Friends,
This week got away from me, so apologies for the abbreviated commentary.
To make up for it, I recommend watching the explainer video by Dinny McMahon at Trivium China on the macro-economic challenges facing Beijing (#2 below). The main take-away is that the problems facing the Chinese people are entirely solvable… but the Chinese Communist Party won’t do it because the solution would result in their loss of power.
The Party prioritizes its interests above the well-being of Chinese people.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
MUST READ
Second senior Chinese diplomat detained for questioning, sources say
Reuters, August 15, 2025
A deputy to a prominent Chinese diplomat being questioned by authorities was also detained, three people with knowledge of the matter said, a further sign of uncertainty in the top echelons of China's diplomacy.
Sun Haiyan, a senior diplomat and former ambassador to Singapore, was detained in early August around the time Liu Jianchao, widely seen as a potential foreign minister candidate, was taken in for questioning, two of the people said.
Sun, the first woman to serve as a deputy head of the Communist Party's International Department, was detained by Chinese authorities in connection with the questioning of Liu, the sources said.
None of the sources knew the basis of the questioning of either diplomat. The sources requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
The detention of Liu, who leads the International Department, marked the highest-level disappearance of a diplomat since China ousted its former foreign minister and President Xi Jinping's protege, Qin Gang, in 2023, following an unexplained public absence.
His detention followed a work trip to Singapore, South Africa and Algeria. His house was searched in early August.
The disappearance of Sun alongside the highly visible Liu, adds to questions about China's foreign policy establishment at a time of rising tensions with Washington around trade and geopolitical influence.
China's State Council Information Office, which handles media queries for the government, and the International Department did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Reuters could not verify if both Sun and Liu were still being detained. Neither could be reached for comment.
Both their profiles remain on the International Department's website.
Sun's last public appearance was on August 1, when she attended a reception hosted by Nepal's embassy in Beijing.
Sun, 53, was stationed in Singapore between May 2022 and July 2023. When she left her post, she hosted a 500-person reception at a luxury Singapore hotel, according to Chinese news reports.
She joined the International Department in 1997, where she served in a wide range of roles, including spokesperson and head of the bureau responsible for ties with Southeast Asian countries. She also served as a district Party Committee official in the city of Zibo, Shandong province, in 2008.
Originally from Hebei province, Sun holds a doctorate in law from Peking University, having also studied at Japan's Kyushu University.
COMMENT – Another senior PRC diplomat has disappeared as Xi’s crackdown on his own diplomatic corps continues unabated. Not a good time to be a Chinese diplomat… or a senior military officer.
Does anyone want to bet that Xi gets more paranoid of his own people, the older he gets?
VIDEO – China isn’t rebalancing to consumption…and it isn’t about to
Trivium China, August 13, 2025
Trivium argues that the PRC’s economy remains investment- and manufacturing-led despite officials’ rhetoric about boosting consumption. Consumption’s share of the economy is flat and that is a major problem for Beijing. Limited stimulus, cautious local governments and demographic headwinds mean no imminent shift toward consumption-driven growth anytime soon.
COMMENT – Great explainer video from the team at Trivium China.
The Iranian connection: how China is importing oil from Russia
Tom Wilson, Financial Times, August 20, 2025
Networks of brokers and shipowners from Panama to Switzerland are becoming expert at circumventing international sanctions.
In the spring of 2019, a polite middle-aged Iranian walked into a lawyer’s office in the Swiss town of Zug. Speaking with a subtle lisp, in excellent English, he introduced himself as Saeed Alikhani.
Alikhani told the lawyer he was an accountant working with a Panama-registered commodity broker, Ocean Glory Giant, that was seeking to establish offshore companies for an unusual trading arrangement.
The company wanted to set up naval mortgages — in this case a fixed charge secured on a ship, rather than a conventional loan to purchase one — against certain oil tankers to serve as guarantees for trades with Chinese buyers. If Ocean Glory did not receive payment for the oil it delivered, it could call in the mortgage and claim ownership of the vessel from the counterparty.
When asked about the origin of the oil, Alikhani produced two bills of lading, the lawyer recalls. One described a cargo of Malaysian crude and the other listed crude from Basra, in Iraq.
