A New National Security Strategy

More continuity than the Administration, or its critics, would have you believe

Friends,

Just before midnight on Thursday, the Trump Administration dropped their much-anticipated National Security Strategy.

I read it through and then decided to look at how it was being covered in the press.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, what was reported about the document didn’t quite match what was written.

Here is a selection of the headlines… mostly hyperventilation that the administration is critical of its Europeans allies and that the administration considers the Western hemisphere as important.

The Trump Administration’s criticism of Europe is that Europeans have been irresponsible allies and that due to the threats in the world today, the United States desperately needs the Europeans to get their act together (for readers of this newsletter, you won’t be surprised by that perspective).

It isn’t 1949 any more… Europe’s population isn’t starving and its infrastructure isn’t destroyed, and the Russian Federation isn’t the Soviet Union, it can’t even subdue Ukraine, a former Soviet Republic.

How is it that 450 million Europeans need 350 million Americans to defend them from 140 million Russians?

Europe has trouble deterring Russian aggression BECAUSE European leaders have been irresponsible and European citizens have not been serious about the threats that face them (Newsflash: it ain’t climate change).

The Strategy points out that “Europe remains strategically and culturally vital to the United States.” The section on Europe is titled “Promoting European Greatness” and it asserts that “[w]e want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.” The Administration wants these things because it needs Europe as an ally.

This is criticism of a passive-aggressive teammate who isn’t pulling their weight.

It is an appeal to ally to “be better.”

For those who were looking for the Administration’s objective in ending Russia’ war in Ukraine, its there:

“It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.”

It goes to point out that:

“[n]ot only can we not afford to write Europe off—doing so would be self-defeating for what this strategy aims to achieve.”

[How incredibly horrible that the United States should want Europe to live up to its potential and be a responsible ally… completely outrageous, huh?!?]

When it comes to the reason why the U.S. needs to concentrate on the Western hemisphere, the Strategy points out:

“Non-Hemispheric competitors [the PRC and Russia] have made major inroads into our Hemisphere, both to disadvantage us economically in the present, and in ways that may harm us strategically in the future. Allowing these incursions without serious pushback is another great American strategic mistake of recent decades.”

Contrary to the article by Jonathan Cheng in the Wall Street Journal (Trump’s National-Security Strategy Softens Language on China) or the hot-take from John Cookson at the Atlantic Council (Great Power Competition is Out. The Trump corollary is in.), this isn’t an abandonment of great power competition or a “softening on China.” This is a strategy that views the U.S. rivalry with both the PRC and the Russian Federation as the most important challenge that Americans must face and it makes demands of allies to do much more than they have in the past.

So, what is my hot-take?

Once you get past the obligatory hagiography (which is admittedly obnoxious), it’s a solid strategy that is realistic about the world and generally consistent in its approach to prioritize attention and resources. It provides a roadmap for how U.S. Departments and Agencies should integrate their activities and provides American citizens, and those outside the United States, with an understanding of what the Administration cares about, what it is trying to achieve, and how it intends to do it.

This is, first and foremost, a strategy of economic statecraft (something that nearly every major media outlet and think tank missed in their analysis).

It recognizes that the United States faces two serious rivals that are both “hostile” and “adversarial power[s]”: the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. It also recognizes that the United States’ allies have been irresponsible in their own dealings with these rivals and have failed to provide for their own defense, which forces the United States to spread itself thin and creates opportunities for these rivals to achieve their goals.

The Strategy observes that international institutions have proven ineffective in protecting U.S. interests and have been easily manipulated by America’s rivals into undermining the strengths and prosperity of the United States and its allies.

The Strategy directs that the United States “must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States (“the Quad”).”

The strategy identifies the Western Hemisphere as the most critical region for the United States to build a stable and prosperous system, while acknowledging that both the Indo-Pacific and Europe are critically important to the country’s long-term prosperity and security.

This is not an isolationist National Security Strategy… it is a global strategy to achieve global objectives because the United States has global interests.

The strategy explicitly states that deterring aggression by both the PRC and Russia in these regions is a vital interest of the United States.

The strategy seeks to deprioritize the Middle East (as the Obama, first Trump, and Biden Administrations sought to do), while recognizing that Africa is the lowest priority for U.S. resources and attention (as every other U.S. Administration has done).

Here’s a map that I think summarizes the Strategy:

IMHO, this is a pretty conventional strategy for engagement with the rest of the world.

The United States faces two primary rivals with the PRC being the most significant of the two. The primary domains of this rivalry are the economic, financial, technological, and industrial domains, therefore U.S. efforts need to focus on economic statecraft and reforming an international trading system that for too long has advantaged the PRC.

U.S. Allies lack the capacity and capability to stand up to these rivals on their own, though Europe does have the potential, if only its leaders would make better decisions. Given that these conditions are likely to persist over the long-term, the U.S. should seek to fortify its position in the Western Hemisphere (#1) against efforts by its rivals to weaken the United States.

The U.S. should bolster its allies in the Indo-Pacific (#2) and Europe (#3) to prevent its rivals from establishing exclusionary spheres of influence in those regions.

Its allies in the Indo-Pacific face the most significant rival and those allies lack the potential to stand against the PRC on their own, which drives the United States to prioritize bolstering its allies in that region (the exact same logic as the ‘Pivot to Asia’ or the ‘Rebalance’ that has been in place since 2012).

Europe has the potential to stand on its own against the secondary rival and assist the United States (as an ally) against the primary rival, but it must be persuaded to do so and to adopt policies that would make Europe a responsible ally again. Unfortunately, European leaders have for decades refused to change course.

In the medium term, the United States and its allies should stabilize their relationship with Russia in order to isolate the primary rival, the PRC.

The Middle East (#4) should be a region in which the United States pursues stability, as opposed to the Bush and Obama efforts to bring about democratization.

And Africa (#5) remains the least important region in terms of U.S. vital interests, hence it should remain an economy of force.

If I had to summarize this National Security Strategy in ten bullet points, here’s what they would be:

• The international order is defined by competition and rivalry, but the United States has incredible structural advantages if it abandons policies and approaches that have not worked.

• To capitalize on these advantages, the U.S. must husband its resources, revitalize its industrial base, and only provide access to its markets when it is beneficial to American interests. [No more free-riders]

• The People’s Republic of China remains the most serious threat to the United States and the Russian Federation is working with the PRC to undermine the U.S. in multiple ways as they seek to dominate regions that are critical to the U.S. [These two “adversarial power[s]” show up over and over throughout the Strategy, even if they are not named explicitly.]

• If the United States can avoid conflict with these two rivals, the long-term trends and American structural strengths, will give the United States the advantage and it will lay the foundation for long-term economic vitality.

• The Western Hemisphere has become unstable which threatens the foundations of American power and America’s rivals (the PRC and Russia) are accelerating that instability to weaken the United States. In order to protect U.S. interests in the long-term, the U.S. must have a firm and stable sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere and therefore, in the immediate sense, the Western hemisphere is the priority region in the National Security Strategy.

• Beyond the Western Hemisphere, the next most important region for the United States is the Indo-Pacific, which the PRC is seeking to dominate and where the U.S. must devote considerable resources to prevent the PRC from achieving its goals because its allies and partners lack the capability to do so on their own.

• India is a critical partner, but it lacks the capability to play a decisive role in helping secure U.S. interests. The U.S. should continue to build a strong relationship with India, but cannot count on New Delhi. There is hope that this might change in the future, but that change is likely beyond the window of this Administration.

• The third most important region to the United States is Europe. European allies have acted irresponsibly since the end of the Cold War and have allowed both the PRC and Russia to manipulate them into dangerous dependencies. U.S. allies in Europe have enormous potential, particularly the ability to deter Russia, but European political leaders have made major mistakes, and it is critical for the United States that Europe reverse its downward spiral. The PRC and Russia understand this dynamic and will work hard to marginalize European power.

• The Middle East is less important to the United States than it has been in recent decades given the dynamics in global energy markets, and the U.S. will rely on commercial and financial relations to maintain its influence in order to stabilize the region. The U.S. should cease its efforts to democratize the region because that leads to instability.

• Africa remains the least important region to the United States and will remain an economy of force.

As if on cue to amplify the Trump Administration’s NSS, the first three articles under the ‘Must Read’ section describe the nature of the problem facing the U.S. and its allies.

Thanks for reading!

Matt

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MUST READ

1. China is making trade impossible
   Robin Harding, Financial Times, December 1, 2025

Europe has nothing to offer and difficult decisions to make.

On a recent trip to mainland China, I found myself posing the same question, again and again, to the economists, technologists and business leaders who I met with. “Trade is an exchange. You provide something of value to me, and in return, I must offer something of value to you. So what is the product, in the future, that China would like to buy from the rest of the world?”

