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TOO MANY LIVESTREAMS: As this newsletter lands in your email box, we’ll be closely monitoring Uzbekistan, with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping discussing nothing less than the future of our world. Let’s hope the meeting lives up to expectations now. I’ve even dug up a clip from the Russian Duma’s video channel, where Xi’s top aide pledged “coordination” during a meeting in Russia last week. Plus, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the (European) Union speech, and she’s bashed China for the third time in a row. We’ve got all this covered for you.

COUNTDOWN: It’s 31 days before the Communist Party convenes the 20th National Congress. Over the next few issues we will be discussing why the conference matters to Europe. Stay tuned.

WELCOME TO CHINA DIRECT! I’m Stuart Lau, Europe-China Correspondent at POLITICO, bringing you your weekly Thursday edition.

And mark your calendar: On Wednesday Sept. 28 at 4 p.m. Brussels time, please join U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) and French legislator Benjamin Haddad for a special Twitter Spaces discussion, co-hosted by me and our U.S.-China Correspondent Phelim Kine, on how Xi’s move toward leader for life status may rally and rattle the U.S.-E.U. relationship.

DATE IN SAMARKAND: Let’s see if Putin’s week can get any worse. Is he going to get any real help from Xi as his strategic position worsens in Ukraine and political cracks even start to emerge in Moscow, or is he simply going to find that he’s becoming more and more of a Chinese vassal. Xi is expected to hold talks with Putin on Thursday, after a whirlwind visit to Kazakhstan the previous day, his first destination out of China since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in Wuhan.

CHINA’S STANCE ON UKRAINE: It fell to DumaTV, our favorite channel, to tell us what China actually told Russia in its own words, rather than what the Beijing state media want us to hear. That opportunity arose when the Duma’s chairman Vyacheslav Volodin was meeting Li Zhanshu, his Chinese counterpart and a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.

IN LI’S WORDS: “On the Ukraine question, the U.S. and NATO cornered Russia right on its doorstep. This involved Russia’s national security, and its people’s life and safety,” he said, according to the Duma’s video channel. (Watch it here if you speak Chinese.) “China understands [the fact that] Russia took the appropriate measures, and has offered coordination in various ways.” He continued: “We can say Russia was cornered. Under such circumstances, Russia struck back in order to safeguard its core interest.”

Vague yet clear: He didn’t elaborate what kind of “coordination” that was — well, after all Russia wouldn’t be oblivious to that. His remarks, uploaded last week but circulated only on Wednesday, attracted an immediate audience in Europe, as it shows that Beijing is going much further than shown in public statements in the past, in offering and confirming support for Russia. “It’s worrying, since we would’ve hoped Beijing to play a more subtle role,” a senior EU diplomat told us.

NOW CONTRAST THIS: The Chinese statement made no mention of Ukraine at all — even though Li brought it up himself. State tabloid Global Times reported it this way: “When meeting with leaders of the five State Duma factions, Li said that all the groups have demonstrated their support to enhancing friendly cooperation with China, showing that it is the broad consensus of all parties and people from all walks of life in Russia to develop the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era.”

Putin is presumably after a bit more than platitudes.

INTEL CHIEF CANCELS: The European Union’s top intelligence official canceled a meeting with his Taiwanese counterpart after his top-secret preparations were seemingly leaked to Beijing in advance, according to two diplomats with knowledge of the situation.

A trip, as understood in Taiwan: José Casimiro Morgado, director of the European Union Intelligence and Situation Centre, was supposed to make the below-the-radar visit to meet Taiwanese officials in October, according to the diplomats.

But but but: His plan came to a halt, after Beijing got hold of the information and put pressure on the EU to scrap what would have been an unusually sensitive visit amid China’s escalating military threats on Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its own territory.

EU SAYS THEY JUST DECIDED NOT TO … CALL: After the initial publication of my article with my colleague Jacopo Barigazzi, an EU official briefed on the matter contradicted the understanding in Taipei that Morgado was planning a visit. He said Morgado had simply planned to hold meetings by phone with Taiwanese officials, but had decided to cancel even this long-distance communication because of the Chinese reaction to last month’s visit to Taipei by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Overreaction or utmost caution? Or damage control? Your call.

The Chinese Mission to the EU, when asked about Morgado’s original plan, said China “has consistently and firmly opposed any form of official exchanges between the Taiwan region and countries or organizations having diplomatic ties with China.”

An EU spokesman said: “As a general rule, we never comment on everyday working activities of the European External Action Service staff in public.”

Taiwan’s de facto embassy, the Taipei Representative Office in the EU and Belgium, said in a reply: “We have no further information.”

For those lost in EU’s structure: The EU Intelligence and Situation Centre, known in the Brussels bubble as INTCEN, focuses on civilian “intelligence-based situational awareness” and forms one of two pillars of the EU’s “single intelligence analysis capacity,” alongside the military-focused Intelligence Directorate of the EU Military Staff.

ONE CHINA, PLUS WORKING WITH TAIWAN: Speaking during a session on EU-Taiwan relations in the European Parliament on Tuesday, Borrell vowed to “intensify” ties with the self-ruling democratic island, while abiding by the “one China policy.” “Let me be clear on this: ‘One China policy’ doesn’t prevent us, the European Union, from persisting and intensifying our cooperation in Taiwan, nor from expressing our concerns at the recent rising tensions,” Borrell said.