Over the next six months the lawyer agreed mortgages against at least nine oil tankers before passing on the work to two Swiss friends. They continued to arrange naval mortgages for Alikhani until at least 2023.
In total, the three Swiss signed mortgages against more than 30 tankers worth almost $1bn, according to documents lodged with the Panama Maritime Authority, where the vessels were registered at the time.
But their cargoes were not as innocuous as Alikhani had claimed. Analysis of ship tracking data by the FT and C4ADS, a non-profit research group that studies illicit networks, suggests the vessels were used almost exclusively to transport billions of dollars’ worth of oil from Iran, Venezuela and later Russia.
It was also not clear who exactly was buying the oil. Each tanker was registered to a different holding company administered by a different Chinese director with little or no public profile. When the FT visited some of the directors’ listed addresses in China it mostly found men and women with little apparent knowledge of the multimillion-dollar vessels they purportedly owned.
However, phone numbers and other details on the mortgage documents show that some of the holding companies shared links to Chinese individuals and entities placed under sanctions by the US during President Donald Trump’s first term in office.
Together, the networks identified by the FT shed new light on the systems developed to send Iranian oil to China — and how they have been adapted to ship oil from Russia and Venezuela. The revelations come just as Trump is once again seeking to choke Tehran’s exports and weighing new measures against Moscow.
“This oil network and its suppliers show in intimate detail how tools and tactics used to resist western sanctions have proliferated among sanctioned states,” says Andrew Boling, an investigator at C4ADS.
By diversifying into Russian and Venezuelan shipments, Ocean Glory appears to have acted, he adds, as a “sort of ‘super-broker’ for sanctioned crude”.
COMMENT – Look no further for proof that the rules-based, liberal international order no longer functions.
Totally unsurprising that the Swiss are at the middle of these conspiracies… the Swiss have spent decades profiting off undermining international law and efforts to achieve transparency.
Hong Kong Officials Harden Their Stance on ‘Soft Resistance’
Joy Dong, New York Times, August 20, 2025
With pro-democracy movements long squashed, the government is targeting any hint of subtler expressions of discontent. Even establishment figures say it may be too much.
The Hong Kong authorities have a new favorite buzzword: “soft resistance.”
The phrase, which is used to describe anything seen as covertly subversive or insidiously defiant against the government, is showing up in news reports, speeches by top officials, and warnings from government departments. Officials and propaganda organs have warned of the threat of possible “soft resistance” in a book fair, music lyrics, a U.S. holiday celebration and environmental groups.
The term and its widespread official use reflect the political climate of a city that has been transformed since Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020, after quashing mass pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.
Protests disappeared, and the political opposition was largely dismantled by the yearslong crackdown that followed. Now, with such “hard resistance” held at bay, the authorities appear to be targeting what they see as the next threat: subtler, inconspicuous expressions of discontent.
Officials have warned that Hong Kong continues to be threatened by foreign forces, led by the United States, that seek to destabilize Hong Kong in order to block China’s rise. To the authorities, “soft resistance” is nothing short of a national security threat, and at least a dozen senior officials have used the term in recent weeks. Warning signs include messaging that is deemed to be critical of the government or sympathetic to the opposition or to protesters, whom the authorities have described as rioters or terrorists.
“Soft resistance is real and lurks in various places,” John Lee, the city’s leader, warned in June. He cited the threat of unspecified forces that “don’t want our country to prosper and become stronger,” saying that such actors had planted agents in Hong Kong to undermine stability.
Mr. Lee pointed to what he described as an attempt to turn public opinion in the city against organ donations, after Hong Kong and mainland China started exploring establishing a system for doing so across their border. In 2024, after thousands of people appeared to withdraw from the organ donation system, two people in Hong Kong were sentenced to prison, accused of using fake registrations and cancellations to create the illusion that there was widespread opposition to the system.
The term “soft resistance” is being used so widely that Hong Kong’s justice secretary, Paul Lam, felt the need to explain it officially for the first time, in late June. He told local media that it referred to using false or misleading information to incite the public, or to cause people to have a “wrong understanding” of the government. But he also said that the term was hard to define, and that “soft resistance” was not necessarily illegal.
