sentiment in the Marcos administration and in the Philippine public, said political analysts and diplomats.

Almost immediately afterward, the Philippine military significantly increased its overtures to the United States over maritime security issues, including tactics for boosting surveillance of sea activity, said a U.S. Embassy official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private discussions. While this type of cooperation had long been possible under the existing military alliance between the two countries, Manila had not until recently shown such interest, the official said.

Since the start of the year, the Philippines also has signed or begun negotiations for new defense agreements with Australia, Japan, the European Union and India.

The Navy bought eight ships from South Korea for its Offshore Combat Force, which is responsible for territorial defense, and recently struck a deal with Canada for use of its satellites to detect ships that go “dark” by turning off location signals — something commonly done by Chinese vessels in the South China Sea, analysts say.

After decades of focusing on domestic security threats that have now mostly abated, it is natural for the Philippines to pivot toward external security issues, said Teodoro, the defense secretary. The country needs to muster a “credible defense” against China, not as a strategy to provoke war but to deter it, he said.

In China, however, establishment scholars have accused Marcos of making a high-stakes bid for more direct American support. He rejects that allegation.

“Marcos thinks China-U.S. competition is an opportunity to seize more control in the West Philippines Sea,” said Hu Bo, the director of the South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative, a Chinese think tank. “He thinks he can play the two powers off each other for his own benefit, but it is a dangerous approach.”

A public relations blitz

In January, Marcos appointed a new national security adviser, Eduardo Año, a former general who led the military’s battle against Islamic State militants in the southern city of Marawi in 2017. Among his first directives was to adopt a policy of “transparency” about developments in the contested waters, said his deputy Jonathan Malaya. The coast guard was directed to document every instance of harassment and publicize it on social media, and to share the information with diplomats and journalists.

These photos and videos, sometimes shakily taken by seamen at the break of day, have driven widespread fury toward China among Filipinos. In a survey done by the polling firm Pulse Asia in June, more than 80 percent of Filipino respondents said they want the country to strengthen alliances to defend its maritime rights.

Winning friends by training workers is China’s new gambit

But “transparency cuts both ways,” said Evan Laksmana, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore who studies military modernization. While the Philippines’ publicity campaign has exposed Chinese aggression, it also has laid bare the limitations of the Philippine coast guard and navy, which have been underfunded.

The Philippine forces are beginning to advance, Laksmana said. In the meantime, however, “China keeps inching, inching, inching.”

‘A tinderbox’

Ten days after the barrier incident, the coast guard made an announcement that brought Manila to a stop: An unidentified commercial vessel had rammed a fishing boat in the West Philippine Sea, killing three Filipinos.

Across departments, officials scrambled to figure out whose vessel it was. Lawmakers on the floor of the Philippine Senate claimed prematurely that it was China’s. Marcos issued a statement urging calm. After two hours, the coast guard provided an update: It had been an oil tanker sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands.

“Thank God,” Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said that morning as he strode into his office, apologizing for being 40 minutes late for an interview because he had been fielding calls on the incident. “It’s a tinderbox right now in the West Philippine Sea,” he said.

One flash point that could set off a major crisis is an atoll in the contested Spratly Islands, about 100 miles off the Philippine coast and 900 miles from mainland China. In 1999, the Philippines intentionally ran a World War II-era ship aground on the Second Thomas Shoal and has used the vessel since then as a military outpost.

Pro-China commentators say Beijing will not allow the Philippines to build a structure on the atoll, as some Philippine lawmakers have proposed. Malaya, the national security official, declined to say what the government has in mind for the grounded vessel, the BRP Sierra Madre, but stressed that the administration has been refining a government-wide plan to deter China.

Would it work? He paused. “We don’t really know.”

“What we do know,” Malaya added, “is we don’t want to just accept this behavior.”

Earlier this month, as navy personnel from seven allied countries gathered in the Philippines to participate in joint naval exercises, Chinese ships tried to intercept Philippine ships transporting supplies to the Sierra Madre. One Chinese ship came within feet of a Philippine coast guard vessel.

Crew members and journalists stood on its deck with cameras, filming.

Shepherd reported from Taiwan. Jhesset Enano in Manila contributed to this report.

