Xi Abandons a “Comprehensive Partner”

Again.

Friends,

First off, good on India for refusing to sign the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit statement over its silence on Pakistani terrorism.

The PRC government was the host for this Defense Ministers Meeting held in Qingdao last week and it was the first time since the PRC attack on the Indian border five years ago that the Indian Defense Minister showed up at this SCO meeting.

Apparently, the PRC refused to budge on having the statement even mention Pakistan’s responsibility for the terrorist attacks in April that killed 26 Indian tourists.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the collective security organization that claims it isn’t one.

As usual, Chinese Communist Party mouthpieces like Global Times claimed that the meeting went great and “all parties reached a consensus” because to admit the truth would be a huge embarrassment to the host.

Of note, the Iranian Defense Minister, Aziz Nasirzadeth attended the SCO meeting as well.

I’m sure the Ayatollah didn’t have to ask him twice if he wanted to leave Iran for the PRC… it is probably one of the only places the IDF wouldn’t target him with a missile through his bedroom window.

Xi demonstrates his selfishness… again

Speaking of the Iranians, they must have been quite disappointed by how meaningless the 2021 Sino-Iranian “comprehensive partnership” was in Tehran’s time of desperate need. Surely the Ayatollah thought Xi Jinping would come to his rescue in some way. What’s the sense of having a “comprehensive partnership” with a UN Security Council Member and nuclear power if you don’t get anything in return. Perhaps, the Ayatollah thought Xi would threaten Washington and force Trump to abandon his military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. As President Trump demanded the Ayatollah’s unconditional surrender, threatened to bury him in his command bunker, and then went ahead to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, Xi didn’t even pause his trade negotiations.

I think that meets the dictionary definition of a ‘fair weather friend.’

As Craig Singleton pointed out in his letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal on Thursday (“Where Was Xi Jinping in Iran’s Hour of Need?”), Xi Jinping was AWOL during Iran’s most serious time of need. Along with the so-called “comprehensive partnership,” Iran is a brand new member of both SCO (since July 2023) and BRICS (since January 2024). Iran votes consistently in Beijing’s favor at the United Nations and sells almost all its oil to the PRC.

As Iran has come under increasing pressure from Israel and the United States, Tehran sought guarantees from the world’s only authoritarian superpower… and when Tehran needed help, Beijing refused to pick up the phone.

This behavior on Beijing’s part does call into question the entire rationale of these Beijing-led institutions.

If the Ayatollah can’t trust Xi Jinping to help his country, how can any other country trust the Chinese Communists? In Beijing’s propaganda these institutions are built on the solid foundation of “mutual respect” and provide its members with solidarity against so-called “American hegemony.” But apparently, loyalty only flows in one direction.

Leaders that commit their nations to a “comprehensive partnership” with the Chinese Communists, or are members of BRICS or SCO, must demonstrate their unswerving loyalty to Beijing’s geopolitical priorities, but Beijing provides nothing in return aside from a couple of strongly worded statements from the MFA spokesperson.

Perhaps these leaders should conclude that there is nothing “comprehensive” about a partnership with the PRC.

Beijing mouthed its disappointment that the U.S. was hammering Iran, but Xi had his lieutenants continue negotiations on a trade agreement granting President Trump two high-profile victories in a week (make that three high-profile victories when you count the NATO 5% defense spending pledge)… so much for all that stuff about ‘the East is rising, and the West is declining.’

It still appears that Washington can walk and chew gum at the same time (even without a full team in place), while Beijing is still incredibly selfish and won’t jeopardize its interests for its allies.

I’m sure the Chinese Communists rationalize this selfishness to themselves in some way, but the idea that anyone would put their faith in Beijing’s commitments is just insane. The Party is happy to pursue opportunities that benefit them or play the spoiler when it might impose a cost on their rival, but they won’t make sacrifices for the benefit of others. Not exactly what the PRC’s partners might expect from the lofty rhetoric of a “community of common destiny for all mankind.”

The former Soviet Republics that took part in the China-Central Asia Summit last week should take note. If Moscow ever ends its costly campaign in Ukraine and turns its attention back to Central Asia, those “Permanent Friendship Pacts” they signed with Beijing last week won’t look so “permanent.”

Say what you will about the Soviets/Russians, they at least demonstrate a modicum of loyalty to their allies, partners, and satellites. The PRC, on the other hand, is perhaps the least dependable “Great Power” there has ever been.

Better Late than Never: NATO Defense Spending to 5%

Hats off to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the Trump Administration for a big win at the NATO Summit this week. Getting NATO members to raise their spending target from 2% to 5% of GDP by all members was a real coup (now let’s see some follow through… seriously let’s not waste 15-20 years talking about meeting the goal, let’s actually meet it).

It is amazing that immediately following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and during the following years, the Biden Administration couldn’t get NATO to revise its completely outdated peacetime defense spending pledge of 2% (which many members failed to meet and continue to fail to meet: side-eye at you Canada at 1.37% in 2024).

It must have occurred to Biden’s national security team that NATO needed to vastly increase defense spending in the face of the growing Sino-Russian threat, especially since the United States was stretched so thin given the lack of defense spending by allies in the Indo-Pacific.

I just finished reading Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Biden’s mental incapacity must have played a major role in that failure to get the Europeans to step up. Though Tapper and Thompson don’t raise this, I assume Russian intelligence understood how unprepared Joe Biden was for the rigors of the Presidency and that must have played a major role in Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. (That was probably intelligence that the Biden Administration was unwilling to declassify)

[NOTE: If you haven’t read the Tapper-Thompson book, you should… it is absolutely terrifying what the “politburo” (the nickname for Biden’s five closest advisors) did to lie to the American people and cover up Joe Biden’s mental incapacity. I had no idea how much Hunter Biden’s legal troubles in 2023 furthered his father’s cognitive decline. Under any normal circumstances, he would have had his car keys taken away, but instead we had dozens of Democratic Party insiders telling us: “He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine.” After reading their book, I conclude that there were likely months, if not years, during his Administration that Joe Biden was incapable of being President of the United States. As a country, we can never let that happen again].

The outcome from this latest NATO meeting suggests that being “diplomatic” and “playing nice” with the Europeans and Canadians doesn’t lead to results that serve the Alliance’s mutual interests.

Those countries will only begin to act responsibly once they are faced with real threats that they may have to shoulder the burden of their own defense alone.

It is more important for the Alliance to be effective at its mission deterrence, than for laggards to feel good about their failures to fulfill their commitments.

Had NATO members lived up to their commitments to raise defense spending during the first Trump Administration (or during the George W. Bush Administration or during the Obama Administration) and if the Germans had canceled Nordstream 2, as President Trump demanded (and the Obama Administration demanded after Russia invaded Ukraine the first time), I suspect that Putin would NOT have felt confident enough to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Obviously, that is a counterfactual I cannot prove, but it stands to reason that things would have worked out very differently had European and Canadian leaders been more responsible.

Many in Europe and the Biden Administration portray February 2022 as some sort of success for NATO… we should be honest with ourselves; it was NATO’s worst failure.

NATO was created for the purpose of deterrence and deterrence failed in February 2022 because our adversary convinced himself that NATO was weak and that NATO’s leaders were not up to the task of exercising hard power.

That lesson should stink in.

If you want a peaceful world, then you must have the military strength to guarantee it. Lecturing people who have tanks about rules and norms is a good way to get dead.

