Matt Turpin's China Articles - September 3, 2023
Friends,
This weekend marked a bittersweet milestone for me, I dropped my eldest off at college and I miss her already.
As a result, the commentary this week is a little lite and I’m getting it out late.
Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel shed light on the divisions within the Biden Administration over the PRC.
Rahm channels the frustration held by many in the Administration and Congress that Beijing simply cannot be a reliable partner, while others pin their hopes on reviving engagement and building stronger Sino-American economic ties (Yellen in Beijing; Raimondo in Beijing)… it is classic Rahm (watch SNL’s “Even-Tempered Apology from Rahm Emanuel”)
You can listen to the whole conversation in the “What’s News” podcast, but here’s his main point:
Luke Vargas: Economic ties between the US and China are slipping now. You have been outspoken in your criticism of the Communist Party at a time when cabinet officials have been trying to put a floor under relations.
Rahm Emanuel: I'm for that. I'm for not only a floor, I'm for a dialogue, but I'm also not for being, as my father would say, a schmuck. And he said it with this term of endearment.
I mean, what I mean by this is Xi stood in the rose garden and said, "We will never militarize the South China Sea." The wheels of his plane were not up in the belly of the plane when they were doing exactly that. They're part of the World Trade Organization, international economic structure. I can't tell you how many times I had a CEO in my office when I was chief of staff, when I was a congressman, and would say that they're stealing intellectual property, they're stealing product, they're making us give it to them for free, so they could basically underwrite and then also undermine your product and do nothing but replicate it. Not even a bolt or a screw is different.
So at some point, you got to say, "Look..." Now you can sit there and say, "Well, we'd like to have a great relationship," but if they're going to keep the Communist Party, and specifically under XI, use lying and cheating as a modus operandi of the state and its legitimacy, then you would be a fool to go into that discussion negotiation not cognizant of what they're doing. And my view is keep doing what you're doing. You're the one with 30% unemployment among youth, not us. You got 10 years of housing with nobody in it. You got people that are getting fleeced by the big developers and the banks. You got municipalities in China that makes Chicago look like a AAA-rated bond. Keep at it. There is nothing the United States is doing to you that measures what you've done to yourself. We didn't do any of that.
And so my point is I'm ready to have a conversation. I'm also ready not to get in the way of you to doing to yourself what we could never only hope on our best day could get done to you. And if you want to stay doing it and you want to walk away from the international system that you benefited from, well, therefore, the grace of God, go ahead. Why should I get in the way of that?
I’m with Rahm, we shouldn’t be “schmucks.”
Beijing’s actions over the past 10 to 15 years make it impossible to achieve the kind of mutually beneficial relationship that some desire. Beijing clearly does not want a “mutually beneficial” relationship… it wants a one-sided relationship which protects the Party’s interests above all else, it wants to supplant the liberal international order with an anti-liberal order that benefits Beijing and Moscow, it wants its neighbors to abandon collective security and dismantle the alliance system, and it wants to discredit democracy so as to inoculate its own citizens from challenging the Party’s monopoly hold on power.
Why has Beijing adopted this approach? Because the ideas that the United States represents, an international system based on limited government and rules that apply to all, are an existential threat to the Party.
In short, the Chinese Communist Party wants to pursue both its own Cold War against the United States as a method to achieve its objectives, while insisting that no one should challenge China in the same way… We would be “schmucks” if we accepted this arrangement.
***
This week I participate in a debate on these issues at the Brookings Institution with my colleagues Patricia Kim, Joe Nye, and Jessica Chen Weiss. Demetri Sevastopulo from the Financial Times will be our moderator and my friend and predecessor at the NSC, Ryan Hass, will be our host.
We are examining the question: Should the US pursue a new Cold War with China? You can read our opening statements and responses here.
Sign up to watch online here or make the trip down to 1775 Massachusetts Ave NW in person. We take the stage at 11am EDT on Thursday, September 7.
***
On an entirely different note, we lost a legend this week, RIP Jimmy Buffett (here’s a young Jimmy performing Margaritaville in 1978).
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
1. Chinese Intel Officers Interfered in U.S. Election
Adam Rawnsley, Rolling Stone, August 29, 2023
An influence operation spread propaganda about Hong Kong’s democracy movement, Covid-19’s origins, and the U.S. midterm elections.
China is behind the largest known covert propaganda operation ever identified on Facebook and Instagram, according to a new report by security researchers at Meta.
Meta on Tuesday outed the authors of a four-year long influence campaign dubbed “Spamouflage Dragon,” which first appeared in 2019 to spread propaganda about Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. Since then, the campaign has focused on spreading disinformation about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, attacking dissidents and critics abroad, criticizing the United States, and attempting to sow division during the 2022 midterm elections.
For years, researchers have speculated that the voluminous Spamouflage Dragon posts were connected to the Chinese government but have been unable to publicly prove a link until now. The link comes courtesy of overlapping content found in both Meta’s report and charges filed against Chinese intelligence operatives back in spring.
Federal prosecutors accused dozens of Chinese Ministry of Public Security officials of being behind a covert social media propaganda campaign in a criminal complaint filed in April. Some of the same propaganda content cited by U.S. prosecutors in that complaint also appears in Meta’s report published on Tuesday, indicating that the Ministry of Public Security is the “law enforcement agency” Meta believes is behind Spamouflage Dragon.
“We can confirm that the social media activity described in the complaint is part of the Spamouflage operation we described in our report,” a Meta spokesperson tells Rolling Stone.
In April, the Justice Department indicted 34 Chinese intelligence officers with the MPS on charges of conspiracy to transmit interstate threats and conspiracy to commit interstate harassment in connection with an attempt to intimidate Chinese exiles in the US.
The operatives were part of the MPS’s “912 Special Project Working Group,” according to the indictment. Chinese officials have charged the group with “creat[ing] and us[ing] a host of accounts under false names on U.S. social media platforms to disseminate and amplify messages as part of a broad effort to influence and shape public perceptions of the PRC government, the CCP and its leaders in the United States and around the world.”
Spamouflage Dragon operators haven’t meddled as aggressively in U.S. elections as other actors, like Russia’s Internet Research Agency. But the troll network has begun to push narratives tied to the 2022 midterms.
