Hi, China Watchers. Today we look at China’s snub on fentanyl cooperation, unpack Beijing’s diplomatic charm offensive and profile a book that argues the world shouldn’t fear China.

Let’s get to it. — Phelim.

***CHINA WATCHER BOWS OUT***: After five years and 300-plus editions, we’ve decided to close down China Watcher. But I’m not going anywhere! With the world’s eyes on Beijing like never before, we’re swapping out our weekly take on all things China and supercharging our coverage to bring you daily news across multiple POLITICO platforms. So look for my breaking and in-depth reporting in Pro subscriber stories, on our home page, and featured throughout POLITICO’s array of newsletters around the globe. Our final edition of China Watcher will be on May 29. I can’t wait for this new chapter — I hope you’ll join me!

CHINA SHRUGS OFF TRUMP’S FENTANYL FOCUS

President Donald Trump said Monday that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s trade talks in Geneva with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng reaped a breakthrough to address China’s role in the U.S. opioid overdose crisis.

That’s on top of a deal to lower U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports to 30 percent and to reduce Chinese levies on U.S. products to 10 percent for 90 days (read your host’s story on that with POLITICO’s Victoria Guida, Daniel Desrochers and Megan Messerly)

Trump said Beijing would take steps to curb exports of precursor chemicals to Mexico that cartels process into fentanyl.

“They’ve agreed that they’re going to stop that,” Trump told reporters.

Beijing’s incentive was a possible cut in the 20 percent tariff on Chinese imports that Trump imposed in March (He justified that by saying China had “not taken adequate steps” to stop exports of the chemicals). The presence in Geneva of China’s top cop — Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (per the Wall Street Journal) — suggested stronger action against precursor peddlers was on the agenda.

Not according to Beijing.

“China has made it clear more than once that fentanyl is the U.S.’s problem, not China’s,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian on Tuesday. “Despite the goodwill China has shown, the U.S. wrongly slapped tariffs on Chinese imports by citing the issue of fentanyl.”

That drew a rebuke from former U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns.

“China is an authoritarian country. It has the capacity to stop the flow of these precursor chemicals,” Burns told Bloomberg in an interview Tuesday.

Lin at China’s foreign ministry called Burns’ comments “false accusations” Wednesday.

That’s despite evidence that the House Select Committee on China released a report in 2024 exposing how Beijing encouraged domestic chemical firms to produce and export dangerous narcotics and their component chemicals.

“Beijing must do more to crack down on e-commerce sellers who blatantly peddle precursor chemicals. There is no legitimate excuse for the Chinese Communist Party not doing so,” said committee ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.)

Beijing may be miffed by Trump’s failure to recognize progress the two countries made in addressing those issues through a Joint Counternarcotics Working Group launched last year. Former President Joe Biden credited that cooperation in November with reducing overdose deaths.

Trump’s goal of a total halt in China’s precursor exports is likely overambitious.

“An absolutist demand of zero flow of precursors out of China is absolutely impossible to accomplish for any country,” argued Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and an expert on China’s role in the U.S. fentanyl crisis. “Most precursors today are dual-use chemicals that leave China as legitimate chemicals and head to shell companies that appear to be legitimate.”

Cutting that supply to cartels requires stricter inspections at Chinese ports, compelling exporters to verify their buyers and prosecuting those that knowingly sell to criminal elements.

“Mandating that due diligence is done before any of the chemicals leave China is an important move, but China has been reluctant to do it,” Felbab-Brown said.

POLITICO’S 2025 SECURITY SUMMIT: Your host and the rest of POLITICO’s Washington-based defense, foreign affairs and cybersecurity reporters will be leading the conversations today at POLITICO’s Security Summit — a gathering of senior administration officials, military officials, key lawmakers and industry executives.

I’ll be talking to former House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) and House Select Committee on China ranking member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) about the U.S.-China relationship at a time of high tensions over trade, Taiwan and technology. Other conversations of note to the China Watcher audience include my colleague Maggie Miller’s conversation with former deputy national security adviser for cyber Anne Neuberger and Sam Skove’s discussion with Space Force chief Gen. B. Chance Saltzman.

And of course we’ll be hitting the biggest topics of the day from Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks to Trump’s Middle East trip.

Come join us! Sign up here.

TRANSLATING WASHINGTON

— TRUMP TOUTS POSSIBLE CALL WITH XI: Those U.S.-China trade talks in Geneva earlier this week went so well they may pave the way to another call between Trump and China’s leader Xi Jinping. The two leaders last spoke in January.

“The relationship is very, very good. I’ll speak to President Xi maybe at the end of the week,” Trump told reporters Monday. We’ve been here before. Both White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and trade adviser Peter Navarro teased such a call back in February that never happened for reasons unexplained. Stay tuned.

— TRUMP RATTLES TAIWAN WITH ‘UNIFICATION’ COMMENT: The U.S. diplomatic outpost in Taipei has reassured Taiwan that Trump’s comments about “unification” on Monday had nothing to do with China’s claims to the island.

“It’s clear President Trump was speaking in the context of the U.S.-China trade relationship,” a spokesperson for the American Institute in Taiwan said Tuesday, per Reuters.

Taiwan has been concerned about comments Trump made Monday about a U.S.-China deal to lower tariffs for 90 days. “They’ve agreed to open China — fully open China. And I think it’s going to be fantastic for China. I think it’s going to be fantastic for us. I think it’s going to be great for unification and peace,” Trump told reporters. The Chinese state media tabloid Global Times exploited that opening. Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progress Party “has become highly jittery and grows nervous, fearing it will be abandoned by the U.S. and turned into a discarded pawn,” the paper reported Tuesday.