Unsurprisingly, Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister immediately denounced the spending agreement and pledged that his country would NOT fulfill its obligations to the rest of the alliance. Apparently, Spain negotiated some sort of side-agreement. Of note, under PM Pedro Sanchez’s leadership, Spain’s defense spending as a percentage of GDP has been about 1.28% (the lowest of NATO members), shamefully short of the 2% minimum goal set 15 years ago during a period of a relatively benign international environment. Despite 3+ years of war on the NATO border, Sanchez has failed to fulfill even that inadequate goal, though he did agree that he would ramp up to 2.1%.. someday… maybe.

Spain’s economy minister told the press on Wednesday, that the country expected no negative repercussions from its decision to thumb its nose to the rest of the Alliance. He said, “Spain will be a responsible ally," and meet all of its commitments despite not fulfilling the minimum spending target. I suspect that if there are no repercussions on Spain, that other NATO members will find ways to proclaim they are also “responsible” while not fulfilling the spending target.

Let’s be clear: Spain is NOT a responsible ally.

Rather than fulfill Spain’s obligations to the rest of Europe, I guess Sanchez was too busy paying the PRC to set up his janky clean-energy grid and handing out money to his cronies. But despite ever-widening corruption scandals, Sanchez refuses to resign and is defiant that he will run again in 2027 (probably on the platform of standing up to Donald Trump and keeping Spain from fulfilling its defense obligations).

Over the last two years, Sanchez has become perhaps the most vocally anti-Israel leader in Europe, going so far as to deny port entry of U.S. ships that might be carrying arms to Israel even as Israel’s enemies launch attacks against ships in the Red Sea that are bound for Spanish ports.

Europe’s political left has a bit of the “defund the police” vibe to them and we shouldn’t be surprised when our adversaries feel confident to conduct military adventurism against us.

Thanks for reading!

Matt

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MUST READ

1. Newsom California Initiative Accused of Links to Chinese Influence Network
   Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Newsweek, June 25, 2025

An initiative supported by California Governor Gavin Newsom is part of a broader attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to build networks of influence in the biggest U.S. state, according to a new report from an advocacy group that is critical of Beijing's human rights record in Hong Kong.

Newsom's office did not respond to Newsweek requests for comment. A California business association that has supported the initiative said it was purely economic and not political. China's consulate in San Francisco defended it as an example of mutually beneficial cooperation.

The Washington, D.C.-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK) said it had investigated a "Bay to Bay" initiative aiming to link San Franscisco's Bay Area to the burgeoning Greater Bay Area in southern China - a project presented by Chinese officials as an opportunity for business and to address climate change.

"In these subnational engagements, the U.S. state and local officials are dealing with an apparatus orchestrated and led by China's central government and designed to benefit the CCP," according to the report, Hong Kong's Greater Bay Area and the CCP's Strategy to Influence U.S. State and Local Officials, published on Wednesday by the Washington, D.C.-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK), an advocacy group for freedom and for political prisoners in Hong Kong.

Such efforts could be "incompatible with US interests and values," said the author, Shannon Van Sant, CFHK's Strategy and Public Affairs Advisor, who cited the positions of those who had taken part in meetings from the Chinese side as well as Chinese state media accounts of meetings, Chinese government and U.S. business websites and other documents, including photographs.

The initiative was similar to China's Belt and Road Initiative, or to its global network of "sister city" relationships that seeks to develop closer relationships with local officials - but that carried political risks as the ties also transmitted central government policy and influence and interference, said Van Sant. On the Chinese side there were plans to extend it to New York and Vancouver, she said.

The Bay to Bay initiative was supported by San Francisco's Bay Area Council, a business association focused on developing the local economy.

Reached by telephone, John Grubb, Chief Operating Officer of the Bay Area Council, told Newsweek that the council was a business group and not a political organization. Nevertheless it was aware of political risks: "So our work, everything, is always 'eyes wide open'."

"We're Team players here. We're part of the U.S. team," Grubb said.

"Our engagement was that this is an economic strategy, okay, in between these regions with China, to try to better integrate. And that's been our conversation. It hasn't been about other political or ideological aspects of that," Grubb said.

A spokesperson for the Chinese consulate general in San Francisco told Newsweek: "The people of China and California share a long-standing tradition of friendship. Based on the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation, the two sides have had cooperation that delivers tangible benefits to both peoples and injects vitality into China-US relations."

COMMENT - Don’t California’s elected officials have enough to worry about with fixing their own state… should they really be spending time setting up their own diplomatic and economic policy channels with the PRC?

2. China’s Quiet Push in India
   Dalia Parete and Sriparna Pathak, Lingua Sinica, June 23, 2025

Indian scholar Sriparna Pathak examines how China seeks to influence India’s diverse media landscape through academic infiltration and digital manipulation.

In the last decade, India’s media landscape has experienced dramatic digital transformation, resulting in both opportunities and vulnerabilities that foreign actors have sought to exploit. The country’s vast media ecosystem—comprising over 100,000 registered publications across 23 official languages and hundreds of television channels—has grown rapidly since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. This expansion has also introduced new challenges, particularly around misinformation and foreign influence operations.

China has emerged as a sophisticated actor in this space, deploying influence campaigns that exploit India’s open media environment despite deteriorating bilateral relations following the 2020 Galwan Valley clash. Unlike countries with significant Chinese diaspora communities, India’s minimal Chinese-speaking population has forced Beijing to adapt its strategies, utilizing AI translation, English-language content farms, and academic infiltration to reach Indian audiences.

COMMENT — The CCP loves to exploit vulnerabilities in open societies.

3. Chinese association accused of mixing crime and patriotism as it serves Beijing
   Rebecca Tan, Washington Post, June 24, 2025

In December, a man considered by U.S. officials to be among Asia’s most powerful crime bosses gathered friends and allies in the Chinese casino city of Macao. Videos from the event show Wan Kuok Koi belting out Cantonese songs and smiling broadly for the cameras, seemingly unbothered by investigations across multiple countries into his alleged role in large-scale scams, fraud and money laundering.

The 69-year-old Wan — widely known by his nickname, “Broken Tooth” — presided over the celebration as chairman of the World Hongmen History and Culture Association, which describes itself as an ethnic Chinese fraternal organization devoted to promoting Chinese culture abroad. According to the U.S. Treasury, however, the association serves as a front for the 14K triad, one of China’s largest organized crime groups with involvement in “drug trafficking, illegal gambling, racketeering, human trafficking, and a range of other criminal activities.”

In 2020, the Treasury imposed sanctions on Wan, the association and several related entities, saying they were part of a “powerful business network” that had been involved in illicit activity across the Asia Pacific since 2018, and barred U.S. residents and entities from any transactions with them.

A Washington Post investigation has found that the Hongmen association is not just an alleged criminal front. It is entwined with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in ways that have not been previously reported. And its network, which has continued to expand despite sanctions, has routinely supported Beijing’s political objectives in Southeast Asia, the Pacific and Africa, even as it is investigated in at least four countries for alleged fraud, bribery, online scams, money laundering and other crimes.

Wan’s deputies, several of whose roles are being identified for the first time, have expanded Hongmen’s footprint in the past five years largely unimpeded, The Post found, sometimes evading criminal charges by escaping to China and to jurisdictions where China has deep influence.