Shortly before that election, cybersecurity researchers at Google and Mandiant found Spamouflage Dragon accounts that criticized American elections and democracy in general and urged readers not to vote. In one video posted by the trolls, narrators urged viewers “not to vote for someone” and showed footage of January 6 rioters while claiming that “The solution is to root out this ineffective and incapacitated system.”
As part of that campaign, Meta researchers recently discovered a portion of Spamouflage Dragon activity that “was run by geographically dispersed operators across China who appear to have been centrally provisioned with internet access and content directions,” according to the report released Tuesday.
“Once you put everything together from 2019 until now, it is the largest known covert influence operation,” Meta’s global threat intelligence lead Ben Nimmo says in an interview.
Spamouflage Dragon’s overwhelming scale, however, has failed to translate into any tangible influence or audience, likely because the network is focused on “putting volume over audience building,” according to Nimmo.
The trolls have demonstrated a weak command of idiomatic English with articles that, while prolific, often misspell key names or use English and Mandarin interchangeably. Other posts — like a critique of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 trip to Taiwan — appear long after the events they purported to preview.
At other times, the spammers attempted to push niche and esoteric Chinese propaganda talking points onto unreceptive audiences by piggybacking on clickable search engine optimized headlines. In one case cited by Meta researchers, Spamouflage Dragon trolls filled the replies of social media forum questions like “How do I lose belly fat through weight lifting?” with propaganda articles about “Chinese Police Strengthening International Law Enforcement Cooperation.”
The campaign’s lack of any audience development despite years of operation, dozens of personnel behind it, and thousands of pieces of content leads some to wonder why China even bothers with the trolling effort.
“It always comes back down to this question,” Nimmo says, “of who’s kidding whom here? To what extent are [Spamouflage Dragon] targeting foreign audiences and to what extent are they targeting the people who might be paying them – to make them think that they’re reaching foreign audiences?”
COMMENT – I wonder if there is any connection between this campaign, that Rolling Stone rightly observes as being relatively ineffective, and the contemporaneous “Stop Asian Hate” campaign?
The latter campaign was, and still is, extremely effective at painting criticism of the Chinese Communist Party as racist and anti-Asian.
2. Americans are unwittingly financing the CCP. It has to stop.
Representative Mike Gallagher, Washington Post, August 29, 2023
Do you want your pension paying for China’s aircraft carriers?
Should your university’s endowment be underwriting the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide against the Uyghur people?
Would you like your retirement savings to be powering the CCP’s techno-totalitarian surveillance state?
These aren’t hypothetical questions. Millions of Americans have become financial backers of the CCP without knowing it. Their savings are funding companies that build weapons for China’s People’s Liberation Army as well as companies involved in the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang.
This month, the Biden administration took a first crack at the problem. In a long-awaited executive order, the president directed the Treasury Department to issue rules restricting some U.S. investment in Chinese companies working on artificial intelligence, semiconductors and quantum computing. This was a good first step, but it should not be the last.
COMMENT – Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI) continues to lead on these issues… the next article only highlights why more must be done to address these problems.
3. Goldman Sachs bought UK and US companies using Chinese state funds
Kaye Wiggins in Hong Kong and Will Louch, Financial Times, August 29, 2023
Goldman Sachs has used a fund set up with Chinese state money to buy a series of US and UK companies, including one with a cyber security business that provides services to the British government, even as tensions rise between Beijing and the west.
The Wall Street bank has struck seven deals using cash from a $2.5bn private equity “partnership fund” it set up in 2017 with the sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the fund and its operations.
The deals include a start-up that tracks global supply chains, a consultancy that advises on cloud computing, a drug testing company and a manufacturer of systems used for artificial intelligence, drones and electric vehicle batteries. Although the bank announced it had invested in the companies, it did not say the deals were financed at least partly from the China fund.
The deals highlight how private equity funds have helped sovereign wealth funds build up indirect holdings in companies in critical sectors as western governments have increased scrutiny of foreign direct investment, particularly from China.
The bank’s then-chief executive Lloyd Blankfein launched the China-US Industrial Cooperation Partnership Fund during Donald Trump’s state visit to Beijing in 2017, saying it would help address Washington’s concerns about a trade imbalance between the US and China by investing Chinese capital in American companies.
The bank said CIC would be an “anchor investor” in the fund and play an active role in helping the companies it bought to expand in China.
Despite increasingly fraught relations between Beijing and the west in recent years, Goldman has stepped up the fund’s activity, making four investments in 2021 and one last year.
In 2021, Goldman used the partnership fund with CIC to help finance its purchase of LRQA, the inspections and cyber unit of UK maritime classifications group Lloyd’s Register. LRQA carries out inspection and certification services, and operates in the aerospace, defence, energy and healthcare industries among others.
The business includes cyber security group Nettitude, which says on its website that it is an approved service provider for the UK government and helps to “strengthen government and defence organisations across the world”. Its work includes “ethical hacking”, in which its staff attempt to hack clients’ systems to assess their vulnerabilities.
In the LRQA deal and others, the Goldman-CIC fund invested alongside separate private funds that the bank manages, meaning that the Chinese state’s financial involvement was relatively small.
But the sovereign wealth fund is more closely involved with the companies it buys than typical investors in most buyout funds.
“China represents 40 per cent of the global certification market and we are currently under-represented there, which is something we are seeking to address in part with assistance from the [Goldman-CIC] fund,” an LRQA spokesperson said. He said Nettitude had no business in China and no plans to set up there, and had no interaction with CIC.
Goldman said in a statement: “The co-operation fund is a US fund run by a US manager, and is managed to be in compliance with all laws and regulations . . . It continues to invest in US and global companies, helping them increase their sales into the China market.”
One UK official said the British government could not comment on any specific acquisitions given the “quasi-judicial” nature of its investment screening powers. But they added: “The government will not hesitate to use our powers to protect national security where we identify concerns.”
COMMENT – Zongyuan Zoe Liu’s new book Sovereign Funds: How the Communist Party of China Finances its Global Ambitions provides insight into how the Party uses instruments like CIC, and their relationship with Goldman Sachs, to advance Beijing’s interests at the expense of others.
The fact that US and UK regulators have let these acquisitions through without sufficient oversight just goes to show why legislation is necessary.
4. Wolfgang Münchau: the end of the German era
Freddie Sayers, Unherd, August 28, 2023
For decades, Germany was a beacon of centrist political stability. During her 16-year leadership, Angela Merkel led a succession of grand coalitions which neutralised the political extremes, and piloted her country through an era of steady economic growth.