— AMBASSADOR PERDUE IS BEIJING-BOUND: U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue will head to Beijing to take up his post later this week, according to two people familiar with Perdue’s planning. POLITICO granted them anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss Perdue’s travel plans. Perdue will fill a role vacated in January by former Ambassador Nicholas Burns. Perdue will be on the front lines of a U.S.-China relations roiled by trade tensions over Trump’s aggressive tariff policies and rising concerns about Beijing’s increasingly aggressive military footprint in the Indo-Pacific. Perdue punctuated his Senate confirmation hearing last month with accusations that Beijing is waging “a new kind of war” against the U.S. and that China poses a threat to “the current world order.” But Chinese officials are likely to overlook that rhetoric in hopes that cordial ties with Perdue may boost Beijing’s efforts to strike a trade deal with the U.S. that return tariffs on Chinese imports to pre-“Liberation Day” levy levels.

“We are willing to provide facilitation for Ambassador Perdue in performing his duty in China,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin said Wednesday. Perdue didn’t respond to a request for comment.

TRANSLATING EUROPE

— FORMER TAIWANESE PRESIDENT URGES EUROPEAN SUPPORT: Taiwan’s former President Tsai Ing-wen took to the stage at the annual Copenhagen Democracy Summit this week to urge European support for the self-governing island. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said in a speech Tuesday, per Taiwan state media. Tsai’s European trip — part of her new role as Taiwan’s unofficial roving ambassador — began in Lithuania on Sunday and will conclude with a visit to the United Kingdom on Thursday.

— RUSSIA, CHINA EYE LUNAR NUCLEAR PLANT: That China-Russia “No Limits” partnership is about way more than Beijing’s support for Moscow’s war on Ukraine or discounted oil and gas. The two countries have inked a “memorandum of cooperation” to construct a nuclear power plant on the moon, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday. That facility would keep the lights on at a planned Russia-China International Lunar Research Station that the two countries aim to have operational by 2036.

HOT FROM THE CHINA WATCHERSPHERE

— INDIA CALLS CHINA’S NAME GAME ‘PREPOSTEROUS’: The South China Sea isn’t the only area where Beijing is drawing heat for attempted territorial grabs. China’s Civil Affairs Ministry has riled neighboring India this week by renaming 27 locations in a disputed Himalayan region that Beijing calls Zangnan and New Delhi calls Arunachal Pradesh, the South China Morning Post reported Wednesday.

“China has persisted with its vain and preposterous attempts to name places in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh,” India’s External Affairs Ministry said in an X post Wednesday. Beijing won’t back down. “The Chinese government has standardized the names of some parts of Zangnan — this is within China’s sovereign rights,” Lin at the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

— XI PITCHES ‘UNITY’ WITH LATIN AMERICA: Xi Jinping made a pitch for deeper ties between China and countries in Latin America and the Caribbean at a summit of those countries’ leaders in Beijing on Tuesday. Xi urged attendees to embrace “unity and cooperation” with China and in a jab at the U.S. warned of the dangers of “bullying and hegemonism,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday. Xi’s sweeteners included thousands of China-based scholarships for the region’s government officials and a $9 billion credit line for development.

HEADLINES

The Guardian: Trump risks driving Europe into China’s embrace. Xi Jinping will be delighted
Financial Times: Taiwan TV drama to give public a visceral vision of war with China

BBC: Rise of the patriots: Hong Kong

South China Morning Post: Wanted: China-born researchers to leave U.S. to work in China. Attractive pay

HEADS UP

— LI QIANG’S EXCELLENT ANTI-TARIFF ADVENTURE: Chinese Premier Li Qiang will take the Chinese government’s campaign to expand trade ties to the annual summit of the ASEAN-Gulf Cooperation Council in Malaysia on May 27. Li will use the occasion “to rally against Washington’s tariffs,” Reuters reported. Li’s destination underscores how Beijing sees deeper trade ties with ASEAN and the Gulf states as key to diversifying exports away from the U.S. in the face of tariff frictions with the U.S.. And it follows Xi Jinping’s three-country swing through Southeast Asia last month to drum up closer trade with ASEAN countries.

ONE BOOK, THREE QUESTIONS

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

The Book: Should the World Fear China?

The Author: Zhou Bo is a retired senior colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Large swathes of the world — the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, etc. — do have fears about China’s rise and intentions. Is that justified?

I think primarily that fear is in the West. They see China, a country that is so different and is so powerful, keeps rising. This raises uncertainty or even fear in their minds. In the rest of the world, people’s feelings toward China are less hostile or less resentful. Still, we have lingering uncertainties or fear in some places, because China’s impression in the Indo Pacific is a patchy picture.

China’s rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal is spooking the U.S. — what’s that about?

I do believe China should increase its nuclear weapons. But not to reach parity with the United States, but to the extent that the United States will no longer think in any way about a possible preemptive nuclear strike on China. Because there are some people suggesting that given that the U.S. conventional weapons look somewhat inadequate in deterring China and the possible conflict over Taiwan.

But I hope China will just maintain and encourage other countries to maintain a “no first use” of nuclear weapons policy.

Do you need to self-censor or submit your written work — including the contents of this book — to official Chinese censors?

When I was working in the military, I did need censorship approval to publish. Because if you present an opinion to the New York Times without your boss knowing about it, that is very inappropriate. But not now since I retired and have been working at Tsinghua, because it is an academic institution.

And the foreign ministry and the Publicity Department don’t trouble me. They find me almost a rare species — someone who can write in English and somehow convince foreigners without being biased. I don’t try to change people’s perceptions, but I believe there are always two sides of the same coin. What I can do is to explain the Chinese side.

Thanks to: Heidi Vogt, Emma Cordover and Dean Southwell.

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