An internal document obtained by NR indicates that the State Department appeased progressive critics of its China policy.
An internal document obtained by NR indicates that the State Department appeased progressive critics of its China policy.
I n a document issued last August, the State Department asked U.S. diplomats to soften their use of certain language condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s broadly damaging behavior — its “malign influence.” The document, experts tell NR, marks, at least, a critical yet quiet watering-down of Washington’s rhetoric toward Beijing.
News of the document’s existence comes at a critical juncture for the Biden administration’s handling of China, as Beijing ratchets up its military provocations in the Taiwan Strait and President Biden reportedly plans to see General Secretary Xi Jinping for a potential in-person meeting in November.
Notably, the six-page cable, approved by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and marked sensitive but unclassified, was circulated widely within the State Department and cleared by two White House offices, according to a copy recently reviewed by National Review. Titled “Guidance on PRC Messaging and Nomenclature in Department Products and Communications,” it instructs officials on how to use specific language when discussing China-related topics.
“The Department aims for precise and specific language that reflects this Administration’s policy approach to the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” it begins. “This requires the Department’s written products and diplomatic engagements focus explicitly on the PRC government’s actions and conduct — e.g., making clear U.S. criticism is not directed toward PRC nationals, the global Chinese diaspora, or U.S. citizens of Chinese descent, as well as citizens of other countries who are of Chinese ethnicity or heritage.”
It continues: “These principles serve as a guide to ensure the Department avoids conflating ethnicity and heritage with the negative political decisions and actions of the PRC government or the Chinese Communist Party; they are not meant to constrain cable reporting or messaging in other languages where there may be imperfect translations of these terms.”
While Blinken and other officials briefly acknowledged its existence — and the goal of encouraging specificity — last October, the document’s contents have not previously been reported. It effectively demonstrates the administration’s unwillingness to grapple with the very nature of the Chinese regime, experts told NR.
“It reflects a confused policy approach, just as Secretary Blinken’s speech reflected a confused policy approach,” said Mary Kissel, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo’s senior adviser and behind-the-scenes strategist who played a major role in toughening State’s China policy. She was referring to a speech Blinken gave in May warning that Beijing’s actions threaten international order, while also emphasizing that the U.S. would continue to see cooperation with China on climate, nuclear nonproliferation, and global public health.
While Kissel, who is now executive vice president at Stephens Inc., said that “it’s a good thing” for officials to be specific, she added that this policy guidance “doesn’t reflect the fact that the party runs the country.”
“We used the word ‘communist’ repeatedly” in statements, she said, because Pompeo’s team thought it critical to reflect the nature of the regime in order to help people understand why the party says what it says. She added that documents circulated around several department bureaus and wordsmithed by large groups of people, as this one was, often contain a “lowest common denominator” of watered-down language.
While Pompeo warned, in one of his final acts as secretary, for example, that Beijing’s genocide against Uyghurs shows “what [the Chinese Communist Party] will be emboldened to do to the free world, in the not-so-distant future,” such a sweeping denunciation of CCP conduct would presumably run afoul of department policy today.
“It is fine to use the term ‘CCP’ when discussing aspects of the party’s ideology, governance model, and political concepts, or concrete actions that include direct CCP involvement. As shorthand in referring to the PRC central government, simply use ‘Beijing’ or ‘PRC government,’” states the guidance.
A former government official familiar with the issue, however, said, “When the cable came across my desk, I thought it was a good work product” because it brought greater specificity to China policy. The former official added, on condition of anonymity, that although the document’s treatment of references to the CCP might be a bit narrow, it’s important that non-China-specialist State Department employees be provided clear guidance on language for situations where an entity other than the Party might be most accurate to mention.
Another noteworthy aspect to the guidance document is that it confirms NR’s previous reporting that State had curtailed its use of the phrase “malign influence” to refer to Chinese misbehavior.
“Malign influence” is a widely used diplomatic umbrella term for the many ways in which the CCP exercises influence over American institutions, the U.N., and other foreign entities to undermine free societies. In fact, it is so widely employed that even some Biden officials still use it on occasion, as U.N. ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield did during a podcast interview this past month.
