State Department Taps New Top China Official, Foreign Policy, Aug. 31, 2023.
By Robbie Gramer, a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy, and Jack Detsch, a Pentagon and national security reporter at Foreign Policy.
Veteran diplomat Mark Lambert will lead the new “China House.”
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep! Robbie and Jack here. Wanna feel old? Karl Mathiesen, a senior reporter over at Politico, can help: He’s been waiting on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the State Department for six years. As he pointed out in a follow-up email, that’s about the same length of time as World War II—and he has had two children since filing the request. State’s response to the frustrated reporter? “We truly appreciate your continued patience.”
(Sidebar: If anyone at the State Department is reading this, Robbie also has three FOIA requests from 2017 alone that he hasn’t heard back on, so if you could help get that sorted out, it would be greatly appreciated.)
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The State Department’s “China House” has a new boss, Ukraine’s counteroffensive is finally making gains, and the results are in from a White House-sponsored AI hacking challenge.
‘China House’ Has a New Headmaster
The State Department has tapped a senior diplomat to lead its new initiative focused on countering China on the world stage, three people familiar with the matter confirmed to SitRep.
Mark Lambert is slated to become the next head of the Office of China Coordination at the State Department. Dubbed the “China House,” the office, which was established last year, oversees coordination among the U.S. diplomatic corps on countering China in regions beyond just the Asia-Pacific.
Eyes on the global prize. The China House is aimed at tracking and coordinating responses to China’s geopolitical power plays in Latin America, Africa, Eurasia, and elsewhere. It mirrors a similar entity in the CIA, the China Mission Center, which was set up in 2021, as Bloomberg reported at the time and the agency later announced.
The new man with a plan. Lambert, SitRep sources say, is well respected and will bring more heft to the nascent State Department office. (Kudos to Reuters, which first reported the news.)
Lambert is set to land one of the most important diplomatic assignments in Washington at a time when the State Department has faced staffing issues and criticism from Capitol Hill over its management of China-related policies—both from progressives on the left saying the Biden administration is being too hawkish and stumbling the United States toward a cold war and from Republicans who say it isn’t doing enough to counter China’s growing geopolitical influence.
This appointment signals that the Biden administration is doubling down on its hawkish approach to China and reorienting how federal agencies focus on Beijing’s activities globally.
Another diplomat, Rick Waters, previously led the China House but left in June to join the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm. Lambert, his replacement, is expected to also be named deputy assistant secretary of state for China and Taiwan, the sources told SitRep.
Lambert was formerly the U.S. special envoy for North Korea and also in 2020 established an office dedicated to blunting the rise of authoritarian influence (aka China) at the United Nations and other international institutions. That came after an embarrassing diplomatic defeat for the Trump administration when a U.S.-backed candidate to run a top U.N. agency was routed by the Chinese candidate. Lambert also served two stints at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing as well as in Vietnam and Japan. (Interestingly, his first post in the State Department was in Bogotá at the height of Colombia’s war against notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.)
Team Biden’s pet diplomatic project. The China House, a brainchild of top Biden administration officials (as we first reported in September 2021), faced criticism from the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for adding new bureaucratic layers and overlapping authorities to a department already mired in red tape. Sen. James Risch later greenlit the creation of the China House after the State Department made changes to how it would function and coordinate on countering China.
Still, unlike many senior State Department posts, Lambert won’t have to face a Senate confirmation for this role.
When approached for comment on Lambert, a State Department spokesperson declined to comment on the move.