Undiplomatic impunity: Chinese embassy leaves New Zealand landlord with $900 bill

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/19/undiplomatic-impunity-chinese-embassy-leaves-new-zealand-landlord-with-900-bill

A landlord in New Zealand has run up against an unusual problem while trying to make his tenant pay $900 for rubbish removal: diplomatic immunity.

Chandler Investments Limited claimed its tenant, the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China, left a rented mews house in the capital, Wellington, without covering costs for cleaning, rubbish removal and key cutting.

New Zealand’s tenancy tribunal has dismissed the claim after finding the tenant to be a state and thus protected by sovereign immunity.

“Here the claim is filed against the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in New Zealand. It must follow that the claim is in fact a claim against a state, the People’s Republic of China,” records from the tribunal in September say.

The adjudicator, Rex Woodhouse, found that the arrangement between the landlord and tenant fell outside the usual protections afforded to landlords in New Zealand.

Exceptions to sovereign immunity include disputes that are commercial. Because renting a home was “incidental to the daily life of the diplomat” and profit was not being made from the arrangement, the exclusion was not upheld.

“I am not persuaded that the rental of a residential dwelling to an embassy would be commercial in nature, as the common law around diplomatic or sovereign immunity would consider it.”

Representatives of New Zealand’s foreign affairs and trade ministry were granted a right of appearance at the hearing, while neither of the parties in the dispute attended. Neither the embassy nor the People’s Republic of China waived their immunity.

“It was definitely a quirk we didn’t see coming,” landlord, Chris Chandler, told local news outlet Stuff.

He said that he believed the total amount of NZ$960 (AU$900) would have been “immaterial” to the Chinese mission. Tribunal records show an embassy representative “knew nothing” about the claims made by Chandler.

Chandler said he would not rent property to embassies again.

“No more diplomats, and according to our property manager, that’s the advice he gives to others in the same area as well,” he told Stuff.

The case follows another dispute over property rented to embassy staff in New Zealand. In 2018, landlords were warned not to rent to diplomats after the deputy head of mission for the EU’s delegation in New Zealand, Eva Tvarozkova, was cleared from paying $20,000 to cover unpaid rent and damage to a property she rented in Wellington.

Tvarozkova was initially ordered to pay the money she owed to landlord, Matthew Ryan, but was later found to be exempted by diplomatic immunity. At the time, Ryan said the decision regarding the Slovakian diplomat was “a travesty”.

In Canada, Ontario’s supreme court ruled in 2018 that the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations did not apply to commercial transactions by diplomats in their host country.

The ruling was made after a US diplomat, Betsy Zouroudis, claimed her diplomatic status exempted her from paying $10,000 in unpaid rent and legal fees.

How China’s Belt and Road Initiative is changing | The Economist explains

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/10/17/how-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-is-changing

On October 17th officials from at least 90 countries are expected to arrive in Beijing for a two-day diplomatic festival. The occasion is a summit organised by Xi Jinping, China’s president, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), his most ambitious foreign-policy programme. It involves China financing billions of dollars of investment in roads, railways and other infrastructure across Eurasia and Africa. China claims the BRI has created 420,000 jobs and lifted 40m people out of poverty. But many in the West think its real purpose is to construct a Chinese-led world order in which unsavoury regimes can thrive. The guest list for this week’s summit resembles a gallery of rogues. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, will play a starring role. Various other strongmen have confirmed their attendance. Even the Taliban are sending a delegation. Does China’s BRI bankroll international development or cement autocracy?

Launched in 2013 as “one belt, one road”, the BRI quickly became a clear expression of Mr Xi’s determination to break with Deng Xiaoping’s dictum to “hide our capabilities and bide our time; never try to take the lead”. It seeks to make Eurasia (dominated by China) an economic and trading area to rival the transatlantic one (dominated by America). By investing in infrastructure, Mr Xi hoped to create new markets for Chinese companies, such as high-speed rail firms, and to export some of his country’s vast excess capacity in cement, steel and other metals. By investing in volatile countries in Central Asia, he sought to create a more stable neighbourhood for China’s own restive western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet. And by encouraging more Chinese projects around the South China Sea, the initiative aimed to bolster China’s claims in that area (the “road” in “belt and road” refers to sea lanes).

In many ways, the BRI’s first decade has been a startling success. More than 150 countries have signed up to the scheme, including 18 of the EU’s 27 members. That helped make China the developing world’s largest creditor, boosting its diplomatic and geopolitical clout. It has also brought concrete benefits to many developing countries, where roads and railways would otherwise have gone unbuilt.

