Raimondo's visit to China shows goodwill, why does China "open up" to the Philippines? Britain saw the wind and saw that Japan burst into buying Russian grain, why did South Korea become the biggest "unjust leader"?
The Philippines breaks into Ren'ai Reef again, and China "opens the net"
Hello everyone, I'm Chiming. In this issue, we talk about the complex game between the Philippines and China, the United States and South Korea once again trespassing on Ren'ai Reef.
On August 22, the Philippine task force said in a statement that the Philippines completed the routine rotation and resupply of the landing ship Sierra Madre on Tuesday and accused the Chinese coast guard of trying to "prevent, harass and interfere" with Philippine ships in carrying out their mission. The statement also said that the Philippines' routine tasks at outposts in the South China Sea will continue on a regular basis.
After two weeks of shouting slogans, the Philippines finally acted, and it looked arrogant. However, according to the response of Liu Dejun, spokesman of the China Coast Guard, the reason why the Philippines was able to return to Ren'ai Jiao this time was mainly because the Philippine ship did not carry construction materials, and the Chinese side made "temporary special arrangements" for its transportation of food and other necessary daily necessities out of humanitarian reasons. Liu Dejun also pointed out that the entry of two Philippine replenishment ships and two coast guard vessels into the waters near Ren'ai Jiao without permission from the Chinese government was trespassing. The China Coast Guard issued a stern warning to Philippine vessels, followed them throughout the process, and effectively regulated them. Liu Dejun stressed that China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Qundao and its surrounding waters, including Ren'ai Jiao, and resolutely opposes the Philippine authorities taking advantage of the opportunity of replenishment to transport "illegal" building materials to "beach" warships, and the China coast guard will continue to carry out rights protection and law enforcement activities in accordance with the law.
It should be said that this trespassing in the Philippines is not surprising. Because allowing Philippine ships to transport food and other humanitarian supplies is a long-term tacit agreement between China and the Philippines. Although the Philippines violated the regulations not long ago and tried to deliver construction materials to the "beach" warship to save the broken ship, which was on the verge of disintegration, judging from China's statement afterwards, China does not intend to abolish this rule for the time being. After all, "Monte Madre" was commissioned in 1944, and it has been almost 80 years since today. From 1999 to the present, 24 years have passed. For such a long time, under the erosion and damage of seawater, salt spray and typhoons, the "Sierra Madre" has long become a pool of scrap iron, and it may fall apart at any time. Therefore, since 2014, the Philippines has been secretly carrying steel plates, cement and other building materials to the ship, but this has not stopped the fate of the "Sierra Madre" from aging day by day.
A BBC reporter once boarded the "Sierra Madre" for an interview and found that the landing ship had been severely corroded, the side of the ship was full of large and small holes, and the waves could easily pour into the cabin, "it is simply more dangerous than a dangerous house." A spokesman for the Philippine Navy also frankly said that the dilapidated nature of the Sierra Madre is no secret, and that the maintenance of ships is not a response to China's "land reclamation", but to allow the crew to have the most basic living conditions.
The Chinese side knows very well about the situation of the Sierra Madre, and China also clearly knows that the Philippines' theft of the history of China's Ren'ai Jiao is coming to an end. The Chinese side does not need to forcibly tow the ship away, or even blockade the ship, and under the merciless baptism of nature, sooner or later the "Sierra Madre" will die one day. At that time, Ren'ai Jiao will rightfully return to China's actual control.
Biden's executive order "thunder is loud and rain is small", and Raimondo visited China as scheduled
In addition to the reason why the Sierra Madre itself has decayed, there is another important reason why China has adopted a lenient attitude towards the Philippines' re-invasion of Ren'ai Jiao, that is, US Secretary of Commerce Raimondo will visit China from August 27 to 30. Raimondo is reportedly the fourth senior U.S. official to visit China since June. Following U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's visit to China in July, the United States has repeatedly released news that Raimondo may visit China, but it has never been determined, one of the main reasons is that Biden was preparing to sign an executive order on "foreign investment review" at that time, trying to restrict US entities from investing in China's semiconductor and microelectronics, quantum information technology and artificial intelligence fields.