Today, that political settlement has dissolved. Germany’s reliance on Russian gas has devastated its industrial economy, while the surface tranquillity of the Merkel era is a distant memory. Alternative für Deutschland, a far-Right populist party, has been the beneficiary of this chaos, surging in the polls to become the second-most popular party in Germany.
To understand this reversal of fortunes and what it means for Europe and the world, Freddie Sayers spoke to Wolfgang Munchau, former co-editor of FT Deutschland, and founder and co-director of Eurointelligence. Below is an edited transcript.
Freddie Sayers: Does the rise of the AfD represent a return to Germany’s far-Right past?
Wolfgang Munchau: If you look at the European far-Right parties, the AfD is quite special. Most of the far-Right parties are led by strong leaders: Le Pen, Meloni, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. They’re shaped in the image of their leaders. That’s not the case with the AfD. So if you wanted to draw some historical parallels with the Nazis in particular, they are very different in that respect. I often forget the names of the leaders — they have joint party chiefs — and they keep changing. There are lots of internal rebellions against them. This is a party that’s been very insurrectionary against its own leaders.
But they are on the far-Right: they have goals that I would consider incompatible with constitutional law. For example, one of the goals they recently pronounced was not only Germany’s exit from the EU (which is legal), but the disbandment of the EU, which is obviously not something that a country can do. Some members of the party have been outwardly antisemitic. I wouldn’t call the party officially antisemitic; it’s not like this is an antisemitic platform. But it has neo-Nazis in it.
FS: Fringe parties always attract fringe figures. Is it fair to judge a whole party — or in the case of the AfD, 20% of the general population who say they might support them — by just those few characters?
WM: No, I don’t think you can. It’s not helpful to characterise any party with a word or adjective. They are on the far-Right, that is clear. They’re not a conservative party. Would I call them fascist? No, and I don’t call Meloni a fascist either. She obviously has roots in the far-Right, in the fascist movement in Italy. But she has moved away and from what we see she governs from the centre-right. The AfD is different in the respect that its policies are very different from someone like Meloni, if you take Meloni as the other far-Right party, the one that actually succeeded to get into government. They want Germany to leave Nato, they want Germany to leave the EU — and the euro, of course.
FS: The original energy for the AfD came out of the immigration issue, particularly in 2015 when Angela Merkel accepted over a million refugees. How has the party’s support developed since then?
WM: 2015 was the moment when its support first grew. But by the 2021 election that had already ebbed away and the party was mostly occupied with internal strife and power struggles among party members. It only ended up at 10% at the 2021 election, which is only two years ago. What happened between 2021 and today is that the party doubled its vote, not much in West Germany, but dramatically in East Germany. To go from 10% to 20% in all of Germany means it had to do extremely well in East Germany, and in some parts of East Germany it is now the largest party. It has won its first mayoral election. It has won its first regional election. Previously, with a system of proportional representation, when you are 20% and nobody wants to form coalitions with you, you can have a lot of MPs and councillors sitting around, but you’re never in power. That is now starting to change — they now have their first people in office.
FS: You’ve previously written that East Germany is the German parallel to flyover country, the industrial heartlands that have been suffering over recent decades in places like the US and in Britain and other countries. That suggests that economics is a big part of the AfD’s appeal.
WM: This is the reason why the AfD is now gaining support. Germany’s economic performance is weak at the moment, for reasons that have to do with Germany’s economic model. The general storyline is that Germany did really well until recently and now it’s doing really badly. But the roots of that date back a long time ago. Germany made itself dependent on Russian gas and, as a result, it also made itself dependent on industry, because that was its strongest sector. It had huge export surpluses — Germany had a current account surplus for many years of 8% of GDP, which for a large industrial country is just mind-bogglingly large.
FS: That was made possible, is it fair to say, by the European Union?
WM: That’s right. We have an internal market, and the currency also helps Germany, because what Germany always does when it is in a monetary union with others is it tries to obtain a competitive advantage by reducing wages, so that costs relative to others are lower, and they can’t adjust because the exchange rate is fixed. For Germany, the fixed exchange rates have always worked like a charm. Another huge factor was that this was the heyday of the fuel-driven car, of the diesel car, the heyday of oil heaters, and all the things that Germany did well. And it was also the time of massive globalisation, when countries like China and other developing countries needed equipment, machinery, and machine tools. And they bought them from Germany. Now that they’re in a much more mature phase of their economic development, they need them less. China has now for the first time flipped the trade balance in its favour.
FS: You mentioned energy. Obviously, Germany has been used to Russian gas and meanwhile, it’s been completely winding down its nuclear power. How much are these energy policies driving the AfD and the political instability?
WM: It is certainly one factor. The Greens insisted on the phasing out of nuclear power, and the other parties accepted that this was not something they wanted to fight because in Germany, you tend to lose these kinds of fights. Both Merkel and the SPD favoured the phasing out of nuclear power and it happened this year. The last power station was switched off in April. And it makes no sense. Because now all the Russian gas has gone and nuclear power is switched off and Germany has increased the share of electricity coming from coal — especially from brown coal, which is an incredibly dirty version — and CO2 emissions are going up again.
FS: So by that account, voters can be legitimately angry — it feels like an own goal?
WM: It got worse earlier this year when the Government introduced the domestic heating bill. You’re going to have the same coming in the UK: the switch over from traditional gas heating and heating systems to heat pumps. And heat pumps work very differently from gas heaters. They’re more like air conditioning systems in terms of technology and the way they’re made. And the Government introduced an initial law that would force every homeowner to install a heat pump starting from January next year. I think there was a deadline for 2030 for existing homes, next year’s deadline was only for new homes. They’ve since watered it down a little bit, but still — how much does it cost to change your house’s heating system? Depending on the house, between £20,000 and £50,000, paid for by the homeowner.
FS: Who has £20,000-£50,000?
WM: Quite — especially East Germans, whose house values may not be much higher than £50,000. The government handled this terribly. And the rise of the AfD came in waves, and this was the last wave — the mishandling. That’s where it came from, from 15% or 16% in support to about 20%.
FS: Do you see this as a rejection of Left-leaning, idealistic but impractical, policies whose real-world effects are starting to be felt?
