On June 16, the same day Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to fly to Beijing for meetings with senior Chinese officials, the State Department he oversees reported anomalous activity to Microsoft that the tech firm later blamed on China-based hackers.
(Bloomberg) — On June 16, the same day Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to fly to Beijing for meetings with senior Chinese officials, the State Department he oversees reported anomalous activity to Microsoft that the tech firm later blamed on China-based hackers.
It was Blinken’s second try at making the high-profile trip. His first attempt in February was derailed at the last minute by the discovery of an alleged Chinese spy balloon floating above the US — which President Joe Biden ordered shot down by the US Air Force.
This time, the Biden administration is staying the course on its China-engagement strategy, continuing the string of contact with Beijing that began with Blinken. But the hacking episode underlines the growing risks of restarting crucial diplomatic engagement between the world’s two largest economies when geopolitical competition between Washington and Beijing remains as fierce as ever.
Blinken’s trip last month — the most senior US delegation to China in five years — was only the first of several visits aimed at trying to reestablish more durable diplomatic links that China mostly severed in the wake of then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial stop in Taiwan.
China responded to Pelosi’s trip by holding unprecedented military drills around Taiwan. Similar exercises were held in April, when Taiwan’s leader, Tsai Ing-wen, met House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the US.
“At the end of the day, they get to decide whether they’re gonna do these meetings or not, and they seem to be feeling they want to put some skin in the game to see where this can lead,” said Christopher Johnson, the president of China Strategies Group, a political risk consultancy, and a former senior China analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
“If something really significant were to happen, like a mash-up in the South China Sea or something bad, then obviously that would be it. But I think garden-variety cyber and stuff like that, I don’t think that’s enough,” he added.
China has shown a similar commitment. Beijing shrugged off Biden’s reference to Xi as a “dictator” days after Blinken’s visit, still welcoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in China weeks later. US climate envoy John Kerry is set to arrive in Beijing on Sunday.
Blinken raised the issue of hacking on Thursday in a meeting with China’s top foreign policy official Wang Yi on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, a senior State Department official told reporters.
The agency wouldn’t say if Blinken had raised the latest incident, which included the alleged breach of the email account of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Before the revelations, she’d been both one of those seeking to visit China as part of the engagement efforts and a leading figure in the administration’s moves to limit Beijing’s access to high-tech semiconductors and chip-making equipment.
The hack that was revealed this week was a “sophisticated” example of China’s increasingly advanced cyber abilities, according to George Barnes, the deputy director of the US National Security Agency.
It was “yet another example of what is happening around us every day,” he told a conference of intelligence professionals in Maryland on Thursday. “China is steadfast and determined to penetrate our government, our companies, our critical infrastructure.”
China routinely accuses the US of hacking. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing this week called the US “the world’s biggest hacking empire and global cyber thief,” and asked for Washington to explain its own activities.
‘Zombie Engagement’
Amid the continuing current of irritants in the relationship with China, Republican lawmakers have stepped up criticism of Biden’s diplomatic strategy. Mike Gallagher, who chairs a House select committee on competition with China, derides it as “zombie engagement.”
On Thursday, Gallagher’s committee announced a hearing next week on the Biden administration’s China strategy that will see will see three senior policy appointees appear as witnesses: Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs; Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs; and Thea Rozman Kendler, the assistant secretary of commerce for export administration.
Earlier this week, Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a subpoena to Blinken for documents related to the administration’s moves against China. Using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China, he accused the State Department of “continued weakness and passivity in the face of PRC aggression.”
The administration rejects that criticism, highlighting the numerous sanctions and other export controls that it’s imposed.
“One of the things we heard over and over from Chinese officials is their deep protests and their deep complaints about the competitive actions that we have taken,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Wednesday.
–With assistance from Peter Martin.
(Updates with more context.)
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