The Post investigation drew on hundreds of photos and videos of Hongmen leaders, along with court records, police documents, business filings, and interviews with over four dozen government and law enforcement officials from seven countries, as well as Hongmen members, crime analysts and individuals close to the CCP.

It discovered that at the same time the Hongmen association has been implicated in criminal activity, it has spread Chinese government propaganda, promoted unification with Taiwan, brokered projects for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — China’s $1 trillion infrastructure project to build global influence — and provided security for Chinese officials overseas as part of a stated mission to contribute to “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

In virtually every country where it operates, Hongmen members have forged ties to elites that have been strategically helpful for China, diplomats and analysts say.

And in at least one country, Uganda, Hongmen members set up a Chinese overseas police center — a type of facility that rights groups and U.S. officials say is part of Beijing’s espionage operations. At the opening of the center in 2023, the Chinese ambassador, Zhang Lizhong, standing by the Hongmen chapter leader in Uganda, described it as an effort to “protect the safety and legitimate rights and interests of Chinese investors and Chinese citizens.”

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s bid to expand China’s influence has made increasing use of Chinese people living and working abroad — a “United Front” strategy that Xi has called the country’s “magic weapon.” This includes selectively exploiting ties to criminals that proclaim loyalty to the CCP, The Post found, letting them thrive as long as their illicit activities remain offshore and do not threaten domestic stability.

A Chinese casino mogul, Zhao Wei, has been running a special economic zone in Southeast Asia that has become a flourishing hub of trafficking, money laundering and other illicit businesses, according to watchdog groups. Despite appeals to authorities in Beijing from organizations like the International Crisis Group to rein in his activity, Zhao has been able to travel freely to and from China and maintain close ties to Chinese officials, watchdog groups said. A representative of Zhao declined to make him available for comment.

There is similarly “extremely compelling” evidence tying the Hongmen association to Beijing, including photos of Wan receiving an award for patriotism from CCP entities, said Martin Thorley, a senior analyst focused on China at the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), a Geneva-based watchdog group.

“This is beyond clandestine diplomacy,” Thorley said. “This is crime that is really deeply entrenched in state machinery.”

An endorsement

After the U.S. sanctions, online scam centers linked to Hongmen in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos continued to expand, defrauding tens of thousands of victims with fake investment and marriage schemes, investigators say. The centers are increasingly steering away from targeting Chinese citizens to avoid Beijing’s wrath, as they focus on people from other parts of the world, including the United States, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.

The Hongmen network is under active investigation by law enforcement in Malaysia for alleged involvement in financial crimes, including fraud, bribery, stock manipulation and money laundering, and in an espionage case in the Philippines, according to officials who confirmed probes that have not been previously reported.

At least two other nations — Thailand and Palau — had already opened investigations into Hongmen for allegedly running online gambling, scam centers and other illicit businesses within their territory.

In Palau, a close U.S. partner, Wan was added in 2019 to the nation’s “undesirable alien” list and banned from the Pacific island country. That followed an attempt by Wan to secure land next to two U.S. radar sites on a main southern island, which raised concerns in Washington, officials in Palau said. But individuals linked to Wan “remain active on the island and have continued to expand their influence in Palau and elsewhere in the Pacific,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in an April report.

In the past year, online-scamming, human-trafficking and money-laundering operations similar to those that Hongmen members have been accused of carrying out in Asia have also surfaced in Africa, with Uganda emerging as a major source for trafficking victims and South Africa growing as a hub for financial crime, investigators say.

“There have been increasing indications of major Asian criminal networks establishing connections and operations on the continent and exploiting similar vulnerabilities to those present in Southeast Asia,” UNODC said. Hongmen, in particular, has been “increasing activity in Uganda and other African countries,” the office said.

Ugandan and South African officials did not respond to requests for comment.

“There’s a growing Venn diagram between [Chinese] authorities and Chinese organized crime groups overseas, where there’s clear knowledge of each other’s activities, a kind of co-awareness and cooperation,” said a former official in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs who, like some others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information or because of security concerns.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a list of detailed questions. Neither did the Chinese embassies in Cambodia, Uganda and South Africa, countries where the Hongmen association has active chapters, The Post found. The Chinese Embassy in D.C. declined to comment.

Messages, calls, emails and letters to over a dozen Hongmen-related businesses and organizations, including its registered corporations in Cambodia, were not answered.

Responding to the U.S. sanctions in 2020, Wan said, “The World Hongmen History and Culture Association has always abided by laws and regulations, and never under the guise of China’s Belt and Road Initiative engaged in any illegal behavior.” Following the sanctions, Chinese authorities publicly distanced themselves from Wan, calling allegations that he had ties to the CCP “lies” and “unscrupulous attacks” on China.

But an examination of public and visual records undercuts that assertion and shows that despite the well-known criminal associations of Wan, contact has continued between him, Hongmen, and state and provincial entities in China, including as recently as this year:

• From 2015 to 2020, Wan identified himself and was identified in a newspaper owned by the Chinese government as a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), an advisory body for the party. Months after China’s Foreign Ministry said in 2020 that he was not a CPPCC member, Wan was pictured at a ceremony in Beijing receiving an award for patriotism from the “Overseas United Working Committee,” an entity that sits under the CPPCC and has ties to the People’s Liberation Army.

• Chinese state media has itself documented Wan’s travels across Southeast Asia and the Pacific to negotiate government initiatives. In 2020, Wan met the president of Papua New Guinea alongside retired Chinese Senior Col. Li Yingming. Following the U.S. sanctions, Wan deepened his cooperation with a Chinese company, Ronghong Group, which works under a state-supported initiative to spread traditional Chinese medicine; he was listed last year as a consultant for the company.

• Wan spent extended time last year in a special economic zone in Laos that Chinese authorities helped create to boost investment from China. In March, Wan met publicly with officials of China’s southern province of Hainan to discuss cooperation with Hongmen — including joint work, with “Laos as the base,” on the “regionalization” of the Chinese yuan to displace the U.S. dollar, according to official statements.

• On April 17, during an official state visit by Xi to Cambodia, Hongmen members there participated in a closed-door “special discussion” on the security of overseas Chinese with Cambodia’s deputy defense minister and an organization affiliated with the CCP, according to photos and statements from the association.

The CCP makes “precise, deliberate” decisions on whom it associates with, and Wan is “arguably the most notorious criminal on the continent who has also been very publicly sanctioned by the U.S.,” said Thorley, the GI-TOC analyst. “For them to have given him an award … it’s as clear-cut as it gets,” Thorley added. “It was an endorsement.”

A network across the Global South

Before he was a patriot, Wan was a kingpin.

At the height of his influence in the 1990s, he had a $50 million stake at a Macao casino and command of 10,000 triad members, according to Portuguese prosecutors. (Macao was a Portuguese colony before it was returned to China in 1999.)

Starting in late 1999, Wan served 14 years in a high-security prison in Macao for gambling, loan-sharking and attempted murder — a period in which the political landscape for Chinese organized crime changed significantly. The CCP moved to force triads out of China and, at the same time, began to co-opt non-state actors such as diaspora groups to further its goals overseas.

Before his release in December 2012, Wan was contacted by Beijing’s Liaison Office in Macao and persuaded to “ensure peaceful coexistence between triad societies in Macao and to promote cross-straits links” between Taiwan and China, said Martin Purbrick, an expert in Chinese organized crime and former Hong Kong police officer who commissioned intelligence reports on Wan’s activities at the time.