The answers were revealing. A few said “soyabeans and iron ore” before realising this was not much help to a European. Some observed that Louis Vuitton handbags are popular and then went on to talk about the export prospects for fast-rising Chinese luxury brands. “Higher education” was another common answer, qualified sometimes with the observation that Peking University and Tsinghua are harder to get into, and more academically rigorous, than anything on offer in the west.

Several of the economists, who had perhaps pondered the issue already, jumped ahead to a different point altogether: “This,” they said, “is why you should let Chinese companies set up factories in Europe.”

It is a train of thought that gives away the real answer to the question. Which is: nothing.

There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to. For now, to be sure, China is still a customer for semiconductors, software, commercial aircraft and the most sophisticated kinds of production machinery. But it is a customer like a resident doctor is a student. China is developing all of these goods. Soon it will make them, and export them, itself.

“Well, how can you blame us,” the conversation usually continued, after agreeing on China’s desire for self-sufficiency, “when you see how the US uses export controls as a weapon to contain us and keep us down? You need to understand the deep sense of insecurity that China feels.”

That is reasonable enough and blame does not come into it. But it leads to the following point, which I put to my interlocutors and put to you now: if China does not want to buy anything from us in trade, then how can we trade with China?

This is not a threat but a simple statement of fact. Workers in Europe, Japan, South Korea and the US need jobs. We do not want our economic development to go into reverse. And even if we did not care, without exports, we will eventually run out of ways to pay China for our imports. In a different context, Beijing policymakers do recognise this: they worry about a devaluation or default on the mountain of dollar assets China has already accepted.

The drag on the rest of the world was well illustrated when Goldman Sachs recently upgraded its forecast for the size of China’s economy in 2035. Normally, a growth upgrade in any country benefits all others: there is more demand, more consumption and more opportunity. Yet in this case, the extra Chinese growth comes from exports, taking markets from other countries. Germany will suffer the most, according to Goldman, with a drag of around 0.3 percentage points on its growth over the next few years.

So how should China’s partners respond to its explicit intention not to trade with them as equals? To its mercantilist determination to sell but not to buy?

The only good solutions lie with Beijing. It could take action to overcome deflation in its own economy, to remove structural barriers to domestic consumption, to let its exchange rate appreciate and to halt the billions in subsidies and loans it directs towards industry. That would be good for the Chinese people, too, whose living standards are sacrificed to make the country more competitive.

But outsiders have been requesting as much for decades. Whatever lip service may get paid to this, the Central Committee’s recommendations for China’s next five-year plan should temper any hope of change. Consumption is on the priority list, at number three. Items one and two are manufacturing and technology.

That leaves one difficult solution and one bad solution for Europe. The difficult solution is to become more competitive and find new sources of value, as the US does with its technology industry. That means more reform, less welfare and less regulation: not because welfare and regulation are bad per se, but because they are unaffordable given the competition.

Even that, however, will not be enough in a world where China offers everything cheaply for export and has no appetite for imports itself. There will simply be no alternative but to rely on domestic demand. Which leads to the bad solution: protectionism. It is now increasingly hard to see how Europe, in particular, can avoid large-scale protection if it is to retain any industry at all.

This path is so damaging and so fraught it is hard to recommend it. China absorbed US tariffs, but the US is the only country it regards as an equal, and Beijing is likely to respond aggressively against anyone else who erects trade barriers. It would mark a further breakdown of the global trade system.

Yet when the good options are gone, the bad are all that is left. China is making trade impossible. If it will buy nothing from others but commodities and consumer goods, they must prepare to do the same.

COMMENT – It is critically important to read and understand this article from Robin Harding at the FT, as well as the next one from Greg Ip at the Wall Street Journal.

It is almost as if these two OpEds were planted by the Trump Administration to amplify their National Security Strategy’s focus on economic statecraft.

2. China’s Growth Is Coming at the Rest of the World’s Expense

   Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2025

No one knows how to cope with Beijing’s ‘beggar thy neighbor’ economic model.

Pop quiz. Who has contributed more to the rest of the world’s growth this year: China or the United States?

The answer is the U.S., and it isn’t even close. Even as the U.S. rolls out tariffs, its imports are up 10% so far this year from a year earlier. And as China moralizes against protectionism, its imports are down 3%, in dollar terms.

The U.S. figures might be an anomaly, reflecting front-running of tariffs. China’s are not. In the past five years, its export volumes have soared while imports have flatlined. China is swallowing up a growing share of the world’s market for manufactured goods. This reveals an uncomfortable truth: Beijing is pursuing a “beggar thy neighbor” growth model at everyone else’s expense.

A recent report by economists at Goldman Sachs starkly laid this out. In the past, they wrote, 1% more output in China would raise the rest of the world’s output by 0.2% as it pulled in imports.

In their new forecast, the Goldman team has concluded that the relationship has turned negative. China’s growth, they write, is being driven by its “leadership’s determination and capability to further advance manufacturing competitiveness and boost exports.”

This is positive for other countries insofar as cheaper Chinese goods boost purchasing power. But that benefit is more than offset by the hit to their manufacturing sectors from Chinese competition. The upshot is that Goldman sees China growing about 0.6 percentage point a year faster over the next few years, but that will reduce the rest of the world’s growth by 0.1 point a year.

China’s growth is still good for the Chinese people, and for some countries that sell inputs to its export machine. But Goldman projects it will generate growing headwinds for other industrial economies in Europe and East Asia, and for Mexico.

From positive to negative sum

A fundamental axiom of economics is that when two individuals or countries trade, both are better off. In the decades after World War II, the U.S. was the world’s largest exporter and economy and as it grew, it imported more, helping its partners. As they grew, they bought more of what the U.S. made. Expanding trade helped everyone specialize, leading to more competition, innovation and choice, and lower costs.

China is now the world’s second-largest economy and its largest exporter, but its philosophy is quite different. It has never believed in balanced trade nor comparative advantage. Even as it imported critical technology from the West, its long-term goal was always self-sufficiency.

In 2020, Chinese leader Xi Jinping codified this approach as “dual circulation.” This would, he said, “tighten the international industrial chain’s dependence” on China while ensuring China’s production was “independent” and “self-sustaining.”

And as China expands into high-end manufacturing such as aircraft and semiconductors, Xi has decreed it must not relinquish low-end production such as toys and clothes. Beijing has discouraged Chinese companies that invest abroad from transferring key know-how, such as in the production of iPhones and batteries. Xi has rejected fiscal reforms that would tilt its economy away from investment, exports and saving and toward household consumption and imports.

Of course, China isn’t the first to pursue export-led growth or industrial policy (government support of favored sectors). West Germany, Japan and later South Korea all did the same, eventually running up surpluses that became longstanding irritants with the U.S.

But as part of the democratic West, they didn’t fear economic interdependence nor seek to eliminate imports. And as they moved up the value chain, they allowed lower-end manufacturing to migrate to poorer countries.

Those countries “were driven by a desire for prosperity,” said Rush Doshi, a China expert who served on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. “China is driven by a fortress mentality and sees industrial dominance as key to wealth and power. These are longstanding goals deeply rooted in nationalism and the Communist Party.”

Two decades ago, China’s economy was small enough that its trade surplus mattered little to the world. Today China accounts for 17% of global gross domestic product. Goldman estimates its surplus on the current account—the broadest definition of trade—will reach 1% of world GDP by 2029, larger than any country at least since the late 1940s.

As recently as 2020, international automakers supplied around 60% of the roughly 20 million units sold in China, usually from local factories operated with domestic joint-venture partners. Their executives insisted they would never cannibalize sales outside China by exporting from those joint ventures, recalls Michael Dunne of market research and advisory Dunne Insights.

In the years since, Chinese automotive brands moved into electric vehicles, driving foreign brands’ market share below 40%. Saddled with excess capacity for internal-combustion-engine cars, those joint ventures began exporting.

Cannibalization has begun. Four of the top five Chevrolet models sold in Mexico are made in China by General Motors’ joint-venture partners, Dunne said. They would previously have been made in Mexico or South Korea.

Divided we fall

Many countries are frustrated by China’s strategy, which is squeezing out their own manufacturing sectors and export opportunities. None has a solution.

China’s dominance of so many categories of manufacturing gives it formidable leverage. When the Netherlands took control of Dutch chip maker Nexperia from its Chinese owner for national security reasons, China barred the company from exporting chips from its Chinese operations, crippling auto-assembly customers. The Netherlands backed off. President Trump, whose tariffs have met almost no pushback elsewhere, had to compromise when China restricted exports of critical minerals.

The most effective way to turn back China’s export onslaught would be for the U.S. to coordinate with like-minded partners, such as imposing common restrictions on its autos while maintaining low restrictions on each other.

Trump has to date shown no interest in such a united front. Still, his bilateral deals do include incentives for resisting China’s exports. Malaysia, for example, agreed to match U.S. restrictions imposed on China for national security.

North America would be a natural candidate for a united front. To preserve the low tariffs codified in the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Canada and Mexico might be willing to join the U.S. in raising barriers to China.

But time is running out. Canada last year copied the U.S.’s 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Then Trump hit Canada with auto tariffs, and China retaliated against Canadian agriculture. Caught in a two-front trade war, Canada is reviewing its tariffs on China.

COMMENT – I’d offer a correction to Greg Ip’s recommendation, the “most effective way to turn back China’s export onslaught” would be for like-minded partners to coordinate with the United States.

The United States, under both the Trump and Biden Administrations, has provided a road map for how to block China’s export onslaught, but partners in Ottawa, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Mexico City, Brussels, Brasilia, Jakarta, New Delhi, Madrid, Singapore, Canberra, Geneva, and Rome refuse to adopt it or to coordinate with Washington.

Instead, we get stuff like this from leaders like the President of France…

I particularly like the first reply from Greg Wilbur… sums up the frustration Americans have had with their European “allies” for decades.

The solution that Greg is searching for is right in front of us… disentangle our economies from the PRC. It really is that simple.

3. Why China needs to let the renminbi rise
   Weijian Shan, Financial Times, December 1, 2025

A steady appreciation would boost domestic consumption and improve trade relations.

China’s currency, the renminbi, is undervalued. Everyday evidence abounds: residents of Hong Kong, whose currency is tightly pegged to the US dollar, flock across the border to Shenzhen for weekends of shopping, where prices are half those in Hong Kong.

The Economist’s Big Mac index shows that a McDonald’s Big Mac costs $6.01 in the US, yet only Rmb25.5 (about $3.60) in China, implying the renminbi is roughly 41 per cent undervalued. This light-hearted burger benchmark closely tracks the IMF’s more formal purchasing power parity estimate, which indicates that the renminbi is about 50 per cent undervalued against the dollar.

In 2024, China’s nominal GDP in dollar terms was $19tn, or about 65 per cent of US GDP at $29tn. However, IMF data suggests in PPP terms, China’s GDP was $38tn, 31 per cent larger than America’s. Seen in this light, a gradual appreciation of at least 50 per cent over the next five years, which will narrow the current undervaluation to below 25 per cent, would be both feasible and beneficial to China. A steady appreciation would boost domestic consumption and improve trade relations.

In a floating exchange rate regime, currency values in theory should adjust to restore balance-of-payments equilibrium. Unless offset by a capital account imbalance, a current account deficit triggers depreciation — cheaper exports, costlier imports — until the gap narrows. A surplus prompts appreciation, reversing the flow. Yet China has run a surplus for 32 consecutive years, far exceeding its capital account deficits and amassing $3.3tn in foreign exchange reserves.

No central bank can defy market forces, but it can powerfully shape expectations and guide the market towards fundamentals. History offers precedents. In 1993, the unofficial market rate hit Rmb11 per dollar (against an official rate of Rmb5.8). On January 1 1994, China unified the dual system at Rmb8.7 per dollar, a significant revaluation. In the three decades since, the renminbi has never traded lower than that rate.

4. Taiwan is stepping up on defense spending. That’s good news.
   Ely Ratner and Randall Schriver, Washington Post, December 1, 2025

The island is making leaps in military spending and acting with greater focus than ever before.

A common refrain in Washington is that Taiwan is not taking its defense seriously — that it spends too little, moves too slowly and relies too heavily on others. That notion is even used to justify reductions in U.S. support for the island’s security.

As former assistant secretaries of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs — for the Biden and first Trump administrations, respectively — we have each pressed Taipei to act with greater urgency. And we can now say with confidence that the received wisdom is increasingly outdated.

COMMENT – Ely and Randy are right!

5. The party’s AI: How China’s new AI systems are reshaping human rights

   Fergus Ryan, Bethany Allen, Shelly Shih, et al., Australian Strategic Policy Institute, December 1, 2025

This report shows how the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming China’s state control system into a precision instrument for managing its population and targeting groups at home and abroad. China’s extensive AI-powered visual surveillance systems are already well documented.

This report reveals new ways that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using large language models (LLMs) and other AI systems to automate censorship, enhance surveillance and pre-emptively suppress dissent.

COMMENT – The cover of this report precisely captures what the Chinese Communist Party wants to achieve with artificial intelligence.

6. China’s Electrification Mirage: The vast bulk of China’s electricity production still comes from fossil fuels

   Robin J. Brooks, Substack, December 7, 2025

It’s true that solar and wind are growing in importance, but let’s keep things in perspective. Their shares in total electricity generation were five and nine percent, respectively, in October 2025 versus 67 percent from thermal power. Maybe China is electrifying, but what matters is where this power comes from and that’s still overwhelmingly from fossil fuels.

COMMENT – If you haven’t subscribed to Robin J. Books’ substack, you should do so now. On this point, Brooks is likely reacting to the spate of articles that came out over the last few weeks celebrating (again) that the PRC’s carbon emissions may have peaked…

If you actually read the report from CREA (Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air) on the PRC’s so-called “Climate Transition,” you come away with a much more skeptical outlook that what these reporters and media outlets imply.

Here are the top three findings from the report:

• More than two-thirds (69%) of experts believe China will significantly or partly overachieve its new climate targets for 2035, which aim to reduce emissions by 7-10% compared to peak levels, showing China can indeed achieve much higher reductions.

• Yet, uncertainty about China’s short-term energy transition and industrial decarbonisation has increased following the announcement of the conservative 2035 NDC targets, amid economic uncertainties and geopolitical volatility.

• Although emissions have fallen since March 2024, experts are less certain that China will peak in 2025, expecting a peak later in 2028. This also reflects the reluctance of the government to adopt a peaking year for its 2035 targets and could leave more room for emissions to grow.

These so-called climate experts have been predicting China’s peak CO2 emissions for about five years now.

My prediction: the Chinese Communist Party has no intention to “peak” its CO2 emissions… it is a pursuing an’ all-of-the-above’ energy strategy. The Party is NOT pursuing an energy transition, it is pursuing a strategy to produce more power.

The Party will not allow international commitments to decarbonize to derail its development goals or its effort to dominate global industry. It will employ the rhetoric of climate change only to the degree that it can position itself as more reliable than the United States.

Let’s keep in mind that since Beijing signed up for the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, the country has nearly doubled its production of electricity from “thermal,” i.e. burning fossil fuels to create steam to turn a turbine for electricity. Those power plants have a 50-70 year life cycle, which means they will be emitting CO2 well into the 2080s.

This forces me to recycle this meme yet again.

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Authoritarianism

7. China’s Communist Party wants positive energy only, please
   The Economist, November 24, 2025

But enforced online optimism is no remedy for economic gloom.

The police in Weifang, a city in eastern China by the Bohai Sea, seem to be doing a bang-up job. A tidy 99.1% of its 9m residents are satisfied with public safety, according to the local government. From fraud to robbery, officials say crime there has fallen over the past year. But recently its police have been busy dealing with a trend that is much harder to expunge: the spread of negative feelings among the city’s residents.

Here, the standard for falling foul of authorities is rather murky. In an announcement on November 17th, the Weifang police outlined cases from the past month. In one a local man, Mr Ren, had used his social-media account to publish videos that were critical of agricultural policies, allegedly pumping out distortions as he sought to attract followers. The police said they had prevailed upon him to remove his offensive videos. In another, a student surnamed Qiu got into trouble at school and then went online to accuse his teacher of being a bully. In doing so he had damaged the school’s reputation, the police said. They brought the student in for a stern discussion to rectify his behaviour.

Weifang is far from alone in such policing of popular sentiment. China is in the midst of a national campaign that aims to squash pessimism and promote positivity. In some ways this is nothing new. One theme of Xi Jinping’s leadership, dating to his rise to the top of the Communist Party in 2012, has been the promotion of “positive energy”, especially in online discourse. People who post criticism of the government on social-media sites have always run the risk of seeing their accounts closed or suspended.

COMMENT – Apparently, the Chinese Communist Party has adopted the philosophy of Fernando Lamas…

8. Xi Presses Trump on Taiwan as They Agree to Meet in China in April
   Ana Swanson, Alan Rappeport, and Edward Wong, New York Times, November 24, 2025

In an unusual move, Xi Jinping, the leader of China, called President Trump. The two spoke about trade, Taiwan and Ukraine, according to separate official statements.

President Trump said on Monday that he had accepted an invitation from Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to visit Beijing in April. That occurred while the two leaders discussed several major issues between their nations, including Taiwan, the Ukraine war and lackluster Chinese purchases of American soybeans, according to separate official accounts of their call earlier in the day.

In an unusual move, the call was initiated by Mr. Xi, and it came after weeks of rising tensions between China and Japan over Taiwan. It also followed a weekend in which top aides to Mr. Trump pushed Ukrainian officials in Geneva to move forward on terms of a proposed peace settlement with Russia, China’s partner — a settlement that Russian leaders have not agreed to.

Mr. Trump told reporters in late October that he would visit Beijing in April after he and Mr. Xi held a summit in South Korea. American and Chinese officials meeting then in Busan agreed to a yearlong truce that has rolled back many of the tariffs Mr. Trump imposed on China, and the retaliatory measures Beijing took in return.

In a social media post on Monday afternoon, Mr. Trump said it was a “very good telephone call” that touched on Ukraine, China’s exports of chemicals used to make fentanyl and its purchases of farm products. He described the call as a “follow up to our highly successful meeting in South Korea” and said there had been significant progress on both sides in meeting those commitments.

“Now we can set our sights on the big picture,” Mr. Trump said. “To that end, President Xi invited me to visit Beijing in April, which I accepted, and I reciprocated where he will be my guest for a State Visit in the U.S. later in the year.”

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters outside the White House on Monday that Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Xi for about an hour. The two spoke about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she said, but “the focus was mainly on the trade deal that we are working on with China.”

Mr. Trump also spoke about the needs of American farmers, she said. Overall, Mr. Trump is “pleased with what we’ve seen from the Chinese,” Ms. Leavitt said.

Mr. Trump and Ms. Leavitt did not mention Taiwan in their summaries. But Chinese state news organizations stressed that Mr. Xi had “clarified China’s principled position” on Taiwan, a self-governing, democratic island that China lays claim to. Mr. Xi emphasized “that Taiwan’s return to China is an important part of the postwar international order,” state news reports said.

COMMENT – Of note, less than two week after this call, the Trump Administration released its National Security Strategy which had this to say about Taiwan:

In the long term, maintaining American economic and technological preeminence is the surest way to deter and prevent a large-scale military conflict.

A favorable conventional military balance remains an essential component of strategic competition. There is, rightly, much focus on Taiwan, partly because of Taiwan’s dominance of semiconductor production, but mostly because Taiwan provides direct access to the Second Island Chain and splits Northeast and Southeast Asia into two distinct theaters. Given that one-third of global shipping passes annually through the South China Sea, this has major implications for the U.S. economy. Hence deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority. We will also maintain our longstanding declaratory policy on Taiwan, meaning that the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

We will build a military capable of denying aggression anywhere in the First Island Chain. But the American military cannot, and should not have to, do this alone. Our allies must step up and spend—and more importantly do—much more for collective defense. America’s diplomatic efforts should focus on pressing our First Island Chain allies and partners to allow the U.S. military greater access to their

ports and other facilities, to spend more on their own defense, and most importantly to invest in capabilities aimed at deterring aggression. This will interlink maritime security issues along the First Island Chain while reinforcing U.S. and allies’ capacity to deny any attempt to seize Taiwan or achieve a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible.

It would appear that the Administration remains committed to the status quo (i.e. the de facto independence of Taiwan) and it is prepared to use military force to guarantee it through a strategy of denial.

It would also suggest that President Trump and Prime Minister Takaichi of Japan see eye to eye on the issue and view deterrence (a favorable military balance by the U.S. and Japan) as the best way to deter Beijing from using military force against Taiwan.

9. Taiwan’s president: I will boost defense spending to protect our democracy
   President Lai Ching-te, Washington Post, November 25, 2025

10. Trump Is Silent on Taiwan After Talking to Xi—and That Is Fine with Taipei
    Joyu Wang, Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2025

For years, most U.S. presidents have declined to answer the question of whether America would defend Taiwan’s democracy against a military takeover by Communist China. This “strategic ambiguity”—backed by aid for Taiwan’s self-defense and a robust military presence in the Pacific—has been key to deterring Beijing.

But with China’s military growing stronger and leader Xi Jinping on a mission to tell the world that Taiwan belongs to Beijing—a message he delivered to President Trump in a phone call Monday—the question has resurfaced: Is saying little saying enough?

The view from Taiwan’s leadership: Trump’s silence speaks volumes.

“The relationship between Taiwan and the U.S. is rock solid,” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said Wednesday, after declaring that he would seek a $40 billion special budget for military spending to deter China.

U.S.-Taiwan cooperation during Trump’s second term has been “nonstop,” Lai said. “That’s why we’re confident about the future of U.S.-Taiwan relations.”

11. China seeks “alternative world order,” U.S. commission warns
    Colin Demarest, Axios, November 26, 2025

12. The party’s AI: How China’s new AI systems are reshaping human rights
    The National Tribute, December 1, 2025

13. India lodges strong protest with China over detention of Indian woman
    Reuters, November 26, 2025

India said it had registered a strong protest with China over what it said was the arbitrary detention of an Indian citizen at Shanghai Airport.

Indian media reported that a UK-based woman holding an Indian passport was stopped by Chinese authorities during a layover in Shanghai on November 21 and told that her Indian passport was invalid as she was born in the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

Beijing says Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls Zangnan, is part of China, a claim New Delhi has repeatedly dismissed.

The woman, Prema Wangjom Thongdok, said she was not allowed to board her onward flight to Japan and was held for 18 hours, according to Indian media.

“Chinese authorities have still not been able to explain their actions, which are in violation of several conventions governing international air travel,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said in a statement late on Tuesday.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday that the checks had been carried out in accordance with laws and regulations.

Jaiswal said India had taken up the incident “very strongly” with China.

COMMENT – If we ever needed more proof that the Chinese Communist Party cannot help itself from trashing its own diplomatic relations, this is it.

Presumably, it is in Beijing’s interest to capitalize on the rift in Indian-American relations, but detaining an Indian woman at an airport in Shanghai by saying her Indian passport is invalid because she was born in Arunachal Pradesh… an Indian State… is absolutely bonkers.

The CCP couldn’t devise a strategy which would more likely inflame Indian nationalism and Indian resentment towards Beijing.

14. China criticises Japan’s plan to deploy missiles on island near Taiwan

    Antoni Slodkowski, Reuters, November 24, 2025

China called Japan’s plan to deploy missiles on an island near Taiwan a deliberate attempt to “create regional tension and provoke military confrontation” on Monday, as a diplomatic dispute simmers between the two nations.

The remarks come amid their worst diplomatic crisis in years, after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said this month a hypothetical Chinese attack on democratically governed Taiwan could trigger a military response from Tokyo.

“Right-wing forces in Japan are... leading Japan and the region towards disaster,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press briefing. Beijing “is determined and capable of safeguarding its national territorial sovereignty,” she added.

Japan’s Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said on Sunday that plans were “steadily moving forward” to deploy a medium-range surface-to-air missile unit at a military base on Yonaguni, an island about 110 km (68 miles) off Taiwan’s east coast.

“The move is extremely dangerous and should raise serious concerns among nearby countries and the international community,” especially in the context of Takaichi’s earlier remarks, Mao said on Monday.

COMMENT – Beijing of course sees nothing wrong at all when it deploys missiles near Taiwan or even when it fires those missiles over Taiwan and into Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone.

Pot meet kettle.

I wonder, does Mao Ning, the PRC foreign ministry spokesperson, understand the concept of hypocrisy?

Maybe we should take Mao up on her comment and ask “nearby countries,” like Taiwan, whether they think Japan’s move is “extremely dangerous.” I suspect that Taipei sees it differently than Beijing.

15. How China is using AI to extend censorship and surveillance
    Katrina Northrop, Washington Post, December 1, 2025

16. Same Strategy, But Different Emphasis: Main Takeaways from the Central Committee’s Proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan
    Minxin Pei, China Leadership Monitor, December 1, 2025

17. Hong Kong’s Response to Deadly Fire Is Squeezed by China’s Firm Hand
    Jason Chau, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2025

18. No Fire Critics Allowed in Hong Kong: Authorities move to silence dissent after the blaze that killed 151.

    Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2025

At least 151 died as flames engulfed high-rise towers at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court housing complex last week. The official response shows how this once free city is becoming more like mainland China by the day.

Authorities are seeking to chill speech related to the fire. Several civil-society figures had planned to hold a news conference Tuesday to discuss the response to the blaze. But the event was cancelled after one participant, solicitor Bruce Liu, was “invited to a meeting” with national-security police, the local press reports. Mr. Liu, former chair of the pro-democracy Association for Democracy and People’s Livelihood, reportedly left the police station later Tuesday.

Police on Saturday also detained student Miles Kwan, who called for a probe into any conflicts of interest or regulatory neglect that contributed to the fire, among other demands in a petition to the government. Our sources say he’s since been released.

The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation says national-security authorities arrested former pro-democracy district councillor Kenneth Cheung after he called for an independent probe. Another unnamed volunteer was reportedly arrested for using the fire to incite hatred of the government, which means merely criticizing the government.

Hong Kongers have legitimate questions about what went so lethally awry. Before the blaze, residents of Wang Fuk Court had repeatedly raised safety concerns, and authorities now say some of the protective mesh around the buildings failed to meet flame-retardant standards. Other reports describe flammable construction materials and faulty alarms.

A decade ago the scrappy reporters at the Apple Daily newspaper might have followed up on residents’ complaints and exposed wrongdoing before tragedy struck. But authorities arrested Apple Daily’s founder Jimmy Lai in 2020 on national-security charges and later forced the paper’s closure. Mr. Lai has been in prison on trumped-up charges ever since.

Authorities have also made at least 13 non-speech arrests in relation to the fire, including the bosses of a construction company that a police superintendent called “grossly negligent.” Perhaps they are liable in some way, but the rapid arrests have a round-up-the-usual-suspects quality. That’s how authoritarian regimes respond when they need a scapegoat for the public to blame.

There’s early evidence of government shortcomings. Hong Kong’s Labor Department had told Wang Fuk Court residents that the fire risks were “relatively low,” Reuters reports. Hong Kong’s Fire Services Department conducts inspections and can take enforcement actions regarding fire safety at construction sites. Where were they?

By the way, the fire department is a subordinate agency of Hong Kong’s Security Bureau, and the bureau’s Secretary is Chris Tang, who is also in charge of implementing the national-security law that outlaws dissent. On Saturday Beijing warned “anti-China and pro-chaos elements who attempt to ‘use disasters to disrupt Hong Kong’” would be “severely punished” under the same law. Hong Kongers have little recourse as authorities tolerate neither scrutiny nor criticism.

COMMENT – The fire in Hong Kong was a real tragedy and it is a shame that the Hong Kong Government and its Chinese Communist Party overlords are more concerned with protecting themselves from criticism than accepting responsibility and working prevent something like this from happening again.

19. Beijing’s nat. security office backs Hong Kong gov’t’s actions against ‘anti-China disruptors’ after fatal Tai Po fire
    James Lee, Hong Kong Free Press, November 29, 2025

20. ‘A scene of complete devastation’: Tai Po fire death toll rises to 151, searches may take up to 3 weeks
    Hillary Leung, Hong Kong Free Press, December 1, 2025

21. China’s military firms struggle as corruption purge bites, report says
    Greg Torode, Reuters, December 1, 2025

22. Chinese media demands answers as scandal hits US$1 billion Yongan hydropower project
    Meredith Chen, South China Morning Post, December 1, 2025

23. How Japan’s Rift with China Threatens Its Economy
    Noah Berman, The Wire China, November 22, 2025

24. Japan and China row over Taiwan
    Gurjit Singh, Gateway House, November 17, 2025

25. Japanese ‘One Piece’ singer halted mid-performance in China
    Hong Kong Free Press, November 30, 2025

Japanese singer Maki Otsuki, known for the theme song of the popular anime “One Piece,” had been slated to perform for two days from Friday at the Bandai Namco Festival 2025 in Shanghai.

Japanese “One Piece” singer Maki Otsuki was forced to halt her performance on stage in Shanghai, her management said, one of the latest events hit by a diplomatic spat between Tokyo and Beijing.

Otsuki, known for the theme song of the popular anime, had been slated to perform for two days from Friday at the Bandai Namco Festival 2025 in the Chinese city.

However, she “had to abruptly halt her performance due to unavoidable circumstances” on Friday “even though she was in the middle of performing”, her management posted on her official website on Saturday.

It was the latest event hit in a spate of cancellations of cultural events involving Asia’s two biggest economies.

COMMENT – I suspect that this will simply reinforce what many middle class and well-off Chinese citizens believe that Japan is a better place to live than the PRC.

26. China, Evoking World War II, Urges Europe to Take Its Side Against Japan
    David Pierson, New York Times, December 1, 2025

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Environmental Harms

27. China floods the world with gasoline cars it can’t sell at home
    Nick Carey, Reuters, December 2, 2025

While Western nations focus on the competitive threat of Chinese EVs, a different challenge is reshaping the auto industry. Beijing’s legacy automakers are saturating emerging and second-tier markets with fossil-fuel vehicles — often undercutting their foreign partners.

China’s electric-vehicle industry captured half its domestic market in just a few years, crushing sales of gasoline-powered vehicles from once-dominant global automakers.

But foreign players weren’t the only losers. Many Chinese legacy automakers also watched their sales collapse – and responded by flooding the world with fossil-fuel vehicles they couldn’t sell at home.

While Western policymakers have focused on the threat of China’s heavily subsidized EVs, protecting their markets with tariffs, U.S. and European automakers face greater competition from China’s gas-guzzlers in countries from Poland to South Africa to Uruguay. Fossil-fuel vehicles have accounted for 76% of Chinese auto exports since 2020, and total annual shipments jumped from 1 million to likely more than 6.5 million this year, according to data from China-based consultancy Automobility.

The boom in gasoline-powered exports is driven by the same EV subsidies and policies that wrecked the China businesses of automakers including VW, GM and Nissan by underwriting scores of Chinese EV makers and igniting a devastating price war, a Reuters examination found. The phenomenon highlights the far-reaching impacts of Chinese industrial policy, as foreign competitors struggle to keep pace with government-backed firms chasing Beijing’s goals to dominate critical sectors nationally and globally.

China’s gasoline-vehicle exports alone – not including EVs and plug-in hybrids – were enough last year to make it the world’s largest auto-exporting nation by volume, industry and government data show.

COMMENT – Hold on, I was led to believe that the PRC was only producing and exporting so-called “clean energy vehicles.”

28. A Massive, Chinese-Backed Port in Peru Could Push the Amazon Rainforest Over the Edge

    Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News, December 1, 2025

The ultra-sophisticated port north of Lima will revolutionize global trade, but it’s already sparking destructive new routes through the world’s most climate-critical ecosystem.

29. From fishing to naval activity, China rewrites maritime norms

    William Matthews, Nikkei Asia, November 28, 2025

30. Philippines Marines Apprehend Chinese Fishing Boat at Second Thomas Shoal

    Aaron Matthew Lariosa, USNI News, October 28, 2025

Philippine Marines deployed two small boats last week to escort a Chinese fishing boat that Manila claimed was illegally fishing at Second Thomas Shoal.

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) stated that its troops “upheld environmental protection” at the disputed submerged reef Oct. 24 in the latest encounter between Manila and Beijing at the contested shoal.

“In adherence to established protocols, AFP personnel promptly escorted the unauthorized fishing boats out of the area and confiscated bottles containing suspected cyanide chemicals reportedly used for destructive fishing,” reads AFP the release.

31. Minister slams Chinese cyanide fishers

    Taipei Times, September 16, 2025

Ocean Affairs Council Minister Kuan Bi-ling yesterday condemned Chinese fishers for using cyanide and urged them to respect the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Speaking to reporters after the International Conference on Marine Environmental Management in Taipei, Kuan made the remarks following the seizure of a Chinese vessel carrying cyanide by the Coast Guard Administration for illegally operating near the Pratas Islands in the South China Sea.

Cyanide fishing involves spraying a sodium cyanide mixture into a habitat to stun fish for capture. The practice harms not only the target species, but also other marine organisms, including coral reefs.

32. Devastating toxic spill seen as test of whether African countries will stand up to China

    Mayeni Jones, BBC, December 2, 2025

Even before the dam collapsed, Lamec did not feel safe working at the copper mine.

“If our work protective gear gets damaged, it is not always replaced,” he tells us. “We have to take a risk and use it again.”

He is talking to the BBC in a car on a quiet backroad near a village in northern Zambia, too nervous to speak to us in public or to use his real name, for fear that speaking to the press might cost him his livelihood.

When he turned up for his shift one day in February, he tells us, he found that one of the dams at the Chinese-owned mine had been closed.

The tailings dam - used to store toxic by-products from the copper mining process, including heavy metals like arsenic, mercury and lead - had collapsed into a tributary connected to the Kafue, Zambia’s longest river and a major drinking water source.

At least 50,000 tonnes of acidic debris spilled out into the surrounding waterways and farmland, according to the government. Some environmentalists, however, claim as much as 1.5 million tonnes was spilled, with one expert saying a full clean-up could take longer than a decade.

The spill has killed the fish around the towns of Chambishi and Kitwe, made the water undrinkable and destroyed crops, farmers have told the BBC.

There are fears that, now the rainy season has started, heavy metals still sitting in the mud will further infiltrate the land and waterways, causing a second wave of pollution. Toxic metals that can cause kidney damage and cancers, as well as gastric and intestinal issues, could be carried downstream to the capital, Lusaka, says Dr Mweene Himwiinga, a senior lecturer at Zambia’s Copperbelt University.

The Chinese embassy in Lusaka disputes the scale of the damage and told the BBC it welcomed the establishment of an independent investigation into the incident. The Zambian government, it said, had reported that the pollution was contained to a confined area, water acidity levels had returned to normal limits and that ongoing checks showed no lasting public-health risks.

33. DR Congo suspends Chinese-owned cobalt mine after dam collapse devastates one of its major cities
    Olamilekan Okebiorun, Business Insider, November 12, 2025

A Chinese-owned copper and cobalt mine in DR Congo has been suspended after a dam collapse spilled contaminated water into Lubumbashi, the country’s second-largest city.

Operations at a major Chinese-owned copper and cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) have been suspended after a dam collapse released contaminated water into Lubumbashi, the country’s second-largest city home to over 3 million residents.

A containment dam belonging to Congo Dongfang International Mining (CDM), a subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Co based in Tongxiang, Zhejiang province, China, continues to leave a trail of devastation across Lubumbashi’s ecosystem after releasing “several million cubic meters of electrolytes” since November 4.

The spill flooded hundreds of homes across three neighborhoods, forcing residents to flee, while environmentalists warn it could contaminate local well water, a vital daily resource for many households.

Growing Environmental Concerns in the Copperbelt

The incident is the latest environmental crisis in the Copperbelt region, which spans DR Congo and Zambia. Earlier this year, a Chinese-owned dam in Zambia collapsed, releasing cyanide- and arsenic-laden waste into the Kafue River, a critical water source for millions.

The spill occurred in February at the Sino-Metals Leach Zambia copper mine, a subsidiary of the state-run China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group.

An environmental cleanup company, Drizit, said its two-month investigation found the dam released 1.5 million tons of toxic material, at least 30 times more than the company initially admitted.

34. Report Details Widespread Environmental Destruction Caused by Chinese Industry

    ADF, November 25, 2025

Beijing’s drive for minerals, rubber and rosewood leaves a trail of devastation across Africa.

Woodcarvers in China’s eastern city of Dongyang produce billions of dollars in expensive furniture every year, much of it made from rosewood. While wealthy people enjoy the highly prized chairs and tables, African communities pay the price in the form of environmental destruction.

Across the continent, China’s drive for natural resources — from cobalt and gold to rubber and rosewood — has displaced communities, deforested the landscape and devastated livelihoods.

“Chinese infrastructure and mining projects have opened previously undisturbed forest and conservation areas, fragmented habitats and weakened the ecological integrity of critical landscapes,” researchers led by Ebagnerin Jérôme Tondoh, an expert in ecology and sustainable land management at Côte d’Ivoire’s Nangui Abrogoua University, wrote in a recent study published by the Atlantic Council.

35. How China Silences Environmental Reporters Beyond Its Borders

    Katie Surma, Inside Climate News, November 23, 2025

Journalists who report on the harms caused by China’s overseas infrastructure buildout in Africa face intimidation, surveillance and police pressure.

The strange number lighting up Tawanda Majoni’s phone again and again felt like a warning.

Majoni, one of the Zimbabwe’s most respected journalists, soon learned where the calls were coming from: a federal police unit called Law and Order, notorious for abductions, torture and killings.

When unmarked cars rolled through his neighborhood after a relative was pressed for his location, Majoni packed a bag, tossed his cell phone’s SIM card so he couldn’t be tracked and fled the city, haunted by memories of slain colleagues. One was hurled from a moving vehicle in broad daylight. Another was beaten to death.

He knew he couldn’t run forever. After two weeks, he returned and answered one of the calls. An officer told him to come in: We have a case related to you.

A few days later, Majoni sat in a small, airless room at Law and Order offices, his lawyer ordered to wait outside. For three hours, officers grilled Majoni about his work, at one point sliding a printout across the desk—a tweet about a speech he’d given on World Press Freedom Day. They accused him of “inciting rebellion,” a treasonous offense.

The questioning made no sense until Majoni noticed a file on the desk: his photograph on top, and beneath it, text written in Mandarin Chinese.

He didn’t need to ask. His newsroom, the Information for Development Trust, had recently published exposes on Chinese mining projects that left open waste pits, poisoned rivers and displaced communities. “I know what this is about,” Majoni said.

The lead officer smiled, then pressed on about the tweet. Majoni walked free that day but stopped writing his weekly column. Later, he said, trusted police contacts confirmed what he already suspected: Chinese investors had been behind the interrogation.

The Chinese government’s repression of journalists at home is well known. Less visible is how that machinery now reaches far beyond its borders—and what that means for the environment.

36. Four years on: Assessing China’s overseas coal power ban

    Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, November 3, 2025

More than four years after President Xi Jinping pledged to end China’s financing of overseas coal projects, the annual assessment from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the People of Asia for Climate Solutions (PACS) finds that while some progress has been made, the rise of privately owned off-grid captive coal projects for industrial needs, particularly in Indonesia and Africa, is a growing concern.

While many coal plants have been cancelled, others continue to move forward, especially privately funded, off-grid projects for industrial use, revealing that implementation gaps and loopholes persist.

COMMENT – I’m shocked, shocked, that the Chinese Communist Party hasn’t fulfilled its international commitment to cease building coal-fired power plants outside the country. Who could possibly have predicted that the CCP would break its promise?!?

37. China’s CO2 Emissions Might Have Finally Peaked

    Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, December 4, 2025

China has rapidly become the world leader in renewable energy, but continued coal use means it could take longer for its emissions to decline.

COMMENT – There is no evidence that the PRC’s CO2 emissions have peaked… the study simply points out that many experts predict that the PRC’s emissions might peak… perhaps in 2028 or 2030 or most definitely in 2035.

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Foreign Interference and Coercion

38. Under increased scrutiny, Harvard enhances screening of international participants at trainings and events
    Deirdre Fernandes, Boston Globe, November 18, 2025

39. China pitches closer ties to Germany in strategic industries to ease rare earth strains
    Joe Cash, Reuters, November 24, 2025

China pitched stronger ties in its highest‑level talks with Germany’s new government as Beijing’s top European trade partner seeks to smooth tensions over rare-earth curbs that have choked German production lines and prompted calls for de-risking.

Beijing has staged an uncharacteristically swift turnaround in relations with Berlin since discord over Chinese export curbs on chips and rare earths resulted in German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul cancelling an October trip to China.

“China and Germany are important economic and trade partners,” China’s Premier Li Qiang told German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on the sidelines of the G20 summit on Sunday, state media reported.

“Our two governments should work together to strengthen dialogue and communication to properly address their respective concerns,” a Xinhua readout quoted China’s second-ranking official as saying, before pitching closer cooperation in a series of strategic industries.

COMMENT – So let me get this straight… the PRC uses its dominance of rare earth processing to impose harm on German industry and now Beijing is suggesting that even more of German industry should be dependent on the PRC as a way to “resolve” the problem Beijing created?!?

40. The Failed Crusade to Keep a Rare-Earths Mine Out of China’s Hands
    Jon Emont, Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2025

41. TWEET – ACCUSED CHINESE SPY BRAGGED THAT HOCHUL WAS “MUCH MORE OBEDIENT” THAN CUOMO IN TEXTS TO BEIJING OFFICIALS. This is what foreign infiltration looks like.

    Mario Nawfal, Twitter/X, December 4, 2025

42. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang visits Republicans as debate over intensifying AI race rages

    Matt Brown, ABC News, December 3, 2025

Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican who sits on the upper chamber’s Banking Committee, said he skipped the meeting entirely.

“I don’t consider him to be an objective, credible source about whether we should be selling chips to China,” Kennedy told reporters. “He’s got more money than the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and he wants even more. I don’t blame you for that, but if I’m looking for someone to give me objective advice about whether we should make our technology available to China, he’s not it.”

COMMENT – It certainly appears that the Nvidia CEO is lobbying Congress and the Administration on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.

43. VIDEO – CSIS’ Gregory Allen joined CNBC’s Money Movers to discuss US-China AI Competition

    CNBC, December 4, 2025

CSIS’ Gregory Allen joined CNBC’s Money Movers to unpack NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s recent comments on U.S.–China AI competition. Allen argued that export controls—not chip sales—are the primary reason U.S. companies still hold a technological edge, and warned that easing restrictions would strengthen China’s military and commercial AI capabilities. He also noted that Huang’s influence in Washington has waned following a series of controversial remarks.

COMMENT – Greg Allen completely dismantles Jensen Huang’s arguments.

