◎ How U.S. political drama could see political Black Swans take flight in China.
On Oct. 14, the New York Post published the first of several articles concerning email exchanges with Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. While conservative media and commentators focused on the content of the Post’s articles and their implications of corruption on Biden Senior’s part, it was the clumsy censorship of the Post and those sharing the articles by social media companies that grabbed the national attention. Overnight, election interference became a topic of heated discussion on both sides of the political aisle.
Based on publicly available information and in weighing the interests of various groups, we have identified a potential scenario where fallout from the Hunter Biden email saga could develop into a political Black Swan event for General Secretary Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party.
Here is how such a scenario could unfold.
Team Biden counters
The Biden campaign and media outlets are claiming that the allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden in the New York Post is “Russian disinformation.” Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and the person who passed the emails obtained from a hard drive supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden to the Post with the help of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, is also said to be targeted by Russian intelligence. The FBI is said to be checking if the emails obtained by the Post are “linked to a foreign intelligence operation.”
It is unclear if the “Russian disinformation” angle is working to redirect the spotlight on Hunter and Joe Biden. Facebook and Twitter’s ban of the Post’s article “nearly doubled” attention to the Bidens. Giuliani has also passed the emails to other (likely pro-Trump) news outlets, including Fox News, which likely means a constant stream of Hunter Biden email leaks until election day. Over three years of focus on “Russiagate” could also weaken the “Russian disinformation” narrative’s ability to deflect attention from Biden and effectively shift the spotlight on Trump. In other words, Team Biden might find themselves needing to change strategies further down the road to push for victory.
Team Biden might not have to search too hard for another narrative. According to the Daily Beast, which runs a section devoted to identifying disinformation, a media network linked with fugitive Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and Steve Bannon had been talking about Hunter Biden’s hard drive weeks before its contents were reported by the New York Post. And Rudy Giuliani, who worked with Bannon to get the emails to the Post, is seen smoking cigars and smiling with Guo in photos posted by a pro-Guo Twitter account. Add Midland mayor Patrick Payton’s allegation that Guo Wengui and Xi Jinping are responsible for the recent harassment of prominent Chinese human rights activist Bob Fu, plus President Trump’s lack of criticism of Xi, and the “Chinagate” narrative of election interference practically writes itself. Relationship web aside, there is at least one case of the PRC attempting to hack the Biden campaign; on Oct. 16, Google said Chinese hackers launched unsuccessful phishing efforts targeting the personal email accounts of Biden staffers.
Whether or not “Chinagate” is real is secondary. The narrative only needs to seem plausible to hurt the Trump campaign.
“Chinagate,” or the narrative of the Trump campaign working with China’s Xi to undermine an election opponent, is appealing for several reasons:
1) “Chinagate” neatly ties together several narratives that cast a negative light on the Trump administration’s China policy, namely, that Trump is “soft” on China and dictators, that his China policies have caused unneeded international tension or made China stronger and more self-sufficient, and Trump is unwilling to condemn Xi over human rights and other issues but keeps promoting their friendship. The Trump campaign will immediately be put on the defensive, and President Trump has to explain his relationship with Xi and ambiguous China decisions like “letting off” ZTE. Meanwhile, Team Biden can seize the opportunity to sell Joe Biden as being tough on China and the steward of U.S. national security by calling out foreign election interference by America’s top geopolitical rival.
2) “Chinagate” is congruous with the national focus on election interference, but shifts the target of attention from Biden to Trump.
3) “Chinagate” concerns the upcoming election and directly impacts undecided voters. Undecided voters will be less concerned with efforts to interfere in the 2016 election or the 2019 Ukraine impeachment of President Trump, which the Hunter Biden email saga chiefly addresses, if there is an even more pressing scandal that they can still “correct” at the ballot box.
4) “Russiagate” is growing stale as a topic and the idea of Russia as a serious threat to America is less obvious. In contrast, China represents a clear threat to the American public, especially with the coronavirus outbreak and the Trump administration’s ramped up publicity efforts this year. A recent Pew survey finds unfavorable American views of China at historic highs. Pushing a “Chinagate” narrative at the “eleventh hour” equivalent of the presidential election could leave Team Biden with the last laugh on which campaign has the better “October surprise.”
Team Trump responses
The Trump campaign might need to take drastic action against the CCP regime to curb the “Chinagate” narrative. Just words from President Trump, however, will not be sufficient to counter charges that he is close to dictator Xi Jinping.
Trump’s options are limited. Financial and economic actions like tariffs or sanctions of banks in Hong Kong risk affecting U.S. markets (and everyone’s 401Ks) too close to election day, and could end up backfiring badly on the Trump campaign. Likewise, “show force” military action in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific in general could raise people’s alarm bells about the potential for war and affect the stock markets. Escalating the tech war through banning Chinese companies and apps is one course of action, but it might not be enough for the Trump campaign to draw attention away from “Chinagate.” The only good options for Trump at this stage are rhetoric, diplomacy, and human rights.
1) President Trump will likely have to condemn Xi Jinping to take the sting out of “Chinagate.” However, Trump cannot be too critical of Xi lest he closes off future opportunities for negotiation and diplomacy. Members of Trump’s cabinet could be tasked to do the heavy lifting in denouncing Xi and the CCP. In the meantime, Trump could look to bring the focus back on Biden by calling him out for being consistently “weak” on China.
2) The Trump administration has a range of diplomatic tools to deploy against the People’s Republic of China. CCP members and their kin could be banned from obtaining visas. Trump could approve sanctions against individual high-level CCP officials, including allies of Xi. More PRC consulates could be forced to shutter, and more military-linked researchers and graduate students could be expelled. And the Trump administration could find ways to kick out Confucius Institutes from U.S. schools. However, the aforementioned actions may not be sufficient to shift attention away from “Chinagate.”
The Trump administration also could look to take significant action in strengthening ties with Taiwan or allies in the Indo-Pacific region. However, there are time constraints to making such moves, and markets could be shaken if investors fear CCP military retaliation to those moves.
3) Trump could target the CCP’s most egregious and “sensitive” human rights abuses. For instance, the Trump administration could designate the CCP’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province as “cultural genocide” or other equivalent terms. The administration could also spotlight the persecution of Falun Gong and forced organ harvesting in China. After all, the first recommendation in the executive summary of a recent report issued by the China Task Force, a group of 15 House Republicans, calls for “evaluating whether the CCP’s crimes against Uyghurs amount to genocide, fully implementing sanctions laws enacted in response to the CCP’s Hong Kong crackdown, and taking further specific actions to respond to the full range of CCP human rights violations, from religious freedom violations to forced organ harvesting.” Shocking revelations about the horrific nature of the CCP’s human rights abuses could be just enough to challenge, and even displace, the “Chinagate” narrative before election day.
Xi’s ‘October Surprise’
Xi Jinping is currently facing a “perfect storm” of domestic and foreign problems. His recent power consolidation moves (see here and here), the purge of associates of his allies (see here and here), and financial trouble at China’s leading property developer indicate that his grip on power is nowhere near as secure as many believe, as well as escalation in the CCP factional struggle. “Chinagate” could prompt tough U.S. action against China and present Xi with an unwanted “October surprise” before the Fifth Plenum near the end of October.
Xi will almost certainly run into factional struggle issues if the Trump administration makes high-profile human rights moves, particularly those outlined in the previous section. We earlier explained how the persecution of the Uyghurs and Falun Gong are explosive issues in CCP factional politics because they concern the political legacies of Party bosses. Seemingly innocuous U.S. human rights moves, born out of domestic political need, could end up pushing the intra-Party struggle to a tipping point and see political Black Swans take flight in China.