4. Words of the Week: “Being Traveled”
   Samuel Wade, China Digital Times, June 20, 2025

On June 4, Safeguard Defenders published a new report on the practice of "forced travel," by which politically targeted individuals are removed from their home regions during sensitive periods. The report, Holidays in Handcuffs, is presented satirically in the form of a glossy travel magazine. From its opening "Letter from the Editor":

Every year, like clockwork, when major political events or sensitive anniversaries are about to occur, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sends activists and petitioners on “forced travel”. Often those targeted include the same list of long-established rights scholars, lawyers, journalists and intellectuals. There are now so many sensitive dates that these people end up being routinely “forced travelled” several times a year. It doesn’t matter if they are young or old, in good health or ailing, almost without fail they will be escorted by a team from the Public Security Bureau (police) or government department on a “holiday” so that they cannot “cause trouble” at home.

[…] Through interviews with recent victims and analyses of media stories, this report traces how the practice of forced travel declined (but did not completely disappear) during the Covid pandemic (2020 to end 2022) when strict lockdowns were periodically implemented. It also notes how China’s economic problems have shaped a more budget form of forced travel in the post-Covid era.

The use of parody in this report, including in the cover, design and headlines, is not to diminish the seriousness of forced travel. Forced travel is still an illegal and arbitrary form of detention. It violates the fundamental human rights to freedom, liberty of movement, expression and privacy. Rather, parody is employed as a novel approach to raise attention to this repressive practice and to highlight the absurdity of the CCP in pretending forced relocation, surveillance and detention is just a “holiday”.

The phenomenon was previously highlighted in 2018 by Jianying Zha, who wrote for The New Yorker about her activist brother Zha Jianguo’s experiences of "being traveled."

The Chinese term ‌bèi lǚyóu is an example of what has been called the "involuntary passive." Xinhua described the construction’s use in a 2010 report on bèi‘s selection as 2009’s "Character of the Year".

COMMENT – Some blatantly Orwellian stuff here.

I recently did a track 2 dialogue with some former PRC Government officials, and they are convinced that stuff like this never happens in the PRC because the Chinese Communist Party is fully committed to democracy and always serving the Chinese people. It must be nice to live in a fantasyland.

5. VIDEO – Reacting to Sarah Paine’s Communism Video – A Chinese Perspective

   All Things China with Lu, YouTube, May 18, 2025

In this video, I’m reacting to the viral clip “The Brilliance of Communism” featuring Professor Sarah Paine, created by Dwarkesh Patel. As someone who grew up in China, I offer a personal and honest perspective on her views about communism, the Cultural Revolution, and China’s modern history.

If you’re curious about how communism is portrayed in Chinese education versus reality, or want to hear a firsthand account from a Chinese person reflecting on this topic, this reaction is for you!

COMMENT – These are some great new videos.

6. VIDEO – Reacting to Sarah Paine as a Chinese Millennial: Why China Fears Taiwan

   All Things China with Lu, YouTube, May 25, 2025

In this follow-up to my first reaction video, I dive into two more powerful clips from the same viral lecture — one about Taiwan and why China is so obsessed with it, and the other about the most revered (and controversial) figure in modern Chinese history.

7. China Tells Brazil Xi Jinping Will Miss BRICS Summit in Rio
   Simone Iglesias, Bloomberg, June 24, 2025

President Xi Jinping will miss a meeting of BRICS leaders in Rio de Janeiro, according to a Brazilian official familiar with the matter, marking the first time the Chinese leader has skipped the summit since taking power.

China has informed Brazil that Xi will be represented at next month’s huddle by Premier Li Qiang, according to the government official, who requested anonymity as the information isn’t yet public. Li previously filled in for his boss at the Group of Twenty summit in India in 2023.

Beijing blamed a scheduling conflict for Xi’s absence, people familiar with the matter told the South China Morning Post, which first reported the news. The people also said Xi’s frequent meetings with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva over the past year were a factor.

The septuagenarians met at the G-20 summit in Brazil in November, followed by Xi’s state visit to Brasilia. A few months later, Lula came to Beijing for a conclave of Latin American and Caribbean nations. It’s unusual for Xi to visit any country two years in a row, aside from Russia.

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Xi’s absence could undermine his efforts to use the BRICS bloc to expand China’s global influence and build an alternative to the US-led world order. The summit could have also given the Chinese leader his first chance to sit down with Iranian officials since the war with Israel began, after the Islamic Republic joined the bloc in 2024.

Largely under Beijing’s push, the BRICS grouping doubled in size last year to reach nine members with the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Ethiopia also joining Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Lula has emerged as one of Xi’s closest partners on the world stage, along with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. There’s still the possibility Xi will turn up for the UN climate conference held in Brazil later this year, although Beijing hasn’t confirmed such a trip.

COMMENT – Lots of speculation about why Xi is canceling his trip. Bad health that the Chinese Communist Party is trying to keep secret? A spat between BRICS leaders?

8. China's industrial policy has an unprofitability problem
   Noah Smith, Noahpinion, June 23, 2025

“China is paying its national champions to fight each other to the death.” Noah Smith gives a detailed rundown of how Xi Jinping’s massive push for ever greater national industrial policies is making Chinese companies less profitable and creating a race to the bottom.

9. China Confirms Trade Framework with U.S. to Lift Export Controls

   David Pierson, New York Times, June 27, 2025

The deal involves loosening exports of rare earths to the United States and the lifting of some restrictions on U.S. goods to China, China’s Ministry of Commerce said.

China said on Friday that it had confirmed details of a trade framework with the Trump administration that includes an agreement for Beijing to speed up exports of critical minerals to the United States and for Washington to lift recent export controls on China.

“China will review and approve applications for the export of controlled items,” China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement, and “the United States will correspondingly cancel a series of restrictive measures it has taken against China.”

The statement echoed remarks that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick had made hours earlier, telling Bloomberg News that the United States would “take down” their export controls once China began delivering rare earth minerals.

It is unclear if the agreement is what President Trump was referring to when he said at a White House event on Thursday that his administration had “signed” a trade deal with China.

COMMENT – I’ll believe there is an actual agreement when the PRC fulfills its obligations.

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Authoritarianism

10. Hong Kong: If Your Employee Criticizes the CCP, Your Restaurant Will Be Closed

    Gladys Kwok, Bitter Winter, June 26, 2025

Restaurant owners in Hong Kong, some of whom have contacted “Bitter Winter,” are worried that they may soon be forced to close due to strict enforcement of the National Security Law.

In late May, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) dispatched correspondence incorporating new clauses of the Public Health and Municipal Services Ordinance related to national security.

The correspondence outlines that business license holders risk revocation of their licenses if they or their associated individuals—such as directors, management personnel, employees, agents, and subcontractors—partake in activities that threaten national security or undermine public interest.

Restaurant proprietors argue that it is unfeasible for them to oversee the complete range of employee behaviors and activities. Any dissent regarding the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) expressed on social media is now framed in Hong Kong as a potential violation of national security laws.

These new conditions aim to “effectively prevent any act or activity that is illegal or prejudicial to national security in licensed premises.”

