Markets heard from Wang Yi on Thursday. Wang can be a little — how should I put this? — severe. That’s good. Wang’s severe.
America, he chided, during an annual press event in Beijing, is devising “various tricks” aimed at oppressing China’s economic ambitions. Washington’s list of unilateral sanctions is getting longer, and by now is “unfathomably absurd.” He said the US is “obsessed” with keeping China relegated to the bottom of the value chain, an effort he suggested will ultimately prove self-defeating. He also accused Joe Biden of breaking promises made to Xi Jinping when the US rolled out the red carpet for China’s dictator in San Francisco late last year.
The bombast is nothing new from Wang, who had to step back into the foreign minister role in July after Xi got wind of Qin Gang’s “lifestyle issues.” Wang’s a kind of super diplomat: He’s the Party’s top foreign envoy regardless of what title he happens to hold at any given time. Wang was Xi’s point man during the spy balloon fiasco. He spent a few days hanging out in Moscow with Vladimir Putin after last year’s Munich Security Conference, where he scolded Biden for shooting down China’s wayward “weather balloon” off the coast of South Carolina.
Long story short, Wang’s a big deal, and his NPC presser was probably the marquee event in terms of media access to top officials given that Xi decided to nix pressers with his No. 2, thereby robbing even state-owned media of the opportunity to ask Li Qiang scripted questions. Wang employed the usual fiery rhetoric around Taiwan. Any talk of independence for the self-governing, democratic and — ummm — independent, island represents a challenge to China’s sovereignty. (Sorry, Wang. Shoot me I guess.) Anybody who supports independence for Taiwan will “get burned for playing with fire.” (I’ll keep my extinguisher handy.)
Wang at least managed to say something worth saying about Gaza. “There’s no distinction,” he told reporters, “between noble and humble lives.” A life’s a life, Wang emphasized. Distinctions can’t be made in that regard based on faith or religion. “The fact that Palestinian land has been occupied for a long time can’t be ignored any more,” he added. I agree with Wang on that, however, in Israel’s defense, the irony of Wang suggesting, on one hand, that China can commandeer Taiwan through force if necessary at the cost of God only knows how many lives in the service of one man’s glory, while suggesting, on the other hand, that Israel can’t decimate Gaza to avenge a day of horrific debauchery on the part of the enclave’s erstwhile ruling militia, is too much to bear.
As for China’s economy, it’s doing fine. You can trust Wang on that. He might be partial, but he’s objective and he’d tell you the truth if the Chinese economy’s longer-term prospects had deteriorated under Xi’s thumb. I’m obviously joking. Wang’s a propagandist. He’d kill you a thousand times before he’d say a cross word to Xi, which is why his assessment of the economy (“strong”) is, was and always will be entirely meaningless.
For what it’s worth, China released the January-February trade rollup on Thursday. Exports beat, rising more than 7% in dollar terms. That was well ahead of consensus.
Imports, meanwhile, rose 3.5%. The surplus hit a new record.
I suppose you could argue that the strong showing for overseas shipments suggests some offset for still subdued domestic demand, but China can’t rely on the rest of the world buying cheap stuff to rescue the economy. A few days ago, while previewing the NPC, I wrote that, “markets want stimulus from China. Fiscal stimulus, ideally.” Then, I said “the Party won’t deliver.” Instead, they’d invariably offer “more of the same: Promises, rhetoric and piecemeal measures.”
That’s precisely what came out of the NPC this week. Promises, rhetoric and piecemeal measures. Xi has no idea what to do next, and that’s readily apparent to markets, overseas capital and, I should note, to Beijing’s geopolitical rivals.
Commenting Thursday on the possibility of a hot war with the US, Wang said, “Conflicts and confrontations between two major countries are unimaginable.” Something tells me Xi “imagines” them every, single day.
