US plan to build ‘China house’ at State Department urgently needed but raises questions, analysts say

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s vision of expanded and dedicated cadre of China experts meant to implement policy across government departments
While many former officials agree with initiative, some see hurdles to effectiveness in latest White House effort to focus resources on nation’s ‘most serious competitor’

US-China relations

Kinling Loin Beijing

Published: 10:30pm, 5 Jun 2022

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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s plan to build a “China house” at the State Department addresses an urgent policy need for Washington, analysts and former diplomats said, but with more questions than answers about how the entity would operate and how much power it would wield, they are largely reserving judgment.

Washington’s top envoy mentioned the plan during his long-awaited speech on May 26 articulating US President Joe Biden’s China strategy. While the speech was widely perceived by geopolitical watchers as a consolidation of the administration’s previously stated positions on China, the first official mention of the proposal to assemble such a cadre dovetails with US policy efforts in recent years.

Blinken said the new team would inform Washington’s response to “the scale and the scope of the challenge” posed by China, describing the test for American diplomacy as “like nothing we’ve seen before”.

“I’m determined to give the State Department and our diplomats the tools that they need to meet this challenge head-on as part of my modernisation agenda,” Blinken said. “This includes building a China house: a departmentwide integrated team that will coordinate and implement our policy across issues and regions, working with Congress as needed.”

Since Blinken’s speech, no further details have emerged as to what shape the China cadre might take. According to a Foreign Policy report last September, the objective was to track “Beijing’s growing footprint in key countries around the world”.

This would require an additional 20 to 30 State Department staff and more China watch officers compared to the number in diplomatic contingents overseas during the previous administration of US president Donald Trump, the report said. The expanded team would also cover emerging technologies and climate change.

At present, the China desk within the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs is understood to spearhead China policy implementation.

Asked about the planned China cadre, Liu Pengyu, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said: “No matter how the US government adjusts its internal mechanism, if its ultimate goal is to contain China, interfere in China’s internal affairs and undermine China’s interests, China will of course oppose it.”

Blinken’s announcement in the speech struck many who formerly worked in the US government as logical. Yet it raised questions about how the arrangement would advance Biden’s bid to counter Beijing’s rising geopolitical influence.

“This initiative within the State Department is unsurprising and is a clear recognition that the US-China relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world and will be for the foreseeable future,” said David Adelman, a former US ambassador to Singapore. “Leaders on both sides of the Pacific will benefit from more diplomatic resources devoted to the relationship.”

Richard Boucher, a career diplomat who served as US consul general in Hong Kong and on the China desk at State, believed the effectiveness of a China house would depend on the level of support given to it by the secretary of state and president.

“If the China house merely becomes another player in the bureaucracy of Washington, then it won’t have the power to impose a consistent policy with regards to China and the new entity becomes a source of confusion as to who’s in charge,” Boucher said.

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Adelman, now managing director at KraneShares, an asset management firm focused on China, added that the new policy unit might end up revamping “the bureaucracy that supports the decision makers”.

Meanwhile, Paul Triolo, senior researcher and China Digital Economy Fellow at the think tank New America, described the planned team as “a good idea” and said an interdepartmental approach was probably useful for “interconnected” issues like technology and data governance. Recalling past trade negotiations, Triolo believed there was a practical need to bolster Washington’s expertise on technology, an especially contentious area in US-China policymaking.

The Biden administration has made alignment with allies on standards for the technologies flagged by Triolo a key objective in the president’s quest to help the US compete with China.

One aim of the US-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC), for example, is to establish rules for advanced technology such as artificial intelligence and 6G wireless communication so they cannot be used as “tools of repression” and “arbitrary or surveillance, coercion and cyber threats”.

US trade representative Katherine Tai speaking in Bangkok in May. Tai’s office announced an economic and trade initiative with Taiwan last week. Photo: AP

Last week, the US Trade Representative office announced a joint economic and trade initiative with Taiwan aimed at “building consumer trust in the digital economy, promoting access to information, facilitating use of digital technologies, promoting resilient and secure digital infrastructure”.

Ahead of Blinken’s speech, Washington had already been reallocating internal resources to concentrate on China, which Biden identified as America’s “most serious competitor” in an assessment reflecting one of the few policy continuities with the US leader’s predecessor.

While Biden may have disbanded the US Justice Department’s “China Initiative” – a Trump administration plan meant to fight Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft – other, more secretive China-focused government units have been established by the current administration.

Barely two weeks into Biden’s term, the US Defence Department launched a task force to evaluate its China-related military strategies and operations. Just four months later, the Pentagon issued recommendations “intended to streamline and strengthen cooperation with US allies and partners, particularly in the Indo-Pacific”. The recommendations remain classified.

Heightened concern about China at the Pentagon became evident during the Trump administration. In June 2019, the US Defence Department created the post of deputy assistant secretary of defence for China to serve as the Pentagon’s principal adviser “on all things China”.

And last October, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) announced the creation of a China Mission Centre to gather intelligence about China and facilitate a whole-of-agency response. Since the CIA’s announcement, few details have been disclosed as to the centre’s function or staffing.

Clear lines of authority and its own budget are imperative for the new China cadre to make an impact, according to Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.

“Whatever it proves to be, I hope it’s integrated into the existing State Department bureaucracy in a coherent way,” he said. “It won’t last otherwise.”

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The US government’s push to harness internal resources on China was recently echoed by Japan, a top ally. On May 30, days after Blinken’s speech. Japan’s foreign ministry announced the formation of an internal strategy group tasked with collecting and analysing “political, economic and diplomatic intelligence related to China”.

For other long-time China watchers, an effective China strategy entails going beyond making structural changes within the US government.

Deborah Seligsohn, a former US diplomat who is now an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, agreed there was a “need to support the development of China expertise” but saw another issue as more pressing.

Blinken delivers ‘old content in a new context’ in China speech

“The bigger issue … is that there is a real need to ensure the building of a China expert cadre and the shepherding of China experts to have successful long-term careers,” said Seligsohn, who served at the US embassy in Beijing from 2003 to 2007.

Seligsohn cited challenging working conditions for US diplomats in China as making it more difficult to nurture long-term experts. These included recent coronavirus lockdowns in the country and worse bilateral ties. She advocated a re-evaluation of the security clearance process for those who have first-hand China experience, saying it appeared to have become more protracted since the Trump administration.

“The problem is creating an incentive for specialising in China – and attention from the secretary [Blinken] helps.”

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