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China’s National People’s Congress, the country’s toothless legislature, is in session. That matters not for what the members say, but for what their votes indicate about Xi Jinping's long-term plans.
On Sunday the body rubber-stamped a relatively low for 2023 — a sign that third-term Xi will not be as wedded to economic growth as he and predecessors were over the past four decades. There's also a on the way: even so, that leaves the Chinese military budget at .
Delegates will this week confirm Xi's third term as supreme ruler. Prime Minister Li Keqiang is — leaving the party fully in the hands of Xi loyalists.
It’s a big week for the United Nations, with negotiations for a high seas treaty concluding successfully over the weekend, and two major conferences now underway (more below).
THE WEEK AHEAD
MONDAY
A United Nations in Qatar will run through Thursday, for the first time in 15 years. . Companies including Microsoft — which over the weekend — are offering a new partnership push intended to change that dynamic. Microsoft President Brad Smith told Global Insider: “This is not a philanthropic exercise, but rather a business imperative —– And a call to action for all of us to do more."
TUESDAY
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen begins a Canada and U.S. trip that starts with a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The annual is convening in New York, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will impose sweeping gender parity rules in politics and business to coincide with International Women’s Day, a Spanish government spokesperson told Global Insider. The law will mandate that all parties alternate strictly between a man and a woman when drawing up their candidate lists. Women will need to make up at least 40 percent of ministerial posts, and take up at least 40 percent of corporate board seats.
FRIDAY
Von der Leyen will meet with U.S. President Joe Biden. The pair will talk about China, climate and to try to mend fences over the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act.
WHERE TO JOIN GLOBAL INSIDER: Catch up with recent Global Insider-led panels, below.
GLOBAL RISKS AND TRENDS
PERCEPTIONS OF AMERICA AROUND THE WORLD
A Morning Consult survey series casts light on how the U.S. is seen around the world — not just on one or two political issues or leaders, but across a swathe of political, cultural and economic touch points.
What may surprise some readers: America’s richest and closest allies, often in the Anglosphere, have the most criticism to share. Some of the highlights:
Republicans have a Trump problem: .
U.S. cultural exports remain a dominant force in Africa and South America: From movies to food to digital, from geopolitical rivals.
Guns remain America’s Achilles' heel: The U.S. does a terrible job at managing the overwhelming number of guns in the country, and their deadly effects, according to the Morning Consult data. : an average of just 5 percent of Australians, Canadians, Britons, Germans, French and Japanese think gun violence is well-managed in the U.S.
Religious and racial freedom — for some: There are patterns across the data on and — including that Canada, Australia and the U.K. are the most skeptical of how Americans handle these issues. Poland was the only country surveyed in which respondents said America treated people of color better than their own country did.
ELECTION CORNER
ESTONIA — KALLAS SET FOR ANOTHER TERM: Estonia’s centrist Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was the clear winner of last night’s parliamentary election, with her party coming first. Predictions that far-right EKRE — which campaigned against Estonia’s staunchly pro-Ukraine stance — might win more seats and make it harder for Kallas to form a government didn’t materialize.
Results: Kallas’ Reform Party improved its results, winning 38 of 101 seats — four more than in 2019. Second-placed EKRE won just 17 seats. In Brussels, Reform is part of Emmanuel Macron’s liberal Renew Europe group. .
E-stonia wins: More than half of the ballots were cast electronically, which likely helped get a record turnout of 63 percent. Estonian leaders often pride themselves in having built a “digital society” and government, where most administrative tasks can be performed online.
NIGERIA — “IT’S MY TURN” KLEPTOCRAT DECLARED WINNER: Bola Tinubu, a wealthy kleptocratic “godfather” of Nigeria politics — who campaigned on the slogan “it’s my turn” — has been declared the winner of the country’s presidential election. Peter Obi, who placed third in official tallies, rejected the results and . Obi has twice won court challenges overturning gubernatorial elections. International observers have .
Chatham House’s Matthew Page criticized Western governments for being more interested in military relations with Nigeria than in supporting good governance: “They appear to have turned a blind eye, deepened their engagement with the country’s heavy-handed, highly corrupt military, and in London, New York and elsewhere,” while also overlooking actions like a local Twitter ban and forced abortion program in Nigeria’s army.
RUSSIA CORNER
RUSSIA AND IRAN WORRIES: Gulf states and Israel have , Semafor’s Jay Solomon reported, worried that doing so will affect the balance of power in the Middle East by building up Iran's air force.
CHIEF OF WAGNER MERCENARY GROUP WARNS OF RUSSIAN FRONTLINE COLLAPSE: said on his Wagner Orchestra Telegram channel on Sunday that Russia’s front lines near Bakhmut could collapse if his forces did not receive more ammunition “For now, we are trying to figure out the reason: Prigozhin wrote. Prigozhin last month.