For this executive order, the outside world was once very worried, believing that the new sanctions may affect Sino-US economic and trade cooperation. But it wasn't until August 10, when the specific measures were announced, that it was a false alarm, because the scope of the executive order is very narrow, the damage to China's related industries is relatively limited, and the implementation of the executive order is only possible after multiple rounds of public consultation. By that time, the U.S. government has long completed the election, and it is still unknown whether the new president will recognize the executive order. So many Republican politicians have criticized Biden's executive order as purely perfunctory and designed to fool them hawks.
For this reason, although China criticized the US executive order on the 17th, saying that it "harms others and harms itself", it will take necessary countermeasures according to the actual impact of the executive order. At the same time, however, China also announced that it welcomes US Secretary of Commerce Raimondo's visit to China. This actually reflects that Biden's executive order did not have a great negative impact, at least it did not hinder Raimondo's plan to visit China. In addition, on August 10, China expanded the number of countries that resumed outbound group tours from 60 to 138, including the United States and Mexico. Raimondo also welcomed this, saying that this move is good for US travel and tourism, and is an important step to promote people-to-people exchanges that are vital to bilateral relations. She also said that before the pandemic, as many as 3 million Chinese tourists visited the United States each year, contributing more than $30 billion to the U.S. economy. "We look forward to welcoming Chinese groups to the U.S. again."
After China's goodwill, the United States quickly reciprocated. On August 21, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security announced its decision to remove 33 entities, including 27 based in China, from the "unverified list." The U.S. side said the companies were able to determine their legality and reliability after successfully completing end-use inspections. It is understood that the so-called "unverified list" is a prelude to foreign enterprises entering the "entity list". If a company is placed on the "Unverified List" and fails to leave the list within 60 days, it is placed on the Entity List and subject to penalties such as export controls. In the past, the use of "unverified lists" in the United States was very arbitrary, and foreign companies often came in and got out hard. This time, the United States eliminated 27 Chinese entities at one time, apparently because Raimondo is about to visit China, and the United States is trying to convey a signal to China to ease relations through this approach. Under such circumstances, China is naturally not suitable for creating excessive movement on the Ren'ai Jiao issue, so as not to provide excuses for those who wish to undermine Sino-US relations.
Sino-US relations have improved, and Britain has seen the wind steer
As Sino-US relations ushered in an improvement, Britain also began to see the wind at the helm. According to British media reports on the 21st, the British Foreign Office recently asked government officials not to continue to refer to China, Russia, North Korea and Iran as "hostile countries" in official documents, but should change to "hostile actors". A government official told the media that a recent submission he submitted to the Foreign Ministry was rejected because of the words "hostile state." The Foreign Office noted that countries such as China and Russia should no longer be called "enemy countries" because "the state itself is not hostile, but some governments have done hostile things." The official also said that similar terms cannot be used in not only official documents, but also in emails and instant messages sent between civil servants, ministers, advisers and government agencies.
The British government has confirmed the shift in policy and said the new wording was used to align Britain's position with that of its allies and improve Britain's diplomatic relations with China. The report also believes that Britain's move may be related to British Foreign Secretary Cleverley's visit to China at the end of August. Previously, a number of British media reported that if Cleverley makes the trip, he will become the highest-ranking British official to visit China since the epidemic, and this "long-awaited" visit is expected to bring stability to the turbulent relationship between the two sides that has fallen into the lowest point in decades.
Yoon Seok-yue is pro-American, but South Korea's exports have plummeted
For the recent positive signals released by the United States and Britain, there is a view that this may cause a big blow to South Korea. In yesterday's video, we mentioned that after Yoon Seok-yue came to power, he changed the style of his predecessor Moon Jae-in and became more pro-American and flattering diplomatically, constantly contradicting China and North Korea. One of Mr. Yoon's main motivations for doing so is that South Korea faces serious challenges from China in the high-end manufacturing sector. According to the latest data released by the Korean Customs Agency on the 17th, in the first 10 days of this month, South Korea's import and export volume continued to shrink sharply. As of July, South Korea's exports have declined for 10 consecutive months, of which semiconductor exports have been negative for 12 consecutive months. Some Korean media pointed out that the decline in South Korea's exports was mainly caused by the decrease in semiconductor exports. Due to the strengthening of the competitiveness of Chinese enterprises, the proportion of South Korea's semiconductor industry in global exports has been below 20% for four consecutive years, and fell to 13.6% in the first three months of this year. If the advantage in the semiconductor field cannot be regained as soon as possible, South Korea's exports are expected to enter a deep recession, and South Korea's trade deficit will become normalized.