The phrase was first coined by Beijing’s representative to Hong Kong in 2021. It was revived by another high-ranking Beijing official in June, at a celebration of the fifth anniversary of the imposition of the national security law.
COMMENT – The three stages of the enshittification of Hong Kong.
Step 1: Create a vibrant and diverse city on the edge of an authoritarian empire that people from all walks of life want to live in.
Step 2: Have that authoritarian empire take complete control of the city.
Step 3: Destroy everything that made the city vibrant and diverse, ensuring that people don’t want to live there.
Microsoft Failed to Disclose Key Details About Use of China-Based Engineers in U.S. Defense Work, Record Shows
Renee Dudley, Pro Publica, August 20, 2025
The tech giant is required to regularly provide U.S. officials with its plan for keeping government data safe from hacking. Yet a copy of Microsoft’s security plan obtained by ProPublica makes no reference to the company’s China-based operations.
Microsoft, as a provider of cloud services to the U.S. government, is required to regularly submit security plans to officials describing how the company will protect federal computer systems.
Yet in a 2025 submission to the Defense Department, the tech giant left out key details, including its use of employees based in China, the top cyber adversary of the U.S., to work on highly sensitive department systems, according to a copy obtained by ProPublica. In fact, the Microsoft plan viewed by ProPublica makes no reference to the company’s China-based operations or foreign engineers at all.
The document belies Microsoft’s repeated assertions that it disclosed the arrangement to the federal government, showing exactly what was left out as it sold its security plan to the Defense Department. The Pentagon has been investigating the use of foreign personnel by IT contractors in the wake of reporting by ProPublica last month that exposed Microsoft’s practice.
Our work detailed how Microsoft relies on “digital escorts” — U.S. personnel with security clearances — to supervise the foreign engineers who maintain the Defense Department’s cloud systems. The department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
COMMENT – Oh-boy Microsoft! Maybe the corporate leadership should consider spending a few extra bucks to employ folks who aren’t completely under the thumb of the CCP and its Ministry for State Security.
Authoritarianism
The Persistent, Soaring Ambitions of Xi Jinping’s “New Era” for China, Socialism, and the Globe
Daniel Tobin, The ASAN forum, May 7, 2025
The first Trump administration inaugurated a period of open, global strategic rivalry with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and the Biden administration sustained it. As of this writing, it is too early to say how the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) see the contest’s long-term trajectory in light of the new domestic and international policies of the second Trump administration. It is possible, however, to revisit the continuity and expansiveness of the CCP’s ambitions under Xi Jinping, whose tenure as paramount leader since late 2012 has now spanned four US administrations. The foundation of Beijing’s official ideology of “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” (hereafter “Xi Jinping Thought”) is its title concept that the PRC’s successful development over several decades has raised its wealth, power, and status, allowing Chinese socialism to “enter a new era” with implications for the future of: (1) China and the Chinese nation, (2) world socialism, and (3) the development of human society (by which Beijing means global politics). In each of these areas, Xi has announced soaring objectives that he has expressed with even more sweepingly ambitious language over time. While many in Washington have awoken to the ‘hard power’ dimensions of the contest (military, economic, technological, etc.), and some to Beijing’s aim of rewiring the international order, few acknowledge the ideological dimensions or the centrality of the concept of the “new era” as the driver of Xi’s posture in all three areas. This article seeks to fill that gap.
Why pay attention to the CCP’s ideology at all? During the Cold War, an intellectual community complete with English language journals devoted itself to analyzing the Soviet Union’s ideology and examining the evolution of Moscow’s official worldview and its relationship to policy. Today, there is no parallel community focused on unpacking Beijing’s ideology; yet, in recent years, a growing number of external observers have rediscovered the value of CCP leadership speeches and policy documents as a vehicle for understanding the PRC’s intentions and actions. This is indeed the correct starting place. Owing to the CCP’s Leninist heritage, it uses ideology expressed in these venues as its instrument to depict, modify, and mobilize around its long-term goals, view of the external environment, and the policies designed to navigate toward its objectives. Further, as Timothy Heath, Rush Doshi, and others note, the content of Beijing’s ideology is the result of elaborate, multiyear processes by which its assessments are formulated and coordinated. Ideology thus has bureaucratic force because the PRC’s institutions must frame and justify their work in its terms. Finally, the CCP spends enormous resources explicating its ideology to its own officials, forcing them to study it and identify how they are applying it in their areas of responsibility. The oceans of ink and forests of books produced for this purpose are available and should facilitate summary by external observers.