Yet the BRI’s progress has slowed. During the programme’s early years, China lent recklessly to poor countries without proper assessments of risk. Many of those loans have now gone bad, forcing Beijing to become more cautious. China’s foreign lending has been falling since 2016. Mr Xi says it will now focus on “small but beautiful” investments—a marked change of tone for a programme he once hailed as the “project of the century”. Domestic disillusion partly explains the shift: China’s faltering economy has made lavish spending abroad less popular among ordinary citizens. Other countries have also grown more wary of cosying up to China as its global rivalry with America heats up. The EU has tightened rules around foreign investments in critical infrastructure, citing national-security concerns. Italy, the only G7 member to join the BRI, is expected to withdraw.

The BRI may be slowing its march and moderating its aims. But it remains a crucial part of Mr Xi’s long-term goal of rallying the global south around China’s democracy-free model of development. A decade ago, Western countries were slow to recognise the project’s significance. They are now scrambling to provide alternatives. Plans for a transport corridor connecting India with the Middle East and Europe were unveiled at last month’s G20 summit in Delhi. America has promised to ramp up lending to developing countries via the World Bank. China’s BRI has encountered some bumps in the road. Yet it had already changed the world’s direction of travel.■

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California governor Newsom to visit China next week to discuss climate action

https://reuters.com/article/usa-china-california-climate/california-governor-newsom-to-visit-china-next-week-to-discuss-climate-action-idUSKBN31J077

California governor Gavin Newsom will visit China next week to discuss climate cooperation, promote bilateral economic development and tourism and encourage cultural exchanges, his office said in a statement on Thursday.

The week-long trip will include visits to Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong, the statement said.

"California and China hold the keys to solving the climate crisis," Newsom said. "As two of the world's largest economies, our partnership is essential to delivering climate action for our communities and beyond."

Newsom is expected to sign a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Guangdong province on climate issues, and he will also meet with regional leaders to discuss the shift towards electric vehicles and public transport. He will also sign additional MOUs in Beijing aimed at advancing climate cooperation between the two sides.

California has played a major role in maintaining climate ties between China and the United States, the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters.

During the presidency of Donald Trump, who pulled the United States out of the 2015 Paris agreement and all but shut down climate talks, leaders in California continued to meet with Chinese counterparts, including climate envoy Xie Zhenhua.

In 2019, California also set up the California-China Climate Institute, led by former governor Jerry Brown and partnered with Beijing's Tsinghua University, to conduct joint research on climate policies and solutions.

Newsom also signed an MOU with China's environment ministry last year to strengthen cooperation.

China and the United States relaunched top-level bilateral climate talks earlier this year after a hiatus triggered by the visit of former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, the democratically governed island that China claims.

China climate envoy Xie and his U.S. counterpart John Kerry met in Beijing in July and have held several rounds of talks since in a bid to map out areas of agreement ahead of the COP28 climate talks in Dubai starting at the end of November.

Nikki Haley misleads town hall audience on Chinese land acquisitions

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/10/18/nikki-haley-misleads-town-hall-audience-chinese-land-acquisitions/2023-10-17T21:17:26.820Z

“I saw something on the internet that said you gave China thousands of acres of land in South Carolina. Why would you do that?”

— audience member asking a question at a Haley for President town hall in Boone, Iowa, Oct. 9

“Don’t believe what you read on the internet. ... We didn’t sell any land to the Chinese. But, yes, I recruited a fiberglass company.”

— former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), in response

In her campaign for president, Haley has warned repeatedly about Chinese investments, including land purchases, in the United States. Yet as governor from January 2011 to January 2017, she recruited Chinese companies to her state. Chinese capital investment in South Carolina more than doubled from $308 million in 2011 to nearly $670 million in 2015.

There’s nothing wrong with politicians changing their positions in light of new facts. Haley has become a hawk on China, making her stance a key part of her campaign platform, and many politicians in both parties, including President Biden, have become alarmed by China’s behavior. But her response at the town hall was false and misleading. The audience member asked whether she “gave China thousands of acres of land.” She answered that “we didn’t sell any land to the Chinese,” specifically mentioning a fiberglass company.

This is political sleight of hand — denying something that was not asked.