In order to solve South Korea's dilemma, Yoon Seok-yue bet on the increasingly fierce scientific and technological competition between China and the United States, hoping to use the hands of the United States to jam the "throat" of China's high-tech industry and win more breathing opportunities for Korean companies. What worries Yin Xiyue is that although the current US President Biden intends to curb China's high-tech development, he is not willing to pay too much for it, and he is more inclined to transfer the cost of scientific and technological warfare against China to allies such as South Korea. For example, before China announced the Micron ban, the US government warned South Korean companies not to seize Micron's market share in China. If that's all, South Korea may be able to accept it. But the problem is that next year the United States will usher in the 2024 election, and the call for Trump's comeback is high. And once Trump returns to the White House, he may become more serious than Biden in terms of "punishing allies". In addition, Yoon's own term expires in 2027. If the left-wing party in South Korea is in power by then, then South Korea-US relations and even South Korea-Japan relations may return to the original point, and the Japan-South Korea trade war may break out again.
For example, Kim Du-yeon, a senior researcher at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank, pointed out that although the recent US-Japan-South Korea summit has brought the trilateral relationship into a new stage, as long as a left-wing South Korean president and a right-wing Japanese prime minister are elected in the future, or Trump wins the US election, then all the hard and meaningful actions being carried out by the United States, Japan and South Korea may be undermined. In this case, Yoon Seok-yue hopes to use Biden's final term to raise US-South Korea relations to another level as much as possible, so as to prevent the new president from turning his face on South Korea after taking office.
However, judging from the latest actions of the Biden administration, the plot has not developed as the South Korean side hoped. Although Biden established the US-Japan-ROK alliance in an attempt to strengthen the military containment of China, in the economic and trade field, Biden did not mean to completely decouple from China and break the chain, but lifted sanctions on some Chinese companies, so as to pave the way for Raimondo's visit to China. This approach is the same as the US sanctions policy that tightened and loosened against Russia during the Russian-Ukrainian war. In the final analysis, whether for the European Union or Japan and South Korea, the United States treats it as "cannon fodder", always leaving the most dangerous thing such as military confrontation to its allies, and trading is the exclusive privilege of the United States.
Japan swept Russian grain, and trade between South Korea and Russia plummeted
The Japanese government has been very clever about the U.S. approach. According to Russian media reports on the 21st, a recent report released by the Japanese Ministry of Finance showed that in July this year, Japan's total exports to Russia increased by 25% year-on-year, reaching about $348 million. In addition, Japan's grain imports from Russia have surged nearly 57 times, while total imports to Russia have fallen by nearly 70%.
At the same time, the level of trade between South Korea and Russia has fallen sharply. Data show that the bilateral trade volume between South Korea and Russia in 2022 will only be 21.15 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 22.6%. Among them, South Korea's exports to Russia decreased by 36.6%, while imports decreased by 14.6%. As South Korea's main export products, automobiles and parts accounted for 70.4% of the decline in exports to Russia, which had a greater impact on the overall export decline.
It can be seen that although Japan has joined the US-Japan-South Korea alliance under the banner of confronting China, Russia and North Korea, in actual actions, Japan has not made much moves, the imported goods are still imported, and even Japan has taken advantage of the decline in Sino-South Korean relations to catch up with China and become South Korea's second largest trade deficit country, making South Korea the party with the largest trade losses in Northeast Asia.
Overall, the recent improvement in Sino-US relations has sounded alarm bells for South Korea. Blindly following the United States is not a good thing, this will only put the initiative of the game into the hands of the other party, once the United States turns its face and does not recognize people, South Korea will fall into a total passivity.