In the revised food business license application form effective May 2025, it is now required for applicants to endorse a specific clause through their signature. This amendment aims to ensure compliance with updated regulatory standards. It reads as follows: “I shall ensure that no act or activity engaged or involved in by me or any of my related persons… may constitute or cause the occurrence of an offense endangering national security under the National Security Law or other laws of the HKSAR, or conduct [that] is otherwise contrary to the interests of national security or the interest of the public (including public morals, public order and/or public safety) of Hong Kong.”

11. How to Hide a Chinese Empire

    John Delury, China Books Review, June 26, 2025

After millennia of imperial history, China today has distanced itself from the concept of empire. But the new forms of Chinese imperium are more subtle than territorial conquest.

It took a while for our thinking on contemporary China to catch up with the concept of empire.

This might seem surprising given that China is heir to one of the great imperial traditions in Eurasian history. The Han Empire was easily on par with ancient Persia and Rome; the Tang dynasty makes the Holy Roman Empire look puny by comparison; and the Great Qing held its own against Great Britain, all the way up to the Great Divergence.

The shelves of a Chinese historian’s library are lined with insightful books characterizing different phases of this long imperium sinicum — from Yuri Pines’ Everlasting Empire (2012), which starts with the Qin dynasty, to William Rowe’s China’s Last Empire (2012) ending it with the Qing. Filling in the gaps between are Valerie Hansen’s The Open Empire (2000), telling the story up to 1800, and Timothy Brooks’ Troubled Empire (2012) about the Ming and Yuan. The study of empire is the lifeblood of sinology.

As a fraction of China’s history, the era after the Qing fell in 1911 is a blip — a century and change of republic coming on the heels of two millennia of empire. One can see from looking at a map how even the Republican era merely papered over continuity between early modern empire and modern nation-state. The borders of the Republic of China (founded in 1912) and the People’s Republic of China (declared in 1949) are nearly coterminous with the imperial boundaries of China established thanks to Qing expansion during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agreed on this one thing, at least: the new republic should be as big as the old empire. Their respective leaders, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong, managed to hang onto most of China’s land — using force to keep Tibet and Xinjiang inside their borders and losing only Outer Mongolia, due to pressure from Moscow.

Yet despite the imperial borders inscribed on the map of China today, and the rich body of historical scholarship on its imperial history, until recently “empire” barely seemed a relevant category of analysis for communist China. Mao Zedong was a rabid critic of empire, blaming China’s weakness on the “semi-colonialism” imposed by Western imperial powers since the Opium Wars and the “semi-feudalism” of imperial Confucian culture. Mao’s revolution was all about standing up to imperialist bullies, later refashioned as ending China’s Century of Humiliation. The endless stream of anti-imperialist propaganda helped to suppress the idea, especially within China, that the People’s Republic was itself an imperial construct.

Looking at contemporary China from the outside, there was another reason why empire as a category was overlooked. We expect empires to exert power far beyond their territorial boundaries, yet post-1949 China could do little more than defend its own. The People’s Republic, while vast and populous, was also poor and weak. Their foreign wars all took place close to home: pushing the U.S. out of North Korea in 1950, and border clashes with India in 1962 and the Soviet Union in 1969.

The only war that might have been labeled “neo-imperialist” was Deng Xiaoping’s ill-fated incursion into Vietnam in 1979, to punish Vietnam’s invasion of Chinese-backed Cambodia. Yet the poor military performance of the People’s Liberation Army only seemed to confirm the notion that China was unworthy of the epithet “empire.” Indeed, this curious case of one communist nation invading another communist country provided the opening puzzle of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1983), an influential study of how nationalism achieved hegemonic status as the only legitimate form of statehood, chasing empires off the face of the earth.

China’s invasion of Vietnam, moreover, was the exception that proved Deng’s rule, or “only iron law,” that economic development was the priority above all else. His framework of reform and opening-up in the 1980s generated soaring economic growth, especially in the countryside, but also fed hopes for political change. By 1989, Tibetans had rebelled and students were occupying Tiananmen Square in revolt. Yet even when Deng ordered tanks to clear the streets of the capital, massacring peaceful protestors in the early morning of June 4th, Americans saw it as the desperate act of a crumbling communist dictatorship, rather than the self-policing of an empire facing revolution from within.

The “evil empire,” after all, was headquartered not in Beijing but in Moscow. By the end of 1989, the dramatic events in Tiananmen Square were overshadowed by those taking place at the Berlin Wall. As the Soviet empire imploded, ending its Communist Party rule and liberating over a dozen “socialist republics” into sovereign nation-states, it was easy to imagine that the People’s Republic of China was also destined for the ash heap of history.

12. Xi Jinping reaches out to his fellow 'red aristocrats'
    Katsuji Nakazawa, Nikkei Asia, June 19, 2025

13. The Implications for Global Governance of China and Russia’s Post-2022 Alignment
    Evgeny Roshchin, CEPA, June 23, 2025

14. China Unleashes Hackers Against Its Friend Russia, Seeking War Secrets
    Megha Rajagopalan, New York Times, June 19, 2025

15. Xi Jinping’s Costly Inheritance
    Joseph Torigian, Foreign Affairs, June 23, 2025

16. Iran’s defense minister goes to China on first reported foreign trip since conflict with Israel

    Simone McCarthy, CNN, June 26, 2025

Iran’s defense minister has traveled to diplomatic and economic ally China on his first reported trip abroad since a 12-day clash with Israel that briefly dragged the US into a new regional conflict.

Aziz Nasirzadeh is one of nine defense ministers that Chinese state media say attended a gathering of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a China- and Russia-led regional security grouping that has grown in prominence as Beijing and Moscow look to build alternative international blocs to those backed by the United States.

The two-day gathering began Wednesday in the Chinese coastal city of Qingdao, a day after a ceasefire between Iran and Israel quelled what had been days of aerial assaults between the two, punctuated by a US strike on three Iranian nuclear facilities.

COMMENT – Let’s be honest, Iran’s Defense Minister was probably the happiest person ever to get on an airplane and leave Iran.

17. Hongmen Associations Have Links to United Front and Organized Crime
    Martin Purbrick, Jamestown Foundation, June 7, 2025

18. How Xi’s ‘New National System’ Centralizes Innovation to Counter Tech Containment
    Matthew Johnson, Jamestown Foundation, June 16, 2025

19. Scandal Exposes Technocracy, Nepotism, and Control Among PRC Elite
    Shijie Wang, Jamestown Foundation, June 21, 2025

20. Holidays in handcuffs: new report examines forced travel in China
    Safeguard Defender, June 4, 2025

21. Hong Kong teachers allegedly told to avoid US Independence Day events
    Helen Davidson, Hong Kong Free Press, June 20, 2025

22. With much to lose, China sat on Israel-Iran war’s sidelines as U.S. flexed
    Lyric Li, Washington Post, June 24, 2025

23. Rare earth access is the European Union's priority at China summit
    Philip Blenkinsop and Laurie Chen, Reuters, June 19, 2025

24. China Flexes Chokehold on Rare-Earth Magnets as Exports Plunge in May
    Hannah Miao, Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2025

25. Beijing official overseeing Hong Kong warns of persisting national security threats
    Kanis Leung, Associated Press, June 21, 2025

26. ‘The Better Life Is Out of Reach’: The Chinese Dream Is Slipping Away
    Li Yuan, New York Times, June 21, 2025

27. China Says the U.S. Damaged Its Own Credibility by Striking Iran
    David Pierson and Berry Wang, New York Times, June 21, 2025

The rhetoric belies a more complicated reality, as Beijing has been one of Tehran’s biggest backers.