Nevertheless, it is traditional in English language academic writing on CCP ideology to bemoan the challenge of interpretation. Explicating Beijing’s ideology involves summarizing concepts written in what will be, for most readers, two foreign tongues: first, the Chinese language, and second, the party’s conceptual language derived from the Soviet Union’s Marxist-Leninist “newspeak.” To succeed, one must sail narrowly between two challenges. On the one hand is the Scylla of translating the concepts in a way that one’s readers can digest, but which threatens to focus on what the observer cares about rather than what Beijing does and thus utterly distorts the party’s original ideas. On the other is the Charybdis of depicting all of the CCP’s concepts with their original logic and yet drowning the reader who lacks the context the party’s cadres possess to make sense of them. Unfortunately, most English language scholarship on Xi’s political thought as of this writing has been dismembered by Scylla, and some manages to both be torn apart by Scylla and drowned by Charybdis at the same time. While several recent volumes are useful in their summaries of Xi’s policies in particular areas in specific chapters, their arguments about the overall meaning of Xi Jinping Thought do not reflect summaries of Beijing’s own explanations. Crucially, they bury the central concept that animates Xi Jinping Thought and provides unity to its many parts. This neglected idea is the ideology’s title notion of “the new era.” In contrast, while the present essay is not a comprehensive summary of Xi Jinping Thought, or even of the implications of the new era for strategy and policy in all of the major policy areas Xi Jinping Thought addresses, it begins by exploring the overall meaning of the new era. Afterwards, it traces how the ambitions Xi articulated for the new area in each of three major areas have evolved over his tenure in office. Owing to the central role that Party Congresses play in consolidating and promulgating changes to the CCP’s guiding ideology, the article is anchored in the 19th Party Congress held in 2017—the first Xi presided over as incumbent general secretary and at which he announced Xi Jinping Thought—and the 20th Party Congress in 2022. It also addresses how Xi’s first five-year term 2012-2017 set the stage for these ambitions.
Comment – Great piece by Dan Tobin. He puts Xi’s expansive ambition into context and helps us remember that regardless of what Washington may or may not do, Xi Jinping has his own plans and those plans are for a world that undermines, rather than reinforces, the kind of world that many hope for.
The big shift in ethnic affairs exposed by China’s corruption crackdown
Xinlu Liang, South China Morning Post, August 17, 2025
Propaganda from the Bottom Up: How Government Messaging in China Reaches Fragmented Social Media Audiences
Stanford SCCEI China Briefs, August 6, 2025
Hong Kong public universities sign new accountability agreement requiring alignment with Xi’s remarks
Kelly Ho, Hongkong Free Press, July 30, 2025
Hong Kong university student found guilty of insulting national anthem during World Cup qualifier
Hans Tse, Hong Kong Free Press, July 30, 2025
EU condemns arrest of former Macau pro-democracy lawmaker
Hong Kong Free Press, August 3, 2025
Why Does Xi Keep Purging Loyalists? Look to Stalin and Mao for the Answer.