The fiberglass deal did not involve the sale of land — but that’s because the company received almost 200 acres of county-owned land free of charge if promised investments were made. By our count, Chinese companies received about 1,500 acres while Haley was governor, much of it through land sales, despite her denial at the town hall.

For context, that’s only a drop in the bucket. According to an annual report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, by the time Haley was preparing to leave office at the end of 2016, Chinese individuals and companies owned about 190,000 acres of land across the United States — a figure that has since grown to 384,000 acres.

But it’s not the picture she painted at the town hall.

The Facts

Let’s start with the fiberglass company mentioned by Haley — China Jushi. This is a partially state-owned enterprise where a top official is a ranking Chinese Communist Party member. Board chairman Chang Zhangli is a party committee member. China National Building Material Company Limited, a state-owned company, owns nearly 27 percent of China Jushi, according to the company website. Several top officials of CNBMC also are party officials.

In 2016, the company announced that it would establish a manufacturing plant in South Carolina’s Richland County — an announcement that Haley in a news release called “a huge win for our state.” On Facebook, she declared: “Get excited! China Jushi is creating 400 new jobs and investing $300. million right here in Columbia!”

Governors often seek foreign investment if jobs will be created. “There is not a governor in this country or a state in this country that hasn’t worked to get Chinese business in their state somewhere,” Haley said at the town hall, defending the deal. “There’s not a household in this country that doesn’t have Chinese products in it. But there is a difference between focusing on something that’s going to hurt our national security and focusing on whether I brought a fiberglass company to South Carolina.”

But a key incentive here was a grant of land.

According to the contract between the county and China Jushi, a key part of the deal was the company’s receiving 197 acres of land, valued at $4.9 million. The company would have been required to pay back part of the land’s value if it did not invest an expected amount of money or create an expected number of jobs.

Let’s pause for a moment and look at how Haley spoke about the transaction at the town hall: “We didn’t sell any land to the Chinese. But, yes, I recruited a fiberglass company.” Note the use of the royal “we” when talking about land sales, in contrast to the “I” when referring to recruiting the company. The governor’s office of course would not necessarily negotiate specific land transactions; that was done at the county level. But she still wants to get credit for wooing the company without taking accountability for the details.

Indeed, a key player in winning foreign investment is the South Carolina Coordinating Council for Economic Development, which approves grants, tax credits and other incentives. For instance, a South Carolina job development credit provides companies with funds — as much as $3,250 per employee for 10 years — to offset the cost of locating or expanding a business facility. The coordinating council is chaired by the state’s commerce secretary, who is appointed by the governor.

Meanwhile, contrary to Haley’s suggestion that land sales were not involved, many other Chinese companies making investments in South Carolina purchased land, either from local governments or individuals, including:

We found at least another 250 acres acquired by Chinese firms, although many of the acquisitions are relatively small, such as just over 58 acres in 2013 by JN Fibers for a new production facility after receiving an $800,000 state grant and other incentives; about 34 acres (valued at $15 million) by Yanfeng Automotive in 2016 to establish a plant; and nearly 31 acres by the plastics manufacturer Uniscite in 2015 to establish a manufacturing plant. Uniscite received a $400,00 grant and job development credits from the state coordinating council. Eleven other deals involved land purchases of under 30 acres each, with some also involving state grants and incentives.

A Haley campaign spokesperson declined to discuss her comments at the town hall on the record, including whether she was suggesting that as governor she had no control over land sales or grants.

In an emailed statement, the campaign said: “With China-owned companies in all fifty states and Chinese products in nearly every American home, China’s influence is pervasive. China buying farmland near our military bases and stealing American technology is a clear and present security threat. Chinese investment in glass manufacturing in America is not the same, although dangers in the consumer goods sector are greater today than they were five or ten years ago. Nikki Haley has the clearest vision of the comprehensive nature of the Chinese threat to America and will do what it takes to keep Americans safe.”

The Pinocchio Test

Haley sidestepped the questioner’s assertion that the state gave land to Chinese companies by suggesting the state did not sell land to Chinese companies. But in the specific example she cited — the fiberglass company — the land was, indeed, given free. As for the other Chinese investments, the land indeed was sold.

In the first instance, her remarks were was misleading. In the second instance, what she said was false. If Haley was intending to say that such decisions were made at the county level, notwithstanding her efforts to persuade Chinese companies to make investments in South Carolina, she should have made that clear to the town hall audience. Haley earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

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