China said the United States has hurt its reputation as a global power and its diplomatic standing by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities while it was engaged in talks with Tehran.

“Iran is harmed, but also harmed is U.S. credibility — as a country and as a party to any international negotiations,” Fu Cong, China’s ambassador to the United Nations, told China’s state broadcaster on Sunday.

COMMENT – Says the country that has invaded India, Bhutan, and Philippine territory, and continuously threatens to annex Taiwan.

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Environmental Harms

28. Hidden Tides: IUU Fishing and Regional Security Dynamics for India

    Ajay Kumar and Charukeshi Bhatt, Carnegie India, June 23, 2025

This article examines the scale and impact of Chinese IUU fishing operations globally and identifies the nature of the challenge posed by IUU fishing in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). It also investigates why existing maritime law and international frameworks have struggled to address this growing threat.

The world’s oceans are witnessing a continuous growth in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Chinese fishing fleets, in particular, are emerging as a significant threat contributing to this global challenge. While India recognizes the gravity of this global issue, IUU fishing has yet to receive the level of priority it arguably deserves within the country’s economic and security strategy.1 A comprehensive study on the scale and implications of IUU fishing for India is therefore essential to spotlight this pressing challenge.

This article examines the scale and impact of Chinese IUU fishing operations globally and identifies the nature of the challenge posed by IUU fishing in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). It also investigates why existing maritime law and international frameworks have struggled to address this growing threat. By highlighting the gaps in current legal frameworks and regional cooperation mechanisms, this article uncovers why IUU fishing persists despite international efforts to combat it. This article also offers suggestions for India to prepare to combat this challenge in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and across the IOR.

29. China Dominates 'Dark' Network Behind Global Fishing Crisis

    Micah McCartney, Newsweek, June 3, 2025

A new report exposes the sophisticated networks propping up Chinese squid fleets accused of illegal fishing off South America.

These activities—often carried out with Automatic Identification System (AIS) trackers turned off, or "dark"—are undercutting local fishers who depend on regional marine resources for their livelihoods, according to Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit C4ADS.

Illegal, Unreported And Unregulated

The rising demand for seafood and dwindling local stocks have pushed fishing fleets farther from home. The vessels now operate in international waters for months—even years—at a time, virtually unmonitored, increasing the risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and labor abuses.

China and Taiwan account for about 60 percent of distant-water fishing, and Chinese vessels in particular have faced growing scrutiny for allegedly operating illegally within South American exclusive economic zones, prompting rising grassroots pressure to tighten enforcement and close regulatory loopholes.

30. Australia to boost aerial surveillance of Pacific for illegal fishing fleets

    Kristy Needham, Reuters, June 13, 2025

Australia plans to significantly boost surveillance of Pacific Islands territorial waters, spending A$477 million ($310.72 million) on aerial patrols for illegal fishing fleets, tender documents viewed by Reuters show, as China takes steps towards sending its coast guard to the region.

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Fiji on Friday to discuss regional security, after the government of Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka approved a maritime security agreement that will see Australia fund a patrol boat for Fiji.

31. Sullivan Chairs Hearing on Combatting Chinese & Russian IUU Fishing Threat

    Senator Dan Sullivan, June 12, 2025

U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee on Coast Guard, Maritime, and Fisheries, today chaired a hearing on the threat of foreign illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing to Alaska’s fishermen and coastal communities. The hearing focused on strategies to combat foreign IUU fishing, many of which are found in Sen. Sullivan’s Fighting Foreign Illegal Seafood Harvest (FISH) Act.

These strategies include blacklisting offending vessels from U.S. ports and waters, bolstering the U.S. Coast Guard’s enforcement capabilities and partnerships, and advancing international and bilateral negotiations to achieve enforceable agreements and treaties. On April 30, 2025, the Senate Commerce Committee unanimously passed Sen. Sullivan’s FISH Act, co-led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I).

32. China Dominates 44% of Visible Fishing Activity Worldwide

    Oceania, June 5, 2025

Today, on the International Day for the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing, Oceana released an analysis of China’s global fishing activity worldwide between 2022 and 2024. The analysis shows China’s global fishing footprint, in which 57,000 of their industrial fishing vessels dominated 44% of the world’s visible fishing activity during this period. 

“To protect our oceans and fisheries, we must know who is fishing and where,” said Dr. Max Valentine, illegal fishing and transparency campaign director and senior scientist at Oceana. “It is critical that we have eyes on the seas, paying close attention to the world’s largest fishing fleets, especially from China, which have been linked to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and human rights abuses at sea. The sheer scale of China’s distant-water fleet has a profound impact on marine ecosystems worldwide. Transparency at sea is essential, not just to track distant-water fleets, but to hold bad actors accountable, protect vulnerable communities, and safeguard the sustainability of our ocean for future generations.”

Some key takeaways from Oceana’s analysis of China’s apparent fishing activity over a three-year period, from Jan. 1, 2022, to Dec. 31, 2024:

• 57,000 fishing vessels, primarily trawlers, flagged to China appeared to fish for more than 110 million hours,

• China’s fishing vessels appeared to conduct 44% of the global fishing activity during this period,

• Chinese vessels accounted for 30% of all fishing activity on the high seas, appearing to fish for more than 8.3 million hours,

• China’s fishing vessels were most active in South Korea (11.8 million hours), Taiwan (4.4 million hours), Japan (1.5 million hours), Kiribati (almost 425,000 hours), and Papua New Guinea (over 415,000 hours),

• China appeared to fish in more than 90 countries’ waters for more than 22 million hours.

Increased transparency in global fisheries is critical. Oceana calls on governments to require vessel monitoring for both their fishing fleets and vessels they authorize to fish in their waters.

The analysis used data from Global Fishing Watch (GFW) — an independent nonprofit founded by Oceana in partnership with Google and SkyTruth. Notably, the analysis reflects only a partial view of China’s fishing activities during this time, as it includes only those vessels flagged to China and transmitting automatic identification system (AIS) data, making them “visible” to public tracking systems.

33. China’s Global Fishing Footprint

    Oceania, June 2025

China is the largest fishing nation in the world. Using data from Global Fishing Watch (GFW) — an independent nonprofit founded by Oceana in partnership with Google and SkyTruth — Oceana analyzed China’s apparent fishing activity from Jan. 1, 2022, to Dec. 31, 2024. The activity was tracked using automatic identification system (AIS) data transmitted by vessels. AIS is a tracking system that

transmits a vessel’s identity, speed, and location. Vessels that were not transmitting AIS are not included in the analysis. While AIS analysis shows a large share of China’s distant-water fishing activity, it provides only a partial view of China’s total fishing footprint.

COMMENT - Another example of the CCP’s selfishness.

34. Analysis: Clean energy just put China’s CO2 emissions into reverse for first time

    Lauri Myllyvirta, Carbon Brief, May 15, 2025

For the first time, the growth in China’s clean power generation has caused the nation’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to fall despite rapid power demand growth.

COMMENT – Another explanation for this leveling off of CO2 emissions (CO2 emissions aren’t in reverse) is that the Chinese economy is doing much worse over the past 18 months, much worse than what Beijing will admit.