WM: I would say it is not fundamentally an issue of the Left vs Right. It is an issue of three incompatible parties in coalition trying to compromise — any two of them could have managed it better. For example, had this been Britain or the US they would not have given themselves the same fiscal constraints, which led to chronic underinvestment. This was a country that, when I grew up, was a high-tech country. Today, it’s a low-tech country. It’s struggling with digital technologies, it’s not investing in modern industries. Which is why its dependency on the old industries has become stronger, including its dependency on old diesel cars.
FS: That giant car industry is especially vulnerable now, because they’re not as good at manufacturing electric cars as they were at petrol cars. China has overtaken them.
WM: To put it mildly. The Germans were shocked to see that China came out of nowhere and within three years, China became the largest car exporter in the world. And German companies are struggling to sell their cars in China. That was a big surprise to them. The Chinese actually like their own cars. They are cheaper and they have features that the Germans cannot offer. And the reason for that is that China has the role in the electric car industry that Germany had in the old car industry, where Germany owned the supply chain.
It wasn’t just that the cars were made in Germany — that was almost the minor thing. Germany also owned the factories in the Czech Republic and Spain and many Eastern European countries, and bought them in Asia and then the United States. It was a giant network of suppliers. They championed just-in-time production and they owned the whole thing. Now, China owns the supply chain of the electric car. The batteries, the rare-earth magnets, and all the things that matter for lithium — the new gold. The Germans panicked and got Intel to build a factory for chips. But it’s still essentially geared towards cars. This is a country that had the facility and the ability to be a major player in the digital world and has given up on that.
FS: So where does the blame lie for this? Can we make the case that the whole settlement for those decades was inherently fragile, and Germany above all was naive to think it would last forever?
WM: That’s right — and at the root of it is a system of neo-mercantilism, a reliance on industry for exports and a government that follows the wishes of industry. You remember the diesel scandal where they introduced cheating devices — the reason this came up in the United States and not in the EU was that the EU was looking the other way. The EU testing of cars was defunded, basically, compared to the United States.
So the German government helped companies — indirectly, maybe unwittingly — helped companies commit crimes. And it also adjusted its foreign policies according to corporate needs. The foreign policy of Germany was a business-driven foreign policy. It was not driven by geopolitical or other security interests, it was business-driven, and this has changed with this government. Germany’s model was dependent on globalisation, the type of globalisation which we had from 1990 to about 2020, and it was already fading in the years running up to Covid. Germany was dependent on the Russian gas flowing forever, and on globalisation lasting forever.
FS: These populist backlashes, the rise of parties like the AfD, are in some way understandable, angry reactions to decades of naivety and incompetence.
WS: That’s exactly what it is. It’s the result of a country’s economic model running into the ground. If you work for an industrial company that supplies the car industry, you know that your job isn’t going to be secure. There are a lot of fears about the future. And rightly so — if you’re trained to be a mechanical technician, you are right to be worried because the country may not be able to support enough jobs for this particular, highly specialised segment.
FS: What might happen next? Because the whole world order that we’ve been used to for all these decades is built on countries like Germany fulfilling these roles.
WS: The irony of the situation is, the stronger the AfD gets, the harder it is for governments, because under systems of proportional representation, it is difficult for centrist parties to form classic coalitions of the Left or Right. No one would ever go into a coalition with the AfD. So there’s the hard Right, and there’s also the Left Party, which might disappear. But there’s a prospect of another Left Party coming, which is specifically focused on the Russia-Ukraine war, a party of the Left that’s anti-Nato, anti-weapons deliveries for Ukraine. There is a lot of support for that in Germany. The country is really split on this.
FS: Do you have a sense of what proportion of the population shares those doubts about the policy in Ukraine?
WM: I think it’s about half? There was a recent poll asking about the next stage of weapons, deliveries of cruise missiles, and there was a strong majority against. Now that’s a specific question. The other polls that I’ve seen were in the 50/50 area and weakening. A bit like in the United States, it started with very strong support, and the support is still there, but it’s weakening, though it’s not flipped completely. But the longer this goes on, the harder it will become.
COMMENT – In the world of strange bedfellows, we should all keep our eyes on the budding relationship between the AfD and the CCP (see “German far right shows an unlikely affinity for Communist China,” SCMP, August 31, 2023).
Despite being on the opposite sides of what we perceive as the ideological spectrum, the AfD and CCP share a number of common views: race-based, ultra-nationalism; anti-liberal Nazi legal arguments; and homophobia.
I’m quite concerned about Germany’s trajectory, particularly as its automobile industry contracts during the forced energy transition.
5. Anti-Japanese Feeling Rises in China After Fukushima Water Discharge
Miho Inada and Yoko Kubota, Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2023
Anti-Japanese sentiment is growing in China and spilling over into daily life with boycotts and hoarding after Tokyo started discharging slightly radioactive water into the Pacific.
Go Saijo’s 25-seat ramen shop in a Tokyo suburb, where a bowl goes for around $6 or $7, isn’t normally on the front line of tensions between Asia’s two biggest economies. But this past weekend, Saijo found himself fending off dozens of calls from people in China who wanted to express their anger.
Some spoke in Chinese while others cursed at Saijo in Japanese or English, he said.
“I don’t know why those calls came to us,” he said. “It’s so childish that I have decided to ignore it, though the ringing of the phone is still bothersome.”
China banned seafood imports from Japan on Thursday, shortly after Tokyo started releasing water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The releases include small amounts of radioactive tritium, similar to or less than what other countries with nuclear power plants discharge.
For weeks Beijing has been whipping up public outrage, accusing Japan of treating the Pacific as a sewer. Tokyo says radioactive elements in the water were reduced to safe levels, and it says tests of the ocean water near the plant after the discharge didn’t detect anything unusual. China says it doesn’t trust the Japanese data.
What started as a dispute between governments has spread to businesses, schools and supermarkets.
COMMENT – Clearly, Beijing has been planning this attack against Japan for months, if not years. It simply provides even further proof that the Party can pull upon a variety of levers against its geopolitical rivals by employing race-based, ultra-nationalism.
6. Australian fears he’ll die in Chinese prison after doctors find huge kidney cyst
Matthew Knott, Sydney Morning Herald, August 28, 2023
Detained Australian Yang Hengjun says he is increasingly fearful he will be denied medical treatment and die in a Chinese prison after medical authorities told him they had discovered a huge, 10-centimetre cyst on his kidney.
