China and Russia Play A Long Game; So Must We

Why should kids stay off the TikTok app, when all they want to do is dance, watch kids lip-sync and try out their comedy routines? Along with collecting the location, unique device identies and message content data of TikTok users that will last forever, just as Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate food with a bell, China can associate the images kids throughout the world see on TikTok with a warm and fuzzy feeling about all things Chinese. Big Bird helps kids learn on SESAME STREET. What can a Chinese cartoon character with a cuddly pet panda or "Mulan" do to grab a kid's attention and to begin conditioning him or her to ignore warnings about Chinese motives? This morning a PBS kids cartoon show already taught children to associate the "Golden Rule" exclusively with China's Confucius. China also is taking advantage of the opportunity to reach adults by running propaganda ads in TIME magazine and other respected, but revenue-starved, publications. Why not subsidize travel/study trips to China for high school and college students, offer senior centers a documentary about the advanced civilization Marco Polo found, not playing in a commercial's swimming pool, but in 13th century China or include a souvenier pin from the 2022 Winter Olympics near Beijing in cereal boxes? China's payoff would be worth these and other investments that dull US precautions, such as when a US graduate student obliviously agrees to help a Chinese professor obtain classified documents for a research project that compromises US national security. Similarly, a US business executive, conditioned over the years, may see nothing wrong with a sale that transfers US intellectual property to China. Chinese-Americans are especially vulnerable. Both fiction, QUANTUM SPY by David Ignatius, and the FBI case against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, who worked 34 years for the US government, illustrate Chinese agents use a pitch asking them to start supporting their "motherland", not the "foreign" land of their birth. Russian agents use more traditional methods to recruit spies, but they too play a long game. They target those who have access to classified information who run into financial problems, are susceptible to compromising affairs or can be blackmailed because they are hiding a secret. A review of Catherine Belton's book, PUTIN'S PEOPLE, in THE ATLANTIC magazine (September, 2020), lists the Russian operatives who tracked Donald Trump for 30 years on the chance that he could be politically or commercially useful. Looking back at how Westeren democracies contained the USSR after World War II suggests a way forward. NATO brought together a coalition ready to deter Communist expansion. The US cannot go on blithely providing the food, commodities and safe financial haven China and Russia need, while these countries are free to concentrate on their legal and illegal efforts to make military, surveillance and other technological progress, as well as on using social media and other means to destabilize societies throughout the world. Neither on-again, off-again sanctions by the sole US government, nor agreements with and assurances from China and Russia, offer the promise of long-term peace the way a democratic alliance would. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop alternatives to Huawei and other Chinese suppliers. Such a NATO-like coalition of G7 members (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents the brainpower, financing and determination needed to offset the continuing threat China and Russia pose.

China Stakes New Claim to Arctic

When warming from climate change uncovered portions of the ice sheet on Greenland, Chinese tourists arrived as did Chinese mining companies interested in the country's newly accessible deposits of rare earth minerals, said to be the world's tenth largest known deposit. In September, 2019, London's Rainbow mining company announced it was ready to expand rare earth production in Burundi to twenty times its current output in order to compete with China, already the world's major extractor of  the hazardous-to-mine rare earth elements. Rare earth elements have a wide variety of uses in hybrid cars, catalytic converters, wind turbines, aircraft engines, cell phones, film making, oil refining, x-rays, powerful magnets for MRI machines, control rods in nuclear reactors, and for TV and computer screens.

To date, Greenland's 56,000 citizens rely on fishing exports and an annual grant from Denmark. An independence movement lobbies to free Greenland from Denmark, and Greenland's Prime Minister Kim Kielsen sees potential ties with China as a way to eliminate the need for Denmark's help. (The earlier post, "Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder," describes China's earlier attempt to stake a claim in the Arctic.)

Denmark is not opposed to granting Greenland's independence. But it now does use Greenland as a way to claim Arctic land and the U.S. military base on Greenland to claim an exemption from paying its share of NATO funding. (In 2019, Norway's leader termed President Trump's attempt to purchase Greenland "ridiculous.")

Iceland Gives China the Cold Shoulder

Unlike Russia and the United States, China has no military or commercial presence in the Arctic. To date, Beijing's attempts to remedy the situation have failed. China's hope for a foothold in a European NATO member were dashed, when the Iceland sheep farm Huang Nubo, a former official in the Chinese Communist Party's Propaganda Department, tried to buy was sold to British shale gas fracking billionaire, Jim Ratcliffe, in December, 2016.

(If a student has a globe, this would be a good opportunity to see where a sheep farm in northeastern Iceland would be in relation to the Arctic Circle and to see which other countries are in or near Arctic waters.)

Trading on his relationship with Hjorleifur Sveinbjornsson, his former roommate at Peking University, Huang first visited Iceland in 2010 to establish a China-Iceland Culture Fund to finance meetings of poets. Sveinbjornsson has said Huang was "not an idiot" and did not think Huang's offer to buy the sheep farm for $7 million in 2011 was a front for other than the stated eco-resort purpose.

In 2012 , the state-owned China Development Bank put up $100 million to back Huang's plan to build a luxury hotel and golf course in Grimsstadir, Iceland. In the 100 square mile sheep farm, where snow falls from September to May, Huang claimed that what he called his 100-room, high end, environmentally friendly resort was designed for wealthy Chinese tourists looking for clean air, peace, and quiet.

Since Huang's Zhongkun Group chose a location near oil reserves where China bid for a drilling license on Iceland's northeast coast and also planned to upgrade a landing strip to handle 10 aircraft, a suspicious interior minister rejected a request to exempt Huang from Iceland't laws restricting foreign land ownership. Huang countered with a proposal for a long-term lease arrangement which also was not approved.

 Ratcliffe will own two thirds of the Grimsstadir property; the Icelandic government and other minority investors will own the rest. Ratcliffe says his interest in Iceland is conservation, particularly for protecting area rivers that are important breeding grounds for Atlantic salmon. The Strengur angling club that leases rivers in Grimsstadir expressed pleasure having Ratcliffe as a partner they know as an avid salmon angler who has fished the area for years.

Beijing has made multiple approaches to Iceland. From its vantage point in the South China Sea, China is used to presiding over 30% of the world's ocean-going trade. Looking ahead to the prospect of climate change permitting more traffic through warming Arctic waters, China has expressed an interest in using Iceland as a shipping hub. China's embassy building in Reykjavik is the city's largest. The two countries negotiated a Free Trade Area accord. And, in an attempt to become an observer, China sent its Snow Dragon icebreaker for a stop at Iceland during an Arctic Council meeting of eight nations (Russia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Canada, and the United States).

As opposed to China, Russia's oil and gas drilling prospects in the Arctic could improve. Rex Tillerson, currently Exxon Mobil's CEO and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's choice for Secretary of State, has close ties with Russia.