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Foreign Interference and Coercion

35. FBI Declassifies 2020 Intel Alleging Beijing Ballot‑Fraud Scheme Benefiting Biden
    Sam Cooper, The Bureau, June 23, 2025

Newly released documents describe a CCP-backed plan to use fake U.S. driver’s licenses—mostly sent from China—to enable fraudulent mail-in ballots during the 2020 election.

36. Singapore seeks stronger China ties amid uncertainty over Trump tariffs
    Dylan Loh, Nikkei Asia, June 24, 2025

PM Wong calls for 'new frontier for cooperation' with Beijing.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong met Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Tuesday, as part of the city-state's efforts to broaden collaboration with the world's second-largest economy amid ongoing uncertainty over trade talks with the U.S.

"In this time of global turbulence and uncertainty, I believe the China-Singapore relationship is more important than before," Wong said during his meeting with Xi, speaking in English. "We can work together to establish closer ties and also to cooperate in regional and multilateral platforms to continue to strengthen multilateralism in the rules-based global order."

COMMENT – Good luck Singapore!

Enjoy the Chinese Communist Party’s tight embrace.

Don’t be surprised when the balance of ethnic interests inside Singapore, that Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew so carefully crafted, blows up in your face because the CCP is only interested in an ultra-nationalist agenda of Han supremacy. Beijing sees you as a colony of overseas Chinese and will demand greater and greater control over your population which is nearly three quarters ethnic Chinese.

Last year, Singapore finally started using its foreign interference legislation to deal with the CCP’s extensive United Front Work in Singapore but those efforts have largely ground to a halt. In February this year, Singapore passed another law, the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill, to provide transparency of race-based clans and business associations to disclose foreign and anonymous donations, foreign affiliations, and their leadership. Now elements within Singapore’s ruling party (the People’s Action Party which has remained in power since the founding of the Republic in 1965) is using that same foreign interference legislation to end public criticisms that the PAP has been compromised by Beijing.

My recommendation to Singaporeans: closely study what happened to Hong Kong because you are next.

37. Ottawa Slams Eby Government Over Chinese Shipyard Deal, Citing Security and Sovereignty Risks
    Sam Cooper, The Bureau, June 21, 2025

38. Chinese Espionage in South Korea is a U.S. Intelligence Problem

    Ben Forney, SpyTalk, June 17, 2025

Disgruntled South Koreans in high tech industries can too easily cash in on shady Chinese offers for manufacturing secrets.

One day last month, an Asiana Airlines flight sat on the tarmac at Incheon airport in Seoul, South Korea, waiting to push back from the gate for a routine flight across the Yellow Sea to China. The passengers had boarded; everything seemed normal.

But then several minutes passed, and nothing happened. The airplane door remained open. Finally, the voice of a flight attendant crackled over the intercom, “Could [passenger X] please come to the front of the plane?”

The passenger, a man in his forties surnamed Kim, rose from his seat and nervously moved forward. As he approached the cockpit, Mr. Kim was swarmed by airport police and South Korean intelligence agents, who escorted him off the plane and arrested him on the spot.

Buried in Mr. Kim’s luggage were no state secrets or military plans, but arguably something equally vital to Korea’s national security: manufacturing data for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) semiconductors.

Had South Korean authorities not been able to execute this emergency arrest—the first ever for a technology theft crime— the secrets would have ended up in the hands of China.

Mr. Kim was a former employee of a SK Hynix supplier that helped the South Korean conglomerate develop the technology to become a world leader in HBM chip manufacturing. These chips are essential for the rapid data processing that underpins generative AI, including NVIDIA’s most advanced chips, and they’ve become one of the crown jewels in South Korea’s technology ecosystem.

Beijing has been after HBM manufacturing secrets for their own chip industry for years. South Korea has been a rich source of these secrets, but the problems go far beyond semiconductors. Over the past two years, I’ve tracked more than 40 cases of Chinese economic espionage in South Korean tech sectors, a number that likely represents a fraction of the total.

Unlike the U.S., the South Korean government has never acknowledged China to be behind the problem, despite the fact that 75% of overseas economic espionage cases benefit Beijing, and several industries that China dominates can be directly traced back to South Korean intellectual property theft. Local media, at least, have finally begun to raise awareness of the problem with headlines like “Korea on high alert as China-linked tech leaks persist”, “Twenty-five cases of overseas technology leaks this year, the highest ever,” and my favorite, “Why develop technology? You can just steal it from Korea…”.

38. TWEET – The current director of Princeton University Press Christie Henry is now in Xinjiang "I can't wait to tell the world the story here, the ability for multiple cultures and multiple languages to coexist in such wonderful way"

    Uyghur Story, X (Twitter), June 26, 2025

COMMENT – Another “borrowed boat”, this time Christie Henry, the Director of Princeton University Press. You have to be pretty foolish to fall for the all-expense-paid visit to Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party.

Looking at her “Message” as the Director at the Princeton University Press, it is clear that she seems to know a lot about climate change, but based on her trip to Xinjiang, she seems to know almost nothing about the most significant genocide to hit an ethnic group in decades.

I guess this goes to prove that rising to a position of significant influence in academia does not translate into good judgment or even basic skills in Googling the place that your being sent to by a hostile authoritarian regime. I wonder if her next trip will be to see wonderous North Korea?

39. Taiwan launches unity drive as China threat looms
    Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, June 22, 2025

40. Taiwan is 'of course' a country, president says in rebuke to China
    Nikkei Asia, June 22, 2025

41. China, Taiwan clash over history, Beijing says can't 'invade' what is already its territory
    Ben Blanchard, Reuters, June 25, 2025

42. China’s Only Iran Option Is a Low Profile
    Karishma Vaswani, Bloomberg, June 24, 2025

43. As U.S. Dismantles Voice of America, Rival Powers Hope to Fill the Void
    Tiffany Hsu, New York Times, June 24, 2025

44. China’s bet on Iranian oil and Middle East influence turns sour
    Edward White, Financial Times, June 20, 2025

45. Taiwan Criticizes CBC Correction on United Front Buddhist Land Story, Citing PRC Political Pressure
    The Bureau, June 20, 2025

46. China increases cyber attacks on hospitals to ‘humiliate’ Taiwan
    Allegra Mendelson, Telegraph, June 22, 2025

47. Taiwanese rethink China travel as Beijing raises stakes for 'separatist' speech
    Ann Scott Tyson, Christian Science Monitor, June 19, 2025

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Human Rights and Religious Persecution

48. How the Trauma of the One-Child Policy Lingers in
    Liyan Qi, Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2025

Beijing often tends to brush off the impact of its policies, be it its zero-Covid restrictions or the Great Leap Forward, urging its citizens to look ahead and not dwell on the past. But the one-child policy is hard to shake off.

For one thing, it accelerated the demographic bind China faces of now–dropping birthrates and a rapidly aging population. The policies to control the population have given way to new ones to strongly encourage births.

The one-child policy, which was abandoned in 2016, has left a hole in Chinese society: Millions of baby girls were never born and more than 150,000 Chinese children, mostly girls, were sent overseas for adoption. Beijing ended foreign adoptions last year.

In 2009, Barbara Demick, then a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, documented particularly shocking incidents of Chinese officials who snatched babies away from their birth families. Some of them ended up in the U.S. Her new book, “Daughters of the Bamboo Grove,” follows twin sisters who were separated. One moved in with relatives to avoid punishment for the birth family, but was taken away by local officials and eventually adopted by a couple in Texas. Part of the book documents the girls' reunion many years later.