The guidance says that the term “’malign influence’ by itself has been overused to describe an array of PRC actions” and that “its generic nature without specific examples undercuts our goal in justifying collective action against specific behaviors of concern.”
It instead urges officials to identify specific actions with “specific language to clearly indicate the degree of threat that the action poses.” It continues: “The goal is to communicate with more nuanced and precise descriptions, and move away from generic terminology that leads interlocutors to the conclusion that our concern lies with PRC government involvement instead of the specific activity.”
“This probably explains a lot about why the Biden administration has been pulling its punches on China,” said Michael Sobolik, a China expert at the American Foreign Policy Council and a former Senate foreign-policy adviser. He added that the move away from the broader “malign influence” phrase suggests that the administration draws a distinction between criticism of the Chinese regime’s actions and criticism of the regime itself, prohibiting the latter to keep the door open to dialogue and the cooperative agenda that Blinken has outlined.
Notably, the document applies a different standard to other regimes. Despite directing officials to start “moving away” from calling out Beijing’s malign influence, it states that it “applies only to the PRC and should not be taken to preclude the use of the term ‘malign influence’ for other actors, including Russia and Iran.”
This is a glaring exception. As recently as late July, the State Department issued a statement titled “Targeting Russia’s Global Malign Influence Operations and Election Interference Activities.”
The reason State exempted Iran and Russia from this is probably that the administration is not pursuing a cooperate-compete strategy with those countries, Sobolik explained.
Members of Congress and other agencies still use the phrase “malign influence” when discussing threats related to China and other actors. A few years ago, Congress directed the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to establish a “Foreign Malign Influence Center” as a clearinghouse for activities coordinated by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and others.
Foggy Bottom’s approach here is also teeing up a clash with congressional conservatives, as Republicans stand a chance at retaking the House next year. One influential House Republican, Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, told NR, “It is deeply disturbing that the Biden administration has labeled fellow Americans as semi-fascists and domestic terrorists but draws the line at labeling the CCP’s actions against the U.S. as ‘malign influence.’”
The former official defended the department’s reasoning, arguing, “I agree with those who say it’s a broad, vague term” and calling the cable’s precision in terms “helpful.” But State’s position here can likely also be explained, in part, as acceptance of certain progressive narratives linking U.S. attempts to describe the nature of the Chinese regime with a rise in hate crimes. Speaking briefly about the cable during a webinar last October, Blinken said, “We know from our history that when we’re managing a tough relationship with another country, people from that country, or with that heritage, can be made to feel like they don’t belong here, that they can’t be trusted, or that somehow they’re adversaries of the United States.”
Later that month, a progressive researcher took credit for the change, saying that based on her conversations with State Department officials, “the work we’re doing to shine light on these issues is having a positive impact in ensuring that we don’t use sweeping terms like ‘malign influence’ to describe China’s influence.” At the time, that researcher, Jessica Lee, was a fellow at the Quincy Institute think tank, which is known for advocating a softer, more cooperative stance toward Beijing. Throughout 2021 she had led a months-long campaign to convince lawmakers and the executive branch that significant aspects of U.S. policies and criticism of Beijing’s conduct had led to anti-Asian hate crimes amid the Covid pandemic.
Also last October, the department’s internal magazine had said that the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association led the drafting process, calling the document a guide to talking about U.S.–China policy “while recognizing the very real impact policy has on the AAPI community in the U.S.”
Interestingly, two White House officials cleared the document. The first is Liza Tobin, who served as the National Security Council’s China director under both the Trump and the Biden administrations. The other is a less-expected official: Erika Moritsugu, the White House’s senior liaison to the AAPI community — a role apparently not related to foreign-policy decision-making. The White House did not respond to NR’s questions about Moritsugu’s highly unusual involvement in the policy guidance.
For its part, the State Department did not make any officials available for interviews and replied to a series of detailed questions about the process behind the guidance with a brief statement that seemed to quote directly from the document. A few weeks ago — nearly a year after Foggy Bottom first issued its China guidance — the Biden administration appointed Lee to a senior role involving China policy within State’s bureau of legislative affairs.