MEANWHILE IN THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: The lawmakers are expected to pass a motion today calling on the Commission to, among other things, change the name of the European Economic and Trade Office in Taipei “in order to reflect the broad scope of ties.”

FIVE THINGS stand out this week in the EU’s policymaking about China.

FIRST, VON DER LEYEN TAKES ON CHINESE INFLUENCE: Chinese investments in European academia are a problem. That’s according to Von der Leyen in her annual speech.

Here’s what she said: “Earlier this year, a university in Amsterdam shut down an allegedly independent research centre, which was actually funded by Chinese entities. This centre was publishing so-called research on human rights, dismissing the evidence of forced labor camps for Uyghurs as ‘rumours’. These lies are toxic for our democracies,” she said, before announcing a new plan, Defence of Democracy, to screen such activities. “We will not allow any autocracy’s Trojan horses to attack our democracies from within … Many of us have taken democracy for granted for too long.”

EXPERT’S VIEW: According to Ivana Karásková, a Czech researcher from the China Observers think tank, “the new toolbox is a significant sign that Europe understands finally the challenge posed to academic freedoms and knowledge security by China. However, as it is not yet clear, at least to me, how the instrument would look like, it is difficult to evaluate it.”

Values, and technology: “Confucius Institutes are the most visible, yet the least problematic part of Chinese influence over European academia,” Karásková said. “I think that far more problematic, from the point of view of trusted research and knowledge security, is China’s interest in European critical and emerging technologies with dual-use application.”

Germany, and beyond: She also said China doesn’t only targets developed economies such as Germany. “It is not only the problem of the technologically advanced countries in Western Europe. A recently published research showed that dozens of Chinese funding agencies on both the national and provincial level provide funding for scientific research in Central Europe,” said Karásková. “Several research projects were financed by the Thousand Talents Program, China’s scheme to identify and recruit foreign researchers, which has been connected to proven breaches of research integrity.”

SECOND, FORCED LABOR BAN: The European Commission Wednesday published its proposal to ban goods made with forced labor from the EU market. “Forced labour … is a cruel form of modern slavery, with millions trapped worldwide,” EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said. “So the goal is clear: to keep the EU market free from products made, extracted or harvested with forced labour.”

They won’t say which countries are targeted, but: The ban is largely seen as aimed at China, which the U.N. says operates mass internment and forced labor programs in the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang. The country is suspected of using forced labor to produce all kinds of products, from textiles to electronics. Still, Dombrovskis defended the ban’s all-encompassing approach, which also bans EU products made with forced labor. “This is important for the effectiveness of the prohibition, but also to avoid discriminating against our partner countries,” he said. So much about a geopolitical EU.

What could go wrong? Lawmakers are unhappy about the fact that member countries have the final say to determine the sources of forced labor. They fear the EU countries would lack the political will to make such decisions, if the EU doesn’t have a central role.

Now read this: My colleague Sarah Anne Aarup and yours truly have this story on what to expect of the ban.

THIRD, RAW MATERIALS: Von der Leyen also singled out China as an unreliable source of critical raw materials. “Today, China controls the global processing industry. Almost 90 percent of rare earths and 60 percent of lithium are processed in China. We will identify strategic projects all along the supply chain, from extraction to refining, from processing to recycling. And we will build up strategic reserves where supply is at risk.” She proceeded to launch the European Critical Raw Materials Act, details of which will follow later on.

FOURTH, BERLIN VOWS TO GO TOUGH: Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck, from the China-hawkish Green Party, says his country won’t be naïve about Beijing anymore. According to an interview with Reuters, Germany could not allow Beijing’s protectionism to distort competition and would not hold back criticism of human rights violations under threat of losing business. “We cannot allow ourselves to be blackmailed,” he said in the interview.

ImPORTantly: Habeck suggested he would be opposed to plans by Cosco, a Chinese state-run shipping giant, to buy a stake in a container operator at Germany’s Hamburg port. The port is located in the stronghold of Olaf Scholz, the Hamburg mayor turned German chancellor. “I’m leaning towards the fact that we don’t allow that,” he said.

FIFTH, CHINESE DIPLOMATS ARE AROUND: Beijing’s special envoy for Europe Wu Hongbo was in Spain this week, and met with the foreign ministry’s state secretary Ángeles Moreno Bau, who tweeted: “We reviewed the state of our bilateral relations, including the need to ease mobility restrictions. Likewise, I encouraged China to play a constructive role towards ending the Russian aggression in Ukraine and I conveyed Spain’s concern on the situation of Human Rights in Xinjiang.”

NOVEL IDEAS: My Heroic Husband, Good Spring Time, and Magic World are among 16 “Chinese web novels” newly added to the collection of the British Library, reported by Sixth Tone. Apparently there are print versions too, if you like it the old-fashioned way.

MANY THANKS TO: My editor Christian Oliver, and reporters Jacopo Barigazzi and Sarah Anne Aarup.

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