UNITED NATIONS CORNER
OCEANS TREATY NEGOTIATED: Last week was a big week for the world’s oceans — the subject of three major conferences.
On Saturday night in New York City, two decades of efforts culminated in a new legally binding treaty being agreed to protect the high seas — the two-thirds of our oceans lying outside national boundaries known as “exclusive economic areas.” The treaty will be the basis of “marine protected areas” — the global equivalent of national parks for the high seas.
The treaty negotiations were notable in featuring consistent input from the U.S., U.K., EU and China, alongside a coalition of developing countries. When ratified by national legislatures, that gets rid of more than $20 billion in fishing subsidies.
The end goal: have from overfishing, mining and other disruptions.
Meanwhile … At the in Panama, the U.S. delegation headed by climate envoy John Kerry made $6 billion of commitments across 77 announcements, mostly focused on climate action such as greener shipping, offshore renewable energy and sustainable fishing.
ENVIRONMENT — GABBING IN GABON Gabon hosted a on protecting the world’s largest forests attended by French President Emmanuel Macron, but : Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Congo President Félix Tshisekedi.
Around 90 percent of Gabon is covered by trees, and its government wants to be paid in carbon offset markets for forest preservation. Typically those markets pay only for newly planted trees, not the preservation of existing ecosystems. Akim Daouda, the head of Gabon’s sovereign wealth fund, told Bloomberg that the easiest route to replacing oil production revenue is allowing logging — and that .
GERMANY’S SCHOLZ ON TOUR
Chancellor Olaf Scholz without any media, any big delegation or any fanfare like a state dinner. Tense discussions over China are one reason: The U.S. is consulting with allies on whether to jointly impose sanctions on Beijing if China supplies weapons to Russia, something that would put Germany in a tight spot given its strong trade relations with China.
Berlin and Beijing: Scholz on for its war against Ukraine, suggesting that Berlin has received bilateral assurances from Beijing on the issue. Read the .
Scholz was speaking at a press conference with the EU’s von der Leyen, who told reporters that the EU has received “no evidence” so far from the U.S. that Beijing is considering supplying lethal support to Moscow.
If the EU were to sanction Beijing, “this would put China on the same level as Iran, against which the EU recently imposed sanctions, as a supplier of weapons,“ said Michael Roth, a Social Democrat like Scholz who chairs the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and who is open to the idea.
Berlin and Washington: The absence of a press conference after the Biden-Scholz bilateral was noted by reporters, but is a sign of a press-shy Biden as much as any sign of tense bilateral relations. So far in 2023 Biden also failed to meet the press after meetings with Japanese PM Kishida Fumio, Dutch PM Mark Rutte, and Brazil’s President Lula.
GLOBETROTTERS
EU TIGHTENS ETHICS RULES FOR STAFF AS QATAR CONTROVERSY GROWS: The crackdown comes after POLITICO revealed top EU transport official Henrik Hololei between the EU and Qatar. EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly will conduct an investigation.
Meanwhile jailed MEPs Eva Kaili and Marc Tarabella will remain behind bars after losing their appeals to be released while authorities continue the sprawling Qatargate corruption probe. Kaili will spend at least two more months in jail; Tarabella at least one more month.
UK AMBASSADOR IN MOSCOW RUNS INTO ETHICAL QUESTIONS: husband of Britain's ambassador in Moscow, Deborah Bronnert, has run the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce lobby group since 2017, designed to boost trade with Russia, .
THE U.S. LAWMAKER WHO USED TO WORK AT THE U.N.: Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) worked as the “Big Data Lead” in UNICEF’s Innovation Unit and is now the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Africa and on the House Armed Services Committee. . Jacobs’ grandfather Irwin Jacobs founded tech giant Qualcomm.
BRAIN FOOD
PODCAST: Finnish ambassador: , interview by Ryan Lizza.
SHORT READ: , by AEI’s China specialist that takes DC to task over its inaction on China, despite all the recent hearings and rhetoric: “The famous bipartisan China consensus is to rant and rave, and not do anything that might actually come at a price.”
BOOK: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941,” by Robert Kagan. Here Kagan examines America’s rise to global superpower status, looking at the costs of both isolationism and war, and how the U.S. ended up profiting.
ONE FUN THING
CAN AN AI CHATBOT DO FOREIGN POLICY? My colleagues and sent the answers to Ned Price, the State Department’s top spokesperson. His response to the new competitor: “Not bad at all, but no one’s job is in jeopardy. To the extent these answers capture our policy, I sure hope the algorithm is pulling from the transcripts of my briefings. To the extent these answers are off, I sure hope the algorithm isn’t pulling from the transcripts of my briefings.”
Thanks to editor Heidi Vogt and producer Sophie Gardner
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