Ahead of a planned trip to Beijing by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese later this year, Yang’s supporters are urging the federal government to demand the academic be given medical parole or access to Australian-supervised medical care outside his Beijing detention centre.
“If something happens with my health and I die in here, people outside won’t know the truth,” Yang said in a message conveyed through his supporters.
“That is frustrating. If something happens to me, who can speak for me?”
Albanese raised Yang’s case, and that of detained Australian journalist Cheng Lei, when he met Chinese President Xi Jinping last year and is expected to do the same if the pair meet on the sidelines of the G20 summit in India in early September.
The Chinese-born pro-democracy blogger, who worked for China’s Ministry of State Security before becoming an Australian citizen in 2002, was arrested in August 2019 on suspicion of espionage. His case was heard in secret in May 2021, with the details never disclosed to the public.
‘There is little reason to trust that the Chinese state security system has any interest in giving Yang [Hengjun] the treatment he needs.’ -- A friend of the Australian pro-democracy activist who is in a Chinese jail
Friends who have been briefed in recent days said Yang feared he would suffer the same fate as his friend, Nobel Peace Prize-winning writer Liu Xiaobo, a political prisoner who died of liver cancer in 2017.
“There is little reason to trust that the Chinese state security system has any interest in giving Yang the treatment he needs,” said a friend of Yang, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal matters.
COMMENT – Beijing’s strategy for silencing dissent domestically and internationally depends upon world leaders remaining largely silent on these crimes. ‘Friends of China’ encourage diplomats and politicians to only raise their concerns to Beijing behind closed doors and out of the public spotlight… these “experts” assure us that quiet diplomacy works better and that Chinese leaders don’t like to be embarrassed.
Unsurprisingly, Chinese leaders insist on this approach as well: they don’t like it when others challenge their lies and call out their crimes.
Perhaps it’s time we start embarrassing Chinese leaders and imposing even more reputational costs on the Party.
7. Censors Quash Discussion of Singapore Paper's Op-Ed Criticizing Xi Jinping
Alexander Boyd, China Digital Times, August 25, 2023
A Singapore paper’s publication of a blistering opinion piece criticizing Xi Jinping did not escape notice on Weibo, where netizens surreptitiously praised it.
Titled “The Economy Is The Problem, Its Root Is Politics,” the piece was authored by Hong Kong businessman and writer Lew Mon-hung, a former member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and a once ardently pro-China personality. It laid the blame for China’s current economic malaise squarely at the feet of Xi Jinping, the cult of personality around him, and the Party’s failure to enact political reform—namely democratization. If published in most overseas Chinese-language media outlets, the article might not have made much of a stir. However, it appeared in Singapore’s flagship Chinese-language paper, Lianhe Zaobao, which is widely perceived as pro-China. A recent investigation from The Washington Post and The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found that Lianhe Zaobao “now routinely echoes some of Beijing’s most strident falsehoods” and runs regular opinion columns from sitting Party officials without noting their affiliations. Lianhe Zaobao is one of the few foreign Chinese-language news websites that can be accessed from within China—although editors admit they censor the mainland-version of their site. The publication of this opinion piece is a rather extraordinary departure from the paper’s normal editorial line. That being said, it is not the first time Lianhe Zaobao has published Lew Mon-hung essays criticizing China. In recent years, he has published pieces spelling out his opposition to the now-abandoned zero-COVID policy and disillusionment with hyper-politicization. By May 2022, he had already become a fierce critic of China’s enduring support for Russia despite the latter’s invasion of Ukraine:
Given the fact that Moscow invaded Kyiv and not vice versa, we must take a stand and identify Russia as the aggressor, condemn the invasion, and distance ourselves from them. Only then can we pursue the path of peace and development, and avoid a fate where we are sanctioned by and isolated from the international community. If we fail to do so, “Reform and Opening,” “The Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation,” and “The Chinese Dream” will be but so many empty words. A nation that has lost its values will surely be scorned and cast aside by the international community—it is a nation without hope. [Chinese]
Lew’s latest essay for Lianhe Zaobao is nearly unprecedented in its stridency and its directness, for both the author and the outlet. With subheadings like, “Sino-American friendship is a key driving force for economic growth” and “unchecked absolute power is the ultimate form of corruption,” Lew singled out the “socialist fundamentalism” of Xi Jinping’s economic program. Lew argued that zero-COVID was the greatest political mistake since the Cultural Revolution and warned that worse upheavals remain likely unless the Party immediately moves to democratize China and guarantee freedom of speech. CDT has translated relevant portions of Lew’s essay:
An important backdrop to these recent years of economic downturn is that certain individuals have violated the provision in the Second Resolution on History to “prohibit the personality cult in any form,” preached that “loyalty that is not absolute is absolute disloyalty,” and promoted “one position as the highest authority, setting the tone,” all of which have pushed the personality cult to new heights.
[…] The three years of the coronavirus pandemic are an illustrative example. A tide of politicization engulfed everything. Debate over public health policy—obviously a question of science—was unjustifiably elevated to a struggle between systems. Far more damaging than the virus itself was the secondary disaster wrought by the adoption of the unscientific slogan “unswervingly persist in zero-COVID,” and the arbitrary lockdown of cities, highways, and borders; the suspension of all work, production, and economic activity; the severing of corporations’ production, distribution, and retail capabilities; and the wanton trampling of people’s rights, personal freedoms, and dignity, including their right of residency and right to private property. Grave casualties were inflicted on the industrial production and supply chains of “the world’s factory,” making this the third greatest upheaval in modern Chinese history, behind only the catastrophes of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The economic loss was grievous, civil liberties were destroyed, and the government’s credibility fell dramatically—with no end to the disaster in sight.
[…] The current decline of China’s once-booming economy is the tragic consequence of the government’s piecemeal approach to economic reform and failure to enact political reform.
Any attempt to safeguard the Chinese Communist Party’s lock on power by returning to the pre-Reform and Opening era of socialist fundamentalism—much less to the class struggle and cult of personality that were the guiding principles of Mao’s Cultural Revolution—will only multiply and intensify the types of social conflicts engendered by moribund Stalinist political systems. It is this that has led prudent entrepreneurs to flee and foreign investors to steer clear of troubled waters, and laid waste to China’s production lines, supply chains, and capital flows. The structural collapse of the Chinese economy has, in turn, shaken the Communist Party’s hold on power.
During his final press conference in office, former Premier Wen Jiabao issued a grave warning: “Without successful structural political reform, it is impossible for us to fully institute structural economic reform and the gains we have made in this area may be lost … historical tragedies such as the Cultural Revolution may happen again.” Absolute power in the absence of any supervision or restriction, checks or balances is the ultimate form of corruption. It is the root cause of corruption in a variety of spheres including the bureaucracy, the military, the judiciary, foreign development aid, the medical and pharmaceutical industry, education, and engineering.
The prescription is simple: political reform, including the implementation of constitutional democracy, universal suffrage and elections, required financial disclosures for all government officials, judicial independence, and guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of the press to foster public oversight of the government. This is the only way to ensure rapid, high-quality economic growth. [Chinese]
The essay caused a stir within China. On Weibo, one netizen wrote, “Lew Mon-hung’s anti-Party essay is worth a read.” Another wrote, “That Lew Mon-hung essay put it pretty bluntly, haha.” Others wrote more obliquely: “Recommending a good essay from Lianhe Zaobao, August 21, 2023. Author: Lew Mon-hung” and “That Lianhe Zaobao essay 👍.” Another Weibo user wrote: “The Lianhe Zaobao essay shows a true understanding of China, including the solution [it needs].” All of the above comments were censored, as were screenshots of Liu’s essay. Lianhe Zaobao itself became a restricted term on Weibo. Searches for the outlet only returned results from so-called “Blue V” accounts affiliated with the Party-state.
COMMENT – The Singaporeans must be getting increasingly uncomfortable at how their own Chinese population is being mobilized and weaponized by the Chinese Communist Party.
Singapore’s society is built upon the CIMO model (Chinese, Malays, Indian, and Others) which seeks to balance and mitigate racial tensions that boiled over into violence during the 1964 Race Riots pitting the indigenous Malays against Chinese.
8. AUDIO – Reshaping Corporate China
Pekingology, CSIS, August 25, 2023
In this episode of Pekingology, Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette is joined by Thomas Gatley, China Strategist at Gavekal Dragonomics, to discuss his recent report “Reshaping Corporate China.”
COMMENT – See Thomas Gatley’s report from July 13, 2023 here.
Authoritarianism
9. Xi’s Age of Stagnation
Ian Johnson, Foreign Affairs, August 22, 2023
10. China Wants to Run Your Internet
Edoardo Campanella and John Haigh, Foreign Policy, August 25, 2023
11. What Does Xi Jinping Mean By “Forever”?
David Bandurski, China Media Project, August 30, 2023
12. China’s corruption crackdown rips through healthcare sector
Sun Yu, Edward White, and Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times, August 30, 2023
13. US Commerce chief leaves China on upbeat note after 'uninvestible' remark
David Shepardson, Reuters, August 30, 2023
14. U.K. foreign minister visits China as report slams Beijing
Thompson Chau and Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa, Nikkei Asia, August 30, 2023
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng and will hold a meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on Wednesday as London seeks to reengage with the Asian superpower amid growing disagreements and distrust.
Cleverly told Han that the two countries should meet face-to-face more regularly to avoid misunderstandings and address differences of opinion. Han said he hoped mutual respect and cooperation would help improve bilateral ties.
COMMENT – There are deep divisions within the Tory Party on what Britain’s relationship with Beijing should look like.
It appears that the PM and Foreign Secretary want to return to a Cameron-esque “Golden Age of Sino-British Relations.” This perspective seems to be driven by the City of London which has always wanted to replace New York as the banker for China’s rise.
Expect to see London shift even more in this direction as Grant Shapps replaced Ben Wallace last week as the new Secretary of State for Defence. The Sanuk-Cleverly-Shapps trio will likely push even harder for a new Golden Age with Beijing (to Beijing’s great joy) and Tory backbenchers will revolt even more publicly, further weakening the Conservative Party and making a Labour Government next year almost inevitable.
15. China's Wang Yi pushes for multipolar world in return as foreign minister
Yukio Tajima, Nikkei Asia, August 26, 2023
16. Head of Japan coalition partner postpones China visit at Beijing's request
Nikkei Asia, August 26, 2023
17. The coalition aiming to counter American influence
Jay Solomon, Semafor, August 29, 2023
18. UK parliament calls Taiwan ‘independent country’ as Cleverly visits China
Stuart Lu, Politico, August 30, 2023
19. U.S. and China Agree to Broaden Talks in Bid to Ease Tensions
Ana Swanson and Keith Bradsher, New York Times, August 28, 2023
20. Raimondo Says US Businesses See China Becoming ‘Uninvestible’
Bloomberg, August 29, 2023
21. US commerce secretary lands in Beijing to boost business ties
Aime Williams and Joe Leahy, Financial Times, August 27, 2023
22. U.S. Does Not Want to ‘Decouple’ From China, Commerce Chief Says
Ana Swanson and Keith Bradsher, New York Times, August 29, 2023
23. Biden Puts U.S.-China Science Partnership on Life Support
Christina Lu and Clara Gutman-Argemí, Foreign Policy, August 24, 2023
24. US companies in China struggle with raids, slow deal approvals, anti-espionage law
Reuters, August 29, 2023
Environmental Harms
25. China’s Coal Build-Out Raises Questions on Future Power Plans
Dan Murtaugh, Bloomberg, August 29, 2023
26. The Electric: A Coming Chinese Battery Deluge?
Steve LeVine, The Information, August 28, 2023
Foreign Interference and Coercion
27. India and Malaysia protest China's land claim in a newly published map ahead of the G20 summit
Ashok Sharma, Associated Press, August 30, 2023
Malaysia on Wednesday joined India in protesting a new Chinese map that lays claim to India’s territory and Malaysia’s maritime areas near Borneo island ahead of next week’s Group of 20 summit in New Delhi.
This has exacerbated the tensions between China and India, which are embroiled in a three-year military standoff along their shared border.
The timing of the protest is key, as Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to attend the summit.
“We reject these claims as they have no basis. Such steps by the Chinese side only complicate the resolution of the boundary question,” India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said in a statement late Tuesday.
COMMENT - What a bone-headed move by Beijing… it makes no sense that the Party continuously antagonizes its neighbors who are sitting on the fence.
