The California governor’s singular focus on climate in his relations with China has earned him criticism from human-rights advocates.
California governor Gavin Newsom plans to avoid commenting on Beijing’s human-rights abuses, tech theft, and other malign behavior during a visit to China later this month, his aides told reporters this week.
Newsom will travel to the country for site visits and meetings surrounding climate policy, Politico reported yesterday. He is expected to travel to Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Shanghai, among other destinations, meeting with local- and central-government officials. The outlet also reported that some of the California governor’s stops will include Tesla’s factory in Shanghai and the University of Hong Kong.
The emphasis on engaging Chinese officials on climate issues echoes the Biden administration’s approach, which has featured a heavy dose of climate diplomacy. But unlike the president, Newsom does not plan to broach the Chinese Communist Party’s malfeasance.
His aides told Politico that he will “steer clear of engaging on hot-button issues like technology transfers, trade subsidies and human rights issues in Hong Kong and China’s Xinjiang province.”
At the national level, Democratic officials broadly support climate-focused diplomacy with China as one avenue for productive cooperation as the rest of the bilateral relationship darkens. The Biden administration has consistently advanced climate talks in that vein, even as it has condemned the party’s genocide of Uyghurs and taken measures to cut off the Chinese military-civil-fusion system from sensitive U.S. technologies.
Numerous governors and state houses have similarly advanced and enacted policies that, among other things, restrict the sale of farmland near sensitive sites to Chinese nationals, ban the use of drones manufactured by Chinese military-linked firms, and prohibit schools from engaging with Chinese-government-backed educational programs. But Newsom has instead sought to build bridges with Chinese officials.
In April, he inked a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese province of Hainan to advance California’s cooperation with the province on air pollution, climate adaptation, carbon neutrality, clean energy, and electric vehicles. That followed another agreement he signed last year with China’s central government on a series of similar issues. Newsom called China a “partner” in a statement announcing the agreement with China’s ministry of ecology and environment. Lauren Sanchez, who serves as Newsom’s climate adviser, told Politico that he will renew existing agreements with China’s national development and reform commission and with the city of Beijing during the upcoming trip.
That singular focus on climate has earned him criticism from human-rights advocates who say that he’s failing to advance his agenda’s stated goals by ignoring human-rights concerns. Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch, said on X that if Newsom is truly serious about advancing climate-related goals, challenging China is “not optional.” She pointed to Beijing’s suppression of free speech, forced labor in the clean-tech field, and the persecution of climate activists.
News of his upcoming trip also follows significant new warnings about the egregious nature of Chinese espionage that intelligence chiefs from the U.S. and its allies issued this week in Newsom’s state. During a forum at Stanford University, FBI director Christopher Wray and the intelligence chiefs of the other Five Eyes countries — the U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand — spoke at length about China’s spy campaigns. “The threat is that we have the Chinese government engaged in the most sustained, scaled, and sophisticated theft of intellectual property and acquisition of expertise that is unprecedented in human history,” said Mike Burgess, the head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization.