The Chinese government’s use of its own weak legal system to carry out “hostage diplomacy" may herald a new “asymmetric lawfare” strategy to counter the U.S.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made history yesterday when he refused to certify that Hong Kong is autonomous from China. What’s the significance of that move?
The House and the Senate have passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. What is the significance of the Act?
The detention of a top executive from Chinese technology giant Huawei shocked financial markets around the world last week as investors worried that the arrest would derail U.S.-China trade talks. But the detention of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada, pending her extradition to the U.S., has grown from a trade irritant to a full-blown diplomatic crisis. Over the weekend, the Chinese government threatened both Canada and the U.S.
Even seasoned China-watchers were startled last week when news broke that Meng Hongwei, the vice minister of China’s chief law-enforcement ministry, had disappeared. Meng is not just a high-level government official. As chief of Interpol, he is arguably the highest-profile Chinese leader of an international organization.
The most recent U.S. freedom-of-navigation operation (FONOP) in the South China Sea garnered the usual global headlines, but it also shows how ineffective such operations have been in deterring Chinese actions in the region. It was so inconsequential that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs could not even be bothered to come up with new phrases in what is now a ritualized denunciation.
Last Friday, President Trump signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act, which makes it a U.S. policy to allow high-level meetings between Taiwan and U.S. government officials. News reports about the law have often described it as “non-binding.” This “not legally binding” view is widely shared, including by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But this reading is not quite right.