There are rumors that Xi Jinping won’t attend the G20 Summit hosted by Modi next week in Delhi, which likely isn’t connected to this issue but simply goes to suggest that Xi is either oblivious to how China treats its neighbors or he knows and simply doesn’t care.
28. BRICS Expansion Is No Triumph for China
C. Raja Mohan, Foreign Policy, August 29, 2023
29. The Panda Party’s Almost Over
Rishi Iyengar, Foreign Policy, August 26, 2023
30. China says its ban on Japanese seafood is about safety. Is it really?
Kathleen Magramo and Michelle Toh, CNN, August 28, 2023
31. Chinese Paper Demands British Museum Return ‘Stolen’ Artifacts
Bloomberg, August 28, 2023
32. Japan Warns China of WTO Action as Fukushima Spat Worsens
Bloomberg, August 29, 2023
33. Why fewer university students are studying Mandarin
The Economist, August 24, 2023
34. What Does ‘De-Risking’ Actually Mean?
Agathe Demarais, Foreign Policy, August 23, 2023
35. Foxconn founder Terry Gou announces Taiwan presidential bid
Chien-hua Wan and Debby Wu, The Japan Times, August 28, 2023
36. Saudi Arabia Eyes Chinese Bid for Nuclear Plant
Summer Said, Sha Hua, and Dion Nissenbaum, Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2023
37. Xi Jinping dominates BRICS summit as leaders endorse Beijing-led expansion
Joseph Cotterill, Financial Times, August 25, 2023
38. Winning the Influence War Against China
Patrick W. Quirk and Caitlin Dearing Scott, The National Interest, August 27, 2023
39. British policy on China lacks clarity and coherence, say MPs
Lucy Fisher and George Parker, Financial Times, August 30, 2023
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
40. A Uyghur’s Lament for a Persecuted People
Barbara Demick, New York Times, August 1, 2023
In his memoir, “Waiting to Be Arrested at Night,” the poet Tahir Hamut Izgil evokes the fear and danger of daily life for a Chinese ethnic minority that has been the target of a brutal crackdown.
The Uyghur poet Tahir Hamut Izgil’s new memoir, “Waiting to Be Arrested at Night,” is an outlier among books about human rights. There are no scenes of torture, no violence and few sweeping proclamations about genocide. Izgil writes with calculated restraint. As his title suggests, the terror is in the anticipation.
This is in effect a psychological thriller, although the narrative unfolds like a classic horror movie as relative normalcy dissolves into a nightmare. When the book opens, in 2009, Izgil is living in Urumqi, a city of nearly five million in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, the traditional homeland of the country’s persecuted Muslim Uyghur minority. At 40, Izgil is happily married with two daughters, his own home and a robust circle of friends. His poetry earns him considerable renown in a culture that reveres the genre, while his work as a film director, eventually at a company he owns, pays the mortgage.
In short, he’s at the top of his game, a precarious position to maintain and one that requires constant vigilance. The political climate is volatile. In July 2009, longstanding tension between the Uyghur and Han Chinese populations in Xinjiang turns violent, leading to riots and nearly 200 deaths, and to a government crackdown.
Izgil is not exactly a dissident, but as a prominent Uyghur intellectual, he has to avoid behavior suggestive of ethnic nationalism in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party. He knows the risks. In 1996, while trying to cross the border to Kyrgyzstan on his way to study in Turkey, he was arrested on spurious charges of “attempting to take illegal and confidential materials out of the country.” He is pragmatic enough to order baijiu — a potent Chinese alcohol — at a banquet to deflect suspicion that the assembled group of Uyghur poets are “devout Muslims.” But he’s also subversive enough by nature to enjoy a few laughs at the absurdities of the ruling regime.
41. US states ask SEC to check if Shein complies with forced labor rules
Arriana McLymore, Reuters, August 29, 2023
42. Chinese sextortion scammers are flooding Twitter
Caiwei Chen, Rest of World, August 28, 2023
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
43. China’s record annual limit for infrastructure-boosting bonds to be spent by October
Amanda Lee, South China Morning Post, August 29, 2023
44. Factory strikes flare up in China as economic woes deepen
Marrian Zhou, Nikkei Asia, August 28, 2023
45. The Real Contest with China
Michael Brown and Robert Atkinson, Foreign Affairs, August 28, 2023
46. Russia hopes to raise fish, seafood exports to China after Japan ban
Olga Popova and Katya Golubkova, Reuters, August 26, 2023
47. US raises concerns by Micron, Intel with China
David Shepardson, Reuters, August 28, 2023
48. Chinese carmaker BYD to buy US firm Jabil's mobility business for $2.2 bln
Sameer Manekar and Yelin Mo, Reuters, August 28, 2023
49. China Issues New Data Regulations for Money Brokers Aimed at Protecting Security
Iris Ouyang, Bloomberg, August 30, 2023
50. Chinese cities ease mortgage rules in bid to revive property sector
Ziyi Tang, Liangping Gao, and Clare Jim, Reuters, August 30, 2023
51. China’s top chip designers form RISC-V patent alliance to promote semiconductor self-sufficiency
Lilian Zhang, South China Morning Post, August 29, 2023
52. The (Mostly) Empty $100 Billion City Rising from the Sea
Bloomberg, August 28, 2023
53. China’s economic slowdown is rippling across the globe
Bloomberg, The Japan Times, August 28, 2023
54. China’s economy is in trouble – and Beijing appears powerless to do anything about it
Chris Blackhurst, The Independent, August 23, 2023
55. Logistics groups seek Asian bases to help clients offshore from China
Oliver Telling and Chan Ho-him, Financial Times, August 27, 2023
56. Communist Party Priorities Complicate Plans to Revive China’s Economy
Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie, Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2023
57. Gina Raimondo Says China Visit Aimed at Protecting U.S. Economic Interests
Yuka Hayashi and Charles Hutzler, Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2023
58. Chinese companies’ earnings to lay bare impact of economic slowdown
Hudson Lockett, Financial Times, August 28, 2023
59. A Crisis of Confidence Is Gripping China’s Economy
Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu, New York Times, August 25, 2023