44. Stanford Earth Sciences Chair Collaborates with China’s Nuclear Program​​

    Garret Molloy and Elsa Johnson, Stanford Review, December 1, 2025

Wendy Mao, Stanford’s Earth Sciences Chair and Deputy Director of Stanford’s Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences at SLAC, has co-authored over 50 publications, trained five employees, and maintained a visiting scholar position at HPSTAR, an “alias” for China’s nuclear weapons program.

In 2020, the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology, or HPSTAR, was added to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List, which identifies organizations that pose a significant risk to national security. Since its 2020 Entity List designation, Professor Mao has co-authored at least 12 peer-reviewed papers with HPSTAR.

The U.S. Entity List describes HPSTAR as an organization “owned by, operated by, or directly affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics (CAEP), which is the technology complex responsible for the research, development and testing of China’s nuclear weapons and has been on the Entity List under the destination of China since June 30, 1997.”

According to Canada’s 2024 Named Research Organizations List, HPSTAR is an “alias” for the institution behind China’s nuclear weapons program.

HPSTAR studies how materials behave under extreme pressures and temperatures using diamond-anvil cells, synchrotron beams, and X-ray diffraction. Mao is a leading U.S. researcher in this very field.

45. Chinese gamblers, cartel cash: The secret pipeline through Las Vegas’ biggest casino
    Rob Kuznia, CNN, November 18, 2025

46. Reverse Deng? For Professionals Only
    Yanmei Xie, The Wire China, November 23, 2025

47. Chinese airlines scrap over 900 Japan flights as Taiwan rift deepens
    Taiwan News, November 29, 2025

48. LDP’s Kobayashi advocates Japan’s economic independence from China
    Japan Times, November 30, 2025

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Human Rights and Religious Persecution

49. When Chinese censorship breaks AI code
    Dana Nickel, Politico, November 24, 2025

50. France: Macron Should Address Repression in China Visit
    Human Rights Watch, December 3, 2025

French President Emmanuel Macron should privately and publicly stress the importance of human rights in Sino-French relations during his visit to China from December 3 to 5, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. Macron’s visit is one of several top-level engagements between European and Chinese leaders amid the complex and shifting geopolitical relationships among Europe, China, and the United States.

President Macron should signal his commitment to taking concrete action in response to deepening repression by China. Key issues include labor rights abuses in China’s supply chains; commercial drones produced by China-based companies being used by Russia to attack civilians in Ukraine; and China’s use of transnational repression to target critics abroad, including in France.

“China’s disregard for human rights has important implications for France, from weapons used in unlawful Russian attacks in Ukraine to abusive supply chains that hinders fair competition for European industries,” said Bénédicte Jeannerod, France director at Human Rights Watch. “Macron should break the silos between human rights and other issues and show leadership by including rights concerns in high-level policy discussions with China.”

COMMENT – There doesn’t appear to be any evidence that Macron raised human rights concerns with Xi Jinping.

51. China’s New Residential Surveillance Rules: Reform or Consolidation of an Abusive System?
    Hu Zimo, Bitter Winter, November 28, 2025

52. China’s Low Rights Model Goes Global
    Li Qiang, The Diplomat, November 26, 2025

China achieved manufacturing dominance thanks to its weaker protections for workers, communities, and the environment. Now it’s exporting that model.

In Indonesia’s nickel belt, Chinese built smelters now produce roughly two-thirds of the world’s battery grade nickel at a capital cost 40 to 60 percent below their Western rivals and in roughly one-third the time. This is not a story of Chinese technological triumph, however. It is the deliberate replication of a distinctly Chinese economic model: one that secures dominance by systematically operating under weaker protections for workers, communities, and the environment.

China today produces nearly a third of the world’s manufactured goods and dominates 70-90 percent of global capacity in rare earths, battery precursor processing, and other critical minerals. With this level of manufacturing concentration, no global effort to improve labor conditions can ignore China. Strengthening oversight of China-linked supply chains is thus a necessary step for better worker outcomes for all.

China’s low rights model is no longer a domestic labor issue but a systemic challenge to global labor standards, supply chain governance, and fair market competition. Without a coordinated civil society response, the global baseline for worker rights will continue to fall.

I call China’s economic model a “low rights” one because it has long relied on suppressing labor costs to maintain industrial competitiveness. As a result, trade imbalances between China, the United States, and Europe are strategically linked to China’s ability to attract multinational companies through low-cost labor and policy incentives. At the same time, Chinese companies internalized the technology and management know-how of these foreign companies into their domestic systems, gradually transforming what were originally Western competitive advantages into China’s own strengths.

53. Hong Kong student Miles Kwan, who urged gov’t accountability for Tai Po fire, leaves police station
    Hong Kong Free Press, December 1, 2025

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Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage

54. 3 Chinese nationals charged with smuggling Nvidia, HP chips to China
    ABC News, November 18, 2025

55. Four Americans charged with smuggling Nvidia GPUs and HPE supercomputers to China face up to 200 years in prison —$3.89 million worth of gear smuggled in operation
    Anton Shilov, Tom’s Hardware, November 18, 2025

56. Robots and AI Are Already Remaking the Chinese Economy
    Brian Spegele, Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2025

57. Chinese Maker Behind Most of World’s Bitcoin Miners Has Been Focus of US National Security Probe
    Anthony Cormier, Jake Bleiberg, and David Kocieniewski, Bloomberg, November 21, 2025

58. VW says it can halve EV development costs with ‘Made in China’ car
    Edward White, et al., Financial Times, November 25, 2025

German automaker is seeking to reclaim share in the world’s biggest market.

Volkswagen has said it can produce an electric vehicle entirely made in China for half the cost of doing so elsewhere, as the German automaker fights to reclaim its share in the world’s biggest market.

Europe’s largest carmaker said on Tuesday that, following a series of investments in the country, it could for the first time develop cars outside Germany, including testing and deploying new technologies such as assisted driving.

VW is preparing to release about 30 EV models in China over the next five years in a bet on localised research and development. The carmaker said that, compared with the 2023 production costs for EVs in Germany, the cost for some models in China had been reduced by as much as 50 per cent due to supply chain efficiencies, including battery procurement, shorter development periods and lower labour costs.

The German group has invested billions in its innovation centre in Hefei, eastern China, where it has more than 100 advanced laboratories for testing software and hardware, alongside batteries and EV powertrains.

COMMENT – Just imagine if VW had picked a different strategy. Perhaps admit it had lost the China market (as many of its American counterparts have done), advocated for significant tariffs on PRC exports to Europe (so it could protect its home market), and invested those billions of euros in its own employees in Germany… that would have been a much better strategy.

Please don’t interpret this as formal financial advice… but if you have money invested in VW, pull it out now.

59. Amazon suspected of acting as ‘Trojan horse’ in Italy customs fraud case
    Emilio Parodi, Reuters, November 22, 2025

60. U.S. Supply Chains Deemed Vulnerable to Chinese Exploitation
    James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2025

A report to Congress says Beijing has the ability to cause manufacturing disruptions from drugs to chips.

China could exploit the U.S.’s dependence on Chinese supply chains for products such as pharmaceuticals and electrical equipment, according to a new report to Congress that urged lawmakers to force industries to disclose such risks.

Earlier this year, China choked off the supply of rare earths to the U.S. that are crucial in making everything from cars to jet engines. The move caused manufacturing disruptions and gave Beijing critical leverage with the Trump administration in its fight to roll back some tariffs on Chinese imports earlier this autumn.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission warned in its annual report Tuesday that Beijing’s huge industrial base affords it similar leverage over other U.S. supply chains as well. For instance, China dominates the production of lithium-ion batteries that go into electric vehicles.

The report warns that scenarios similar to the rare-earth scare could be repeated across U.S. industries.

COMMENT – Ya think?

61. ‘Slow’ EU to unveil plan for cutting raw materials’ reliance on China
    Julia Payne, Reuters, November 30, 2025

The EU executive will unveil next week measures to cut the bloc’s over-reliance on China for critical raw materials as Europe seeks to keep up with fierce global competition from the U.S. and Asia.

Despite years of warning signs that the old model of rules-based trade was coming to an end, accelerated by U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to power, European governments have been asleep at the wheel, EU and industry officials said.

62. Watching China in Europe - December 2025
    Noah Barkin, The German Marshall Fund of the United States, December 1, 2025

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Cyber and Information Technology

63. Can Chinese-Made Buses Be Hacked? Norway Drove One Down a Mine to Find Out
    Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2025

COMMENT – The answer is yes.