Li Yuan, New York Times, August 20, 2025
A Nation of Lawyers Confronts China’s Engineering State
Dan Wang, The Atlantic, August 18, 2025
China extends probe into EU dairy products as trade tussle goes on
Joe Cash, Reuters, August 18, 2025
China mandates domestic firms source 50% of chips from Chinese producers — Beijing continues to squeeze companies over reliance on foreign semiconductors
Jon Martindale, Tom’s Hardware, August 18, 2025
China Eases Drama Rules to Strengthen Content Supply
Sherry Qin, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2025
China Refiners Grab Russian Oil as Trump Menaces Flows to India
Michael Smith, Bloomberg, August 19, 2025
India and China Mend Ties Amid Trump Tariff Threats
Shan Li and Chun Han Wong, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2025
India hails improving ties with China ahead of Narendra Modi-Xi Jinping meeting
Andres Schipani and Joe Leahy, Financial Times, August 19, 2025
Trump Is Pushing India Back Toward China
David Pierson and Alex Travelli, New York Times, August 18, 2025
China pledges to address India's rare earth needs, Indian source says
Reuters, August 20, 2025
China Is Worried About Dollar-Backed Stablecoins
Zongyuan Zoe Liu, Foreign Policy, August 19, 2025
VIDEO – The Nvidia Ai GPU Black Market
Gamer Nexus, August 18, 2025
Environmental Harms
China's overcapacity crackdown faces litmus test in solar sector
Joe Cash, Reuters, August 19, 2025
Foreign Interference and Coercion
Chinese digital propaganda in Central America
Melissa Vida, Global Voices, July 28, 2025
In recent years, the People's Republic of China (PRC) has increased its presence in Central America, not only through infrastructure projects and trade agreements, but also via a sophisticated digital influence strategy. This strategy includes the systematic dissemination of narratives favorable to the Chinese regime across social media and media outlets, with the aim of consolidating its image as a trustworthy strategic partner, while discrediting critical voices and alternative democratic models.
According to a new report, China’s soft power in the region is no longer limited to cultural or educational expressions. It now operates as a key geopolitical tool in the battle over narratives. Through targeted campaigns, partnerships with local actors, and digital diplomacy, China seeks to shape the Central American information ecosystem to reinforce its legitimacy and counter the influence of rival powers, especially that of the United States. This phenomenon poses concrete challenges for the democratic health of the countries in the region, where freedom of expression and information pluralism are under increasing pressure.
Leaked Files Reveal Serbia's Secret Expansion of Chinese-Made Surveillance
Jelena Jankovic and Reid Standish, Radio Free Europe, August 13, 2025
Summary
Leaked documents show a Serbian IT company that has won Interior Ministry tenders buying new software and services from the Chinese tech giant Huawei.
One purchase order from March 2024 shows plans to expand Serbia's eLTE system, the private citywide hotspot that links the surveillance equipment and software that forms Huawei's Safe City project and allows it to operate.
Experts who reviewed the files for RFE/RL said items on the purchase order could support up to 3,500 additional cameras.
The software and services are also provided by Huawei at a substantial discount.
Hong Kong democracy campaigner accuses UK police of asking her to ‘self-censor’
Henry Belot and Geneva Abdul, The Guardian, July 31, 2025
Thames Valley police requested Carmen Lau ‘avoid public gatherings’ after neighbours received bounty letters.
A former Hong Kong politician and prominent democracy campaigner has accused British police of asking her to “self-censor” and “retreat from public life” after officers asked her to agree to avoid public gatherings.
The request, outlined in a signed “memorandum of understanding” seen by the Guardian, has alarmed exiled dissidents who fear it may embolden attempts to silence criticism of Chinese and Hong Kong officials worldwide.
Carmen Lau, who moved to the UK in 2021, was asked to sign the formal agreement in March by Thames Valley police after her neighbours were posted letters offering a £100,000 bounty for information on her movements or for her being taken to authorities.
Thames Valley police requested Lau “cease any activity that is likely to put you at risk” and “avoid attending public gatherings” such as protests.
Lau is wanted by Hong Kong authorities for allegedly contravening the territory’s national security law, which grants sweeping extraterritorial powers to prosecute acts or comments made anywhere in the world that it deems criminal. She also works with the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a Washington-based organisation dedicated to “raising international support for the advancement of its democracy and human rights”.
Tony Chung, a democracy activist who was jailed under Hong Kong’s national security law but now lives in the UK, was also the subject of near-identical letters requesting British citizens inform on him.
While Hong Kong authorities have denied sending the letters, the UK foreign and home secretaries believe they are an example of “transnational repression” and have called on “Chinese and Hong Kong authorities to end the deliberate targeting of opposition voices”. On Friday, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper vowed to protect the “rights and freedoms” of exiled activists in the UK.
COMMENT – Remember back when the UK used to be a beacon of freedom?