60. China and U.S. must have ‘open’ communication, commerce secretary says
Meaghan Tobin, Washington Post, August 28, 2023
61. Manufacturers Leaving China Find a Home with Indian Startups
Aruna Viswanatha, Wall Street Journal, August 29, 2023
62. Country Garden asks for more time to repay renminbi bond
Hudson Lockett, Financial Times, August 29, 2023
63. She Rose from Poverty as China Prospered. Then It Made Her Poor Again.
Li Yuan, New York Times, August 29, 2023
64. China’s Economic Outlook: Pep Talks Up Top, Gloom on the Ground
Vivian Wang, New York Times, August 29, 2023
65. Paid Late, or Never: Painters, Builders and Brokers Hit by China's Property Crisis
Alexandra Stevenson, New York Times, August 28, 2023
66. China's post-reform era has arrived — and its future is unclear
Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, Axios, August 29, 2023
Cyber & Information Technology
67. Mexico’s Microchip Advantage
Chris Miller and David Talbot, Foreign Affairs, August 28, 2023
68. China quietly recruits overseas chip talent as US tightens curbs
Julie Zhu, Fanny Potkin, Eduardo Baptista, and Michael Martina, Reuters, August 24, 2023
69. As TikTok Ban Looms, ByteDance Battles Oracle for Control Of Its Algorithm
Emily Baker-White, Forbes, August 24, 2023
70. China chip stocks rally after Huawei's low-key launch of new Mate 60 Pro phone
David Kirton and Jason Xue, Reuters, August 30, 2023
71. U.S. and China agree to new dialogue on trade, chip export curbs
Rintaro Tobita and Iori Kawate, Nikkei Asia, August 29, 2023
72. Revolutionising the semiconductor industry: Chinese scientists unveil 12-inch wafer with groundbreaking 2D materials
Zhang Tong, South China Morning Post, August 28, 2023
73. China exploring ways to make its own AI memory chips despite US sanctions, sources say
Che Pan, South China Morning Post, August 30, 2023
74. China imports record amount of chipmaking equipment
Andy Lin and Qianer Liu, Financial Times, August 25, 2023
75. Huawei agrees long-term patent deal with Ericsson despite western curbs
Eri Sugiura, Financial Times, August 25,2023
76. Meta’s ‘Biggest Single Takedown’ Removes Chinese Influence Campaign
Sheera Frenkel, New York Times, August 29, 2023
Military and Security Threats
77. Russian, Chinese Warships in East China Sea After Sailing Near Alaska
Dzirhan Mahadzir, USNI News, August 17, 2023
78. Fear and complacency in Taiwan
Zoe Strimpel, The Spectator, August 18, 2023
On a recent trip to Taiwan as a guest of its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I knew that war with an increasingly belligerent China is a daily possibility. Chinese ships are in constant circulation in the Taiwan Strait. Chinese aircraft unceasingly fly near the island, getting close to Taiwanese air space. Beijing’s increasingly threatening language about forced “unification” seems to bring a catastrophic attack closer. Genuine fear fluttered in the wake of Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August last year when China launched three days of drills that paid no regard to what they called the “imaginary” median line, which divides Chinese from Taiwanese territory.
On the surface, Taipei appears to be preparing for the worst — making, then keeping, friends as close as possible, with none deemed too insignificant. Journalists from Taiwan’s scant list of official allies, including Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Paraguay, St. Kitts and Nevis and Belize, had been invited on my trip. Even Liz Truss, briefly British prime minister last year and a figure of ridicule in the UK and Europe, was welcomed in May with open arms by officials for a Pelosi-redux-style visit.
In numerous overly air-conditioned meeting rooms in government buildings, I and the other journalists on the trip were assured that Taiwan’s military is being beefed up. We were reminded that Taiwan is due to take delivery of its first Lockheed-made F-16 fighters any day. And, while the authorities were committed to maintaining the status quo, it was clear to us that officials serving Taipei’s nationalist ruling DPP party were not afraid to use the punchy, anti-China language of independence and self-defense. Ministers fumed eloquently about their “bad” neighbor, its poor moral character, its pervasive use of “cog war.” Several said that countries hoping to gain something, particularly major infrastructure projects from partnerships with China should not “expect anything.” In one briefing with Joseph Wu, the foreign minister, a German journalist asked if perhaps, as people came to wonder of Putin after he invaded Ukraine, Xi Jinping was simply “irrational.” “If you say he’s crazy, maybe he’s crazy,” replied Wu, with a surprisingly devil-may-care chuckle.
But beneath the rhetoric, preparedness seems strangely weak — denialist even. The question of how prepared Taiwan really is for an attack from China — and how far it is relying on the US to swoop in and save it — was asked over and over by our group. In return we heard plenty of bluster about the need to be able to defend fully before asking for help. “We will fight as long as China wants to fight,” said Shen Mingshih of the Defense Ministry-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research Institute (NDSRI).
79. Russian Ships Return from Joint Pacific Patrol with Chinese Ships
Reuters, VOA, August 27, 2023
80. Chinese ships block PH boats
Franco Jose C. Baroña, Francisco Tuyay, and Agence France-Presse, Manila Times, August 24, 2023
81. Campaign of Denial
Becca Wasser, Center for New American Security, August 22, 2023
82. Building Defense Cooperation with Japan: Acquisition and Industry
Gregg Rubinstein, CSIS, August 28, 2023
83. Cyber security experts lament west’s failure to learn lessons from Ukraine
Mehul Srivastava, Financial Times, August 29, 2023
84. Japan’s cyber security agency suffers months-long breach
Leo Lewis, Financial Times, August 29, 2023
One Belt, One Road Strategy
85. Cambodia, Thailand and dealing with China: The more things change…
Jitsiree Thongnoi, Lowy Institute, August 29, 2023
Opinion Pieces
86. China’s Population-Control Disaster
Yi Fuxian, Project Syndicate, August 22, 2023
87. China’s Homegrown Crisis
Richard Haass, Project Syndicate, August 21, 2023
88. Why Hasn’t China Rushed to Bail Out Its Economy?
Zhang Jun, Project Syndicate, August 28, 2023
89. The Scientist Who Foresaw China’s Stagnation
Peter Coy, New York Times, August 28, 2023
90. Don’t allow domestic politics to undermine America’s global role
Ariel Cohen, The Hill, August 28, 2023
91. How Do We Manage China’s Decline?
Bret Stephens, New York Times, August 29, 2023
92. Xi blindsides Japan with outcry over Fukushima water release
Tetsushi Takahashi, Nikkei Asia, August 30, 2023