Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping reinvigorates his Xiong’an New Area project, the latest military purge appears to target scientists, and the Iran war gives a boost to Chinese green technology.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: Chinese President Xi Jinping reinvigorates his Xiong’an New Area project, the latest military purge appears to target scientists, and the Iran war gives a boost to Chinese green technology.
Xi Renews Push to Develop Xiong’an
On Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited the Xiong’an New Area and called for greater efforts to develop the planned metropolis, located some 62 miles from Beijing. Xi conceived Xiong’an more than a decade ago to reduce administrative stress in the capital, but these plans have yet to come to fruition.
The project will relocate some state-owned enterprises, as well as administration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei metropolis, to the new city while keeping central government authority in the capital. The goal is for Xiong’an to host a population of 5 million people by 2035; the area currently has roughly 1.2 million residents.
Xi’s visit appears intended to reinvigorate the project, where construction began in 2017 and is behind schedule. When I visited Xiong’an in 2018, it had little more than a local government office and a handful of residential high-rises. It has grown in the years since but is nowhere near its targets, due in part to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier proposals envisioned expanding nearby Baoding into a regional administrative hub, which would have made sense given that city’s historical importance as the capital of Hebei until 1968. But creating a new city in Xiong’an also has its merits.
Beijing is vast, expensive, and difficult to navigate. Its administrative dominance is also disproportionate to its size. Beijing’s official population, at just under 23 million people, accounts for only 1.5 percent of China’s overall population. By contrast, more than half of South Koreans and roughly 30 percent of Japanese reside in Seoul and Tokyo, respectively.
Xiong’an is also meant to serve as a model of high-quality urban growth. The new city promises not only new buildings—which many dilapidated government offices in Beijing sorely need—but also better livability. Xiong’an is planned to function as a so-called 15-minute city, in which residents can meet most of their daily needs within a short walk or bike ride from their homes.
I’m skeptical of that promise. Older parts of Beijing were also once unplanned 15-minute cities, with residential and commercial life comfortably intertwined, until the government demolished large sections because the diversity and vitality of a complex urban environment is offensive to the state’s preference for order and control.
Furthermore, however sophisticated the new administrative center might be, persuading officials to relocate may prove difficult. Other countries, including the United Kingdom, have struggled to decentralize government functions, as civil servants often view postings outside the capital as dead ends for their careers.
Proximity is power, especially in political systems such as China’s, where an institution’s hidden rules are more important than formal regulations. That dynamic helps explain why provincial leaders, accustomed to luxury accommodations, will sleep four to a room when visiting Zhongnanhai, the Chinese Communist Party’s compound for top leadership. The opportunity for face time is invaluable.
You can relocate the machinery of government, but relocating the engines of power is more difficult.
What We’re Following
Iran war fallout. China has largely stayed on the sidelines of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, with top diplomat Wang Yi calling for immediate peace talks as Beijing seeks to balance its ties with Tehran against its broader economic interests in the Gulf.
This expressed desire for peace is sincere. Like the rest of Asia, China is staring down the barrel of an energy crisis as tankers remain trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. Though China’s oil reserves are substantial, they are not infinite, and Beijing worries that damage to the Middle East’s oil infrastructure could have lasting economic consequences.
At the same time, China is benefiting from the United States squandering its global standing. In a striking reversal from the COVID-19 period, when China was widely distrusted, even some long-standing U.S. allies now view China as a more reliable partner.
Admittedly, that’s a low bar today. But for all of China’s assertive rhetoric, especially toward Taiwan, it has not actually gone to war since its ill-fated invasion of Vietnam in 1979.
Military scientists purged. China’s ongoing military purges appear to have claimed a new set of targets. The profiles of several top scientists associated with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), including some nuclear experts, have been removed from official websites, a move that typically signals detention and likely formal charges to come.
It’s possible that the scientists were implicated in the PLA Rocket Force’s graft scheme that kick-started this round of purges. But some of the scientists were already retired, making them odd targets. A more plausible reading is that the purges have expanded beyond their original scope, becoming a full-blown witch hunt.
FP’s Most Read This Week
Tech and Business
Green technology surge. The turmoil in the Middle East has at least one clear beneficiary: China’s green energy industry. That three leading battery makers have added roughly $70 billion in market value alone since the Iran war began last month has underscored the vulnerabilities of fossil fuel dependence.
Though Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) are more popular than ever across Asia, it may be a brutal year for the industry back home. A fierce price war continues in China despite government efforts to stabilize the market, and several firms are absorbing large losses.
The medium-term outlook remains strong, though. China is well positioned to dominate global EV sales and to shape the rules and standards that govern the industry. That advantage is becoming more pronounced as countries such as Canada drop earlier restrictions on Chinese EVs in response to U.S. trade wars.
Chip exports. U.S. lawmakers from both parties have demanded the suspension of high-end Nvidia chip exports to China, following allegations that a large smuggling network has been routing advanced semiconductors through third-party intermediaries to get around U.S. export controls.
But it’s unlikely that anything will change. U.S. President Donald Trump sold out the China hawks in his party months ago when he approved the export of some high-end chips, as long as the White House gets a cut. As I’ve noted before, theoretical debates over chips matter little when the president’s priority seems to be profit.