Maybe UK police could investigate (and deport) folks who are threatening people who are exercising their rights? The more that London bends a knee to this activity, the worse it will get.
Beijing warns against foreign stockpiling of REEs
Trivium China, August 19, 2025
Human Rights and Religious Persecution
Hong Kong cancels passports and bans financial support for 16 overseas activists
Kanis Leung, AP News, August 5, 2025
Hong Kong authorities on Monday strengthened a crackdown on 16 overseas-based activists who were previously targeted by bounties on suspicion of endangering national security, implementing measures that include banning financial support to them and canceling passports for most of them.
The activists were among 19 people who were targeted with arrest warrants in July for alleged roles in Hong Kong Parliament, a group the police called a subversive organization abroad. The organization is not the city’s official legislature and its influence is limited.
Three of the original 19 activists were already targeted by similar measures last year.
Secretary for Security Chris Tang banned providing funds or economic resources to the 16 activists, including Victor Ho, Keung Ka-wai, Australian academic Chongyi Feng and U.S. citizen Gong Sasha, the Hong Kong government said in a statement.
Travel documents were canceled for 12 of the 16 who hold Hong Kong passports.
The government also prohibited properties from being leased to the people on the list or forming joint ventures with them. Anyone violating the orders risks a penalty of up to seven years in prison.
The 16 activists are hiding in the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Germany, Australia, Thailand and Taiwan, among other regions, the government said, accusing them of continuing to engage in activities endangering national security.
The notice also accused them of intending to incite hatred against Beijing and Hong Kong through smear and slander.
“We therefore have taken such measures to make a significant impact,” the statement said.
Beijing imposed a national security law on the territory in 2020 that has effectively wiped out most public dissent following huge anti-government protests in 2019. Many activists were arrested, silenced or forced into self-exile.
The measures announced Monday were issued under the powers granted by Hong Kong’s homegrown national security law enacted last year.
COMMENT – Apparently “endangering national security” in Hong Kong includes simply complaining that the Chinese Communist Party has completely dismantled Hong Kong’s political culture.
Seven-year-old New Yorker stuck in China over father’s political art
Christian Shepherd and Lyric Li, Washington Post, August 19, 2025
Gao Jia, the American-born son of a well-known Chinese dissident artist, has missed first grade because his parents have been stopped from leaving China.
This was meant to be the summer Gao Jia finished first grade in New York and spent his school break playing with friends near his home on Long Island or drawing with his father, Gao Zhen, a Chinese artist known for his irreverent caricatures of Mao Zedong, the founder of modern China.
Instead, the outgoing 7-year-old U.S. citizen with spiky hair and a mischievous grin has been stuck in China for nearly a year while his father stands trial on charges relating to artwork produced long before his son was born.
Jia has been trapped by the system of exit bans that Chinese law enforcement has used with increasing regularity since Xi Jinping became China’s leader in 2012. The exit bans are used to prevent dissidents and their families from leaving the country and to pressure them into silence, according to human rights groups.
COMMENT – The CCP is a bunch of thugs. Do not take your kids to the PRC.
Xi Jinping visits Tibet amid Dalai Lama succession tensions
Ck Tan, Nikkei Asia, August 20, 2025
Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage
Tesla inks first deal to build China’s largest grid-scale battery power plant
Ganesh Rao, CNBC, June 20, 2025
Tesla has signed its first deal to build a grid-scale battery power plant in China amid a strained trading relationship between Beijing and Washington.
The U.S. company posted on the Chinese social media service Weibo that the project would be the largest of its kind in China when completed.
Utility-scale battery energy storage systems help electricity grids keep supply and demand in balance. They are increasingly needed to bridge the supply-demand mismatch caused by intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind.
Chinese media outlet Yicai first reported that the deal, worth 4 billion yuan ($556 million), had been signed by Tesla, the local government of Shanghai and financing firm China Kangfu International Leasing, according to the Reuters news agency.
COMMENT – Elon and Tesla just cannot help themselves when it comes to making bad business decisions in the PRC.