64. Trump Team Internally Floats Idea of Selling Nvidia H200 Chips to China
    Mackenzie Hawkins and Jenny Leonard, Bloomberg, November 18, 2025

65. Chinese researchers simulate large-scale electronic warfare against Elon Musk’s Starlink
    Stephen Chen, AMP, November 23, 2025

66. Why China Doesn’t Want to Buy More Nvidia Chips
    Qianer Liu, The Information, December 1, 2025

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Military and Security Threats

67. Taiwan to spend $40bn on weapons to counter China
    Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, December 1, 2025

Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te has pledged to spend NT$1.25tn (US$40bn) on weapons over the next eight years, a plan that would constitute the country’s largest special defence budget in over 30 years and aims to enable it to “permanently” defend itself against China.

Lai’s announcement on Wednesday aims to demonstrate to Washington Taipei’s determination to pay for its own defences as US President Donald Trump’s erratic stance on China and demands that Taiwan spend up to 10 per cent of its GDP on defence have raised doubts over the commitment of the island nation’s main backer. China claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

“Faced with China’s escalating military threat and hegemonic ambitions towards the region and Taiwan, Indo-Pacific democracies such as Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and even Australia are gradually reaching a consensus on ‘island chain defence and shared responsibility’ investing more in defence and strengthening their response to the China threat,” Lai said.

68. China’s shadow navy trains to take Taiwan
    Allison Martell, David Lague, Clare Farley and Minami Funakoshi, Reuters, November 20, 2025

69. Taiwan Plans First US Arms Purchase for T-Dome to Counter China
    Yian Lee, Bloomberg, November 30, 2025

70. Pentagon Cited Alibaba on Chinese Military Aid in Oct. 7 Letter
    Anthony Capaccior, Bloomberg, November 26, 2025

71. Chinese exporters charge Russia more for war supplies
    Chris Cook, Financial Times, November 24, 2025

Chinese exporters have been raising prices for Russian military-industrial buyers, exploiting the Kremlin’s reliance on their supplies as western sanctions restrict imports, new research has revealed.

Prices of export-controlled products shipped from China to Russia rose 87 per cent between 2021 and 2024 on average, according to a new paper from the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (Bofit). The price of similar goods shipped elsewhere rose only 9 per cent.

The research shows that while Russia has been able to use Chinese suppliers to get around western restrictions on the purchase of products that have potential military uses, the wave of sanctions imposed in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has pushed up costs for the Kremlin.

A senior western sanctions official told the Financial Times that while they would like to see Russia’s military-industrial complex “cut off” from its suppliers, Chinese companies “ripping them off” was a “pretty good outcome. If you increase the price of a good by 80 per cent, you nearly halve what they can actually buy.”

COMMENT – With an ally like China, Russia doesn’t need enemies.

72. Is China Preparing a Ukraine-Style Plan for Taiwan?
    Karishma Vaswani, Bloomberg, November 30, 2025

73. Is China about to invade Taiwan?
    The Week, December 1, 2025

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One Belt, One Road Strategy

74. China’s economic slowdown and spillovers to Africa
    Matthew Mingey, Jeremy Smith, and Laura Gormley, Atlantic Council, November 22, 2025

75. The Battle Over Africa’s Great Untapped Resource: IP Addresses
    Alexandra Wexler, Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2025

76. Indonesia resists US trade deal ‘poison pill’
    A. Anantha Lakshmi, et al., Financial Times, November 27, 2025

77. How China Built a Network of Ports Encircling the Globe
    Lucia He, Bloomberg, November 27, 2025

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Opinion

78. Taiwan is a complicated issue, but the way out is simple: ex-PLA colonel Zhou Bo
    Shi Jiangtao, South China Morning Post, December 1, 2025

QUESTION: With the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party still in power in Taiwan and intensifying US arms purchases, how viable is peaceful reunification at this stage? What specific “red lines” or thresholds of “external interference”, in your view, would compel Beijing to consider non-peaceful means?

ZHOU BO: Now we’re talking about Taiwan, which is a billion-dollar issue. Of course, it looks very complicated. But for me, the way out is very simple: how to avoid a war in the Taiwan Strait?

The answer is to let Beijing believe peaceful reunification is still possible. If it believes peaceful reunification is possible, it will have confidence rather than impatience.

As China grows stronger, it could go in two different directions. One is that greater strength brings more confidence in eventual peaceful reunification because Taiwan will not move away, and time is on the side of mainland China. But it might also grow impatient and consider using force, especially if provoked. These are two very different directions.

So, which direction will China take? My argument, as I wrote in Time magazine recently, is that it depends on the Taiwanese authorities. Right now, Taiwan’s leader, William Lai Ching-te, is very provocative. Before his election, he described himself as a “practical worker” for Taiwan independence. Now he has called mainland China a hostile foreign force and said Taiwan must oppose China’s united front work. He has even outlined 17 strategies to intimidate people in Taiwan who support cross-strait exchanges.

The best way to understand the Taiwan issue is to put yourself in Beijing’s shoes. China today is strong and powerful. How could it allow part of its territory to remain separated forever? That wish for reunification is natural. The only question is whether it happens peacefully or through war.

Beijing has been patient. With Lai’s remarks about mainland China being a hostile foreign force, theoretically we could use force. In the proposed 15th five-year plan, “peace” is also mentioned. But compared with the last plan, the warning is louder. We hope for the best, but it is not entirely up to us.

COMMENT – Retired Senior Colonel Zhou Bo is entitled to his opinion that the PRC prefers a “peaceful” resolution, but I’m reminded of the recent article by Sergey Radchenko. Sergey recalls how Carl von Clausewitz wrote that aggressors want to appear “always peace-loving” insofar as they would prefer to invade and annex their neighbors unopposed.

Sure, Beijing wants peace, but ONLY if the Taiwanese people capitulate fully to the Chinese Communist Party’s demands… if they refuse, well according to folks like Zhou Bo, the resulting death and destruction is the vault of the victims because the PRC must get everything it wants.

Zhou Bo justifies potentially killing Taiwanese citizens because it isn’t fair to China that Taiwan continues to be independent.

79. Japan and China’s cold war is intensifying
    Philip Patrick, Unherd, December 1, 2025

80. Why is America selling its schools to China?
    David Rose, Unherd, November 18, 2025

81. Is China winning the innovation race?
    Edward White, Financial Times, December 1, 2025

82. Why China Didn’t Do a ‘Kissinger’ to Split Europe from America
    Gabrielius Landsbergis, Foreign Policy, December 2, 2025

83. What Trump Gets Wrong About China
    Raja Krishnamoorthi, Foreign Affairs, December 1, 2025

Only a Long-Term Strategy Can Counter the Threat From Beijing.

In October, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in South Korea. According to Trump, the meeting with Xi—his first since returning to office in January—was a “great success,” a “12” out of ten. In reality, it was a defeat. Xi made some commitments to the United States, including a promise to help stem the flow of fentanyl from China. But these gains were achieved at the cost of significant U.S. concessions on export controls, trade, and shipbuilding. Even with Beijing’s dispensations, Chinese markets are less accessible to American producers today than they were just ten months ago. The United States, in other words, is in a less competitive position toward China than it was on January 20.

The reason for this failure is simple: Trump misunderstands the Chinese Communist Party’s ambitions and underestimates its ruthless determination. The president’s constant praise of Xi and insistence on personal diplomacy suggests that he thinks China’s leader merely wants to strike a mutually beneficial trade agreement and stabilize ties. Instead, China wants to surpass the United States as the world’s most powerful and influential country. It wants to promote its own system at the expense of Washington’s open economic model and its vision for the world.

If the United States is serious about besting the CCP, it must start focusing on how to prevail in a long-term competition for both the future of the international system and for its own well-being. That means it needs to invest in its manufacturing capacity, spend on its people, shore up its partnerships, and reinvest in its values. Above all else, it needs to understand what winning the competition actually looks like. The United States will have prevailed against China not when the two countries have no trade imbalance, but when Washington and its allies are so prosperous and strong that they are impervious to the CCP’s military threats, economic coercion, and malign activity.

84. How to Respond to Chinese Imports
    Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate, November 21, 2025

85. Beijing returns to economic coercion to silence Japan’s new Prime Minister.
    Wall Street Journal, December 1, 2025

86. China’s chip champions miss their cue
    Katrina Hamlin, Reuters, December 1, 2025

87. Taiwan Has Reached Its Tipping Point
    Hal Brands, AEI, November 23, 2025

88. Why U.S. Tech Flip-Flops on China Are So Disastrous
    Justin Sherman, Foreign Policy, November 25, 2025

89. The White House Risks Squandering Its Own AI Leadership
    Ryan Fedasiuk, War on the Rocks, November 24, 2025

90. Japan Has Changed How the World Must Think About Taiwan
    Craig Singleton, New York Times, December 2, 2025

91. Resilient engagement playbook: How Europe can navigate relations with a more confrontational Beijing
    Grzegorz Stec, MERICS, November 25, 2025

92. ASEAN Is No Longer Just a Talk Shop
    Derek Grossman, Foreign Policy, November 24, 2025