China Makes a Fool of Gavin Newsom

C hina’s announcement that it will ban the export of rare minerals to the U.S. has brought into sudden relief the failure of decades of American geopolitical strategy. It also spotlights the role of such useful American idiots as California governor Gavin Newsom.

Believing he can use his executive authority in one state to halt climate changes all over the globe, Newsom has accelerated the destruction of California’s once-immense oil industry. He has fenced in the production and retail sale of gasoline with regulations that have driven up the price of fuel to the highest in the nation — and then, displaying a remarkable Hollywood talent for mimicking outrage, called a special session of the legislature to consider how to punish Big Oil for the outcome. He has bet California’s future on technology that doesn’t exist or that requires rare minerals over which China has a near monopoly, including graphite, the key component in electric vehicle batteries, and other minerals used in the production of semiconductors and munitions. Once a global energy producer, California is now utterly dependent on imported foreign oil and Chinese strategic interests.

Newsom might have seen this coming but was focused on building his global bona fides in advance of a likely run for the White House. In six years, he has produced a raft of climate-change policies and has negotiated climate deals directly with foreign actors, including China. Reflecting Chinese interests more than Californians’, Newsom led the campaign to ban by 2035 the sale in California of new gasoline-powered vehicles.

That announcement came in October 2023, the same month that Newsom traveled to China to talk green energy with Chinese president Xi Jinping. California’s progressive establishment was thrilled.

Six months later, in April 2024, Newsom dispatched two cabinet secretaries — representing the state’s environmental and transportation agencies — to China for talks with local officials in Shanghai and the Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Hainan. To add insult to their self-inflicted injury, his diplomatic team met with Beijing’s handpicked officials in Hong Kong.

The following month, Chinese provincial officials returned the favor. They met with their California counterparts on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, home of the state’s California-China Climate Institute. They “announced a series of new actions to advance subnational climate cooperation and progress from the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters,” according to an institute press release. Not to be outdone, San Francisco officials met separately with Chinese local officials in a league of their own, the Greater Bay Area-California Dialogue.

“Just last year, our planet saw the hottest temperatures in over 2,000 years. There has never been more urgency than now to act on the climate crisis — and we have to act together,” Newsom said. “California and China will continue building on our decades of climate work because this moment calls for an open hand, not a closed fist.”

No one person better exemplifies Newsom’s commitment to entangling foreign alliances than Amy Tong, his secretary of state operations. She was Newsom’s emissary to the November 2023 Sister Cities International conference in Suzhou, China, and to the group’s July conference in Tacoma, Wash.

Both events were co-hosted by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. CPAFFC is “a self-styled independent nongovernmental group dedicated to telling foreigners about China,” reports National Review’s Jimmy Quinn. “But U.S. intelligence officials allege that CPAFFC in fact operates the party’s influence operations targeting state and local officials across America.”

California’s role in Chinese united-front programs continued through October of this year, when Newsom dispatched Tong again, this time to Beijing. She was accompanied by Alameda County supervisor David Haubert. In a statement, California’s government operations agency told Quinn that Tong was “in China building on the state’s significant and longstanding efforts across administrations to strengthen subnational partnerships that benefit Californians.”

A photograph of the event “was disseminated . . . across Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlets calibrated for international audiences and the accounts they control on social media,” Quinn reported.

Quinn’s reporting on CPAFFC illustrates the dangers of gubernatorial foreign policies:

In a 2022 bulletin, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence characterized CPAFFC as one of “many quasi-official entities or proxies involved in united front work and foreign influence operations whose ties to the CCP or PRC government may be hidden or not readily apparent.” It cited the association’s efforts to set up “sister-city partnerships” with U.S. participants. The ODNI also accused CPAFFC of leveraging those arrangements to push Beijing’s political priorities on Taiwan and Tibet.

Despite those warnings, Newsom has forged ahead with a series of events directly involving CPAFFC and Chinese Communist Party officials.

It’s clear that Newsom’s diplomacy is doing nothing good for California or for Americans. Following China’s announced rare-minerals export ban, it’s equally clear that China has gained additional leverage in American politics. While California abandons fossil fuels in the name of saving the global climate, China’s carbon emissions continue to rise. Selling green technology to — and signing inspirational memoranda of understanding with — its California counterparts, China continues to build coal-fueled electricity-generation plants. Its 1,161 coal power plants account for 55 percent of global carbon emissions from coal.

Newsom has mismanaged California into historic decline. He is hardly savvy enough to manage relations with a single foreign power. A few of us may remember that in 2028 when it seems almost certain he will be among those angling for the White House.