Pensions a new front for US clampdown on Chinese investment
Danielle Myles, fDi Intelligence, August 15, 2025
China’s corporate bonds win record share of top credit ratings
Thomas Hale and Wang Xueqiao, Financial Times, August 16, 2025
China steps up tax crackdown on overseas investments
Cheng Leng, Zijing Wu and Ryan McMorrow, Financial Times, August 17, 2025
China’s $11 Trillion Stock Market Is a Headache for Both Xi and Trump
Bloomberg, August 17, 2025
China’s Cement Slump Signals End of 21st-Century Building Boom
Bloomberg, August 17, 2025
Fewer fake firs, higher prices: China tariff delay does little to save the holidays
Jessica DiNapoli, Reuters, August 18, 2025
Applied Materials Forecasts Fall in Profit, Revenue
Kelly Cloonan, Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2025
Xiaomi Posts Another Strong Quarter as Car Sales, IoT Drive Growth
Jiahui Huang, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2025
Property sector woes extend into July
Trivium China, August 18, 2025
Apple Expands iPhone Production in India for US-Bound New Models
Sankalp Phartiyal and Mark Gurman, Bloomberg, August 19, 2025
China Can’t Unify Its Own Markets
Lizzi C. Lee, Foreign Policy, August 18, 2025
‘Not easy’: how a US firm avoided Trump’s China tariffs by sourcing American
Ralph Jennings, South China Morning Post, August 19, 2025
Japan's fragmented power chip industry struggles to meet China's challenge
Ryohtaroh Satoh, Nikkei Asia, August 20, 2025
China’s Data Still Doesn’t Add Up
Brad W. Setser and Michael Weilandt, Council on Foreign Relations, August 19, 2025
Cyber and Information Technology
Inside the Biden Administration's Gamble to Freeze China’s AI Future
Graham Webster, Wired, August 14, 2025
What really motivated the US government to ban Nvidia from selling powerful computer chips to China?
Alan Estevez was sitting at his dining room table wearing a T-shirt when Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo called on Zoom to ask if he wanted to be the Biden administration’s top export control official. “You’re going to have to sell me on this,” Estevez recalls telling her.
It was 2021, and the outspoken New Jersey native thought he had finally left public service behind. After more than three decades at the Pentagon, he had left and taken a job in consulting. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to go back.
Could he be tempted by the opportunity to help oversee the tens of billions of dollars in semiconductor funding the administration was seeking from Congress? “I came from DOD,” he recalls saying. “$50 billion is OK money, but it’s not a lot of money.” Then Raimondo appealed to his sense of service. Estevez gave in and took the job.
COMMENT – I’m sure Graham Webster spoke to Alan Estevez for this piece, but I’m not sure he spoke to anyone else.
Before They Can Rule the World, Chinese Robots Need to Master Basic Chores
Hannah Miao and Yoko Kubota, Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2025
The Athletes at China’s Robot Games Fell Down a Lot
Yan Zhuang, New York Times, August 18, 2025
Adani, Ambani Hunt for Chinese Tech as Ties Warm on US Tariffs
Alisha Sachdev, Bloomberg, August 17, 2025
Nvidia working on new AI chip for China that outperforms the H20, sources say
Liam Mo, Reuters, August 19, 2025
AI boom, lagging China demand create chip tool maker winners and losers
Kensho Motowaki, Nikkei Asia, August 19, 2025
Nvidia's China prospects undimmed by Beijing's H20 worries
Cissy Zhou, Yifan Yu qnd Lauly Li, Nikkei Asia, August 19, 2025
VIDEO – Detained by a Government & Probably Blacklisted by NVIDIA for Our Next Investigation
Gamer Nexus, August 10, 2025
Military and Security Threats
Why Xi Still Doesn’t Have the Military He Wants
Jonathan A. Czin and John Culver, Foreign Affairs, August 18, 2025
China military parade to show off hypersonic missiles and autonomous weapons
Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, August 20, 2025
One Belt, One Road Strategy
VIDEO – Why China’s New Export Terminal in Brazil Is a Threat to U.S. Farmers
Ksenia Shaikhutdinova, Wall Street Journal, August 19, 2025
COMMENT – The PRC is deeply committed to becoming much less dependent on the United States.
‘I Don’t Think There’s a Government in Latin America That Has Given in More’
Jared Mitovich, Politico, August 19, 2025
China’s exports, investments to Global South surge in ‘age of tariffs’: report
Sylvia Ma, South China Morning Post, August 19, 2025
Pakistan presses China for more Belt and Road investment in Gwadar
Adnan Aamir, Nikkei Asia, August 19, 2025
China buys first Australian canola cargo since 2020, traders say
Naveen Thukral, Reuters, August 18, 2025
China’s biggest delivery app brings its disruptive playbook to Brazil
Gabriel Daros, Rest of world, August 19, 2025
Will China’s BYD make cars in Argentina? Filing in country may hint at plans
Igor Patrick, South China Morning Post, August 20, 2025
Opinion
Trump Takes a Wrong Turn on Nvidia’s Chips
Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2025
America Hands China an AI Advantage
Michael Sobolik, The Dispatch, August 18, 2025
Did Taiwan "Lose Trump?"
Tanner Greer, Scholar Stage, August 17, 2025
OVER THE LAST WEEK Christian Whiton’s essay “How Taiwan Lost Trump” has ricocheted its way through the Taiwanese media. Ever sensitive to foreign perceptions of Taiwan, the Taiwanese chattering classes have been especially sensitive in the fallout of two news items: Taiwan’s failure to reach a trade deal with the United States and the Trump administration’s cancellation of a planned New York stopover by Taiwanese President William Lai. Most Taiwanese observers have linked these events together. In Taiwan they have been depicted as a terrible portent of future American policy. The general mood is a fatalistic “now we see what Trump truly thinks of us!”
Whiton’s essay succeeds because it confirms this narrative (“You are right: Trumpworld does think the worst of you!”) while also offering an explanation for how this doleful circumstance came about. To the outrage of their allies and the glee of their enemies, Whiton lays all blame squarely at the feet of the powers that be in the DPP.
Hence the essay’s viral run. What of its accuracy? To those familiar with this administration, its personnel, and the broader intellectual environment that it feeds on, does his argument ring true?
Partially. The essay is directionally correct, but glaringly wrong in many specifics.
Here is Whiton’s core claim: TECRO and the Green leadership have not built meaningful bridges to MAGA world. They must earn the trust of that world, but they do not speak or act in a way that might gain this trust.
This is all basically true. The Greens do not have deep ties with MAGAland’s nationalist conservatives, and have torched some of the ones they once had. From Taipei’s perspective this is not a good thing. The nationalist conservative wing of the Republican Party now staffs much of the Trump administration’s foreign policy bureaucracy, dominates conservative media, and has an absolute lock on the younger Republicans who will determine their party’s future. In Washington’s inner councils, these men often cast the deciding vote. No nation dependent on American arms for its survival can afford to alienate them.
But have William Lai and Hsiao Bi-khim done that? Is the Trump administration, the national conservative movement, or MAGAland writ large as hostile to Taiwan as Whiton makes out? Do their attitudes account for the two events—20% tariff rates and Lai’s canceled stopover in New York—that have set Taiwanese media into this tizzy?
Here Whiton’s arguments do not hold up. Events simply did not unfold as he describes them. U.S.–Taiwan trade talks were similar to the administration’s other tariff negotiations. Trump’s personal fondness for or personal disgust with a foreign nation rarely makes any difference in these deals. Trade talks are also walled off from the broader strategic questions in the relationship. Linking Lai’s stopover to the tariff decision is a category error. Whether Lai visited New York or not, the tariffs would have been the same. It is doubtful anyone in the White House meant them to be read as twin pillars of a single strategy.
Whiton also misreads Trumpist attitudes. Neither the administration nor MAGAworld harbors a special grudge against Taipei. The administration has not yet reached a firm consensus on what American policy towards China should look like, let alone Taiwan. Most national conservatives have yet to think deeply about the problem posed by Taiwan. Whiton claims that this crowd is repelled by Hsiao Bi-khim. The truth is that hardly any of them would recognize her name.
One day they will. At some point in the not-too-distant future, the powerbrokers of MAGAland will have real debates about both China and Taiwan. In that day the ties between Taiwanese elites and their MAGA counterparts will be tested. But that day has not yet come.
COMMENT - Great commentary by Tanner Greer!
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