I asked Demick about her perspective on the lingering impact of the one-child policy. Below are her answers, edited for length.

How is the trauma of that period affecting Chinese families today?

People were very scarred by the experiences of the one-child policy. There were some really unspeakable cruelties, when pregnant women were tied up like animals and dragged off to be forcibly aborted or sterilized. There is still a lot of trauma around that, especially for people who are wondering where their daughters are.

49. Argentina’s Highest Criminal Court Rules in Favour of the Uyghur Universal Jurisdiction Case
    Uyghur Congress, June 23, 2025

On Wednesday 18 June 2025, Argentina highest criminal court, the Federal Court of Criminal Cassation (Cámara Nacional de Casación Penal) ruled in favour of the universal jurisdiction case brought by the World Uyghur Congress, Uyghur Human Rights Project, and Lawyers for Uyghur for crimes against humanity and genocide committed against the Uyghur people by members of the Chinese regime. The Court of Cassation held that there are no legal impediments to the opening of the case, that the case should be opened, and ordered that a new constitution of judges of the Federal Court of Appeal be convened in order to implement their ruling.

This ruling will result in the opening of a criminal case for the Uyghur people whose plight, which has included forced abortions, torture, incarceration in concentration camps, systematic sexual offences, forced sterilisation, murder, forced disappearances, enslavement, and persecution, has been well documented. Despite this, they have been denied justice due to China’s power to veto the creation of any tribunal by the Security Council and China refusing to join the International Criminal Court.

The criminal complaint, in relation to the clear evidence of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Uyghur people by the Chinese regime, was filed on 16 August 2022 at the Federal Criminal Court in Buenos Aires, under the universal jurisdiction provisions set out in Article 118 of Argentinian Constitution, which allow for complaints concerning international crimes to be tried by any court in Argentina, no matter where these offences occur around the world. There are a number of cases currently open in Argentina, and arrest warrants issued, in relation to grave human rights breaches around the world.

The Court of Cassation’s latest unanimous decision follows their previous decision on 11 July 2024, where they held that the Court of Appeal of Buenos Aires had been wrong to agree with the Prosecutor’s decision to archive the complaint and ordered the Prosecutor to open an investigation. Subsequent to this, the Court of Appeal refused to implement the ruling of the higher Court. The Court of Cassation’s more recent decision that there are no legal impediment to the opening of a case, also demands that a reconstituted Court of Appeal implement their decision, can be seen as means of ensuring that the higher court’s decision is followed by the Court below.

COMMENT – I suspect the PRC Ambassador to Argentina is not pleased.

50. Veteran Chinese dissident faces ongoing police harassment despite prison release
    Qian Lang, Radio Free Asia, June 18, 2025

51. Seeking out ‘soft resistance’ will harm Hong Kong artists, prominent playwright says after minister’s warning of scrutiny
    Irene Chan, Hong Kong Free Press, June 23, 2025

52. Hong Kong grows more opaque on arrests in national security cases
    Hong Kong Free Press, June 18, 2025

53. U.S. lawmakers honor Dalai Lama with bipartisan resolution ahead of 90th birthday
    Radio Free Asia, June 17, 2025

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Industrial Policies and Economic Espionage

54. Chalmers hits China-linked companies with landmark lawsuit over crucial military minerals

    Mike Foley and Nick Bonyhady, Sydney Morning Herald, June 26, 2025

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has launched an unprecedented lawsuit against China-linked interests to force them to sell their stake in an Australian rare earths miner, whose products are crucial to warplanes, missiles and submarines.

The lawsuit, filed in the Federal Court on Thursday against foreign investors in Northern Minerals, is also seeking financial penalties for allegedly refusing to obey Chalmers’ direction to sell out of the company last year.

The Australian-listed company is developing the Browns Range heavy rare earths project in remote northern Western Australia, which could be one of the first non-Chinese sources of the minerals used in military guidance systems, wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Chalmers’ court action against an entity called Indian Ocean International Shipping and Service Company Ltd and a former associate follows his order last year for five Chinese-linked groups to sell their shares in Northern Minerals to unconnected buyers by September.

“Foreign investors in Australia are required to follow Australian law,” Chalmers said in a statement. “We are doing what is necessary to protect the national interest and the integrity of our foreign investment framework.”

China’s control of rare earths and critical products is an escalating cause of concern to the United States and countries like Australia, after Donald Trump’s trade war prompted Beijing to restrict shipments of the materials. It has made similar moves before, including against Japan in 2010 during a territorial dispute.

China controls nearly all of the world’s heavy rare earth production and Australian Strategic Policy Institute senior fellow Ian Satchwell said the global superpower’s interests were seeking to exert influence over Northern Minerals.

“Australia, with like-minded partner nations, is seeking to build alternative supply chains for rare earths and other critical minerals, and the Northern Minerals shenanigans are a very obvious example of China-linked bad faith investing to allegedly seek to disrupt those efforts,” Satchwell said.

“In Australia’s case those rare earths are used for things such as F35 fighters, missiles attached to them and in the future, nuclear-powered submarines.”

The federal government has warned that Australian critical minerals companies are a target for foreign actors trying to gain a commercial and strategic advantage. “The sector’s geostrategic importance places it at particular risk of foreign interference that aims to disrupt Australia’s efforts to diversify global supply chains and build onshore capabilities,” it advises companies.

COMMENT – When will we all stop pretending that the PRC deserves to be treated like a normal trading partner?

55. Volvo Sells Stake in Chinese Construction Equipment Maker for $833 Million
    Dominic Chopping, Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2025

56. China floods Brazil with cheap EVs triggering backlash
    Alessandro Parodi, Reuters, June 20, 2025

57. China’s Chongqing rises as global rail hub linking Asean, EU amid trade war risks
    Ji Siqi, South China Morning Post, June 24, 2025

58. Mainland, Hong Kong Launch Real-Time Cross-Border Payment Link
    Wang Xiaoqing and Han Wei, Caixin Global, June 21, 2025

59. How Foreign Scammers Use U.S. Banks to Fleece Americans
    Cezary Podkul, Propublica, June 25, 2025

60. Made-in-China planes face bumpy flight abroad
    Ka Sing Chan, Reuters, June 25, 2025

61. EU Wants China to Fix Rare Earths Issue Before July Summit
    Bloomberg, June 25, 2025

62. EU spurns economic dialogue with China over deepening trade rift

    Andy Bounds and Joe Leahy, Financial Times, June 23, 2025

The EU has refused to hold a flagship economic meeting with Beijing ahead of a leaders’ summit next month because of a lack of progress on numerous trade disputes, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The bloc’s stonewalling of the talks, known as the EU-China High-Level Economic and Trade Dialogue, underlines the deep divisions between the sides despite Beijing’s efforts to court Europe as a counterweight to the US amid President Donald Trump’s tariff war.

The economic dialogue often serves to lay groundwork for the EU-China leaders’ summit, which the people said was this year set for July 24-25 in Beijing. The leaders’ summit this year has particular diplomatic significance, marking 50 years of bilateral relations.

“China would like to have it [the economic dialogue], but we are seeing no progress in all of our talks,” one of the people said.

The bloc would hold the meeting only if there were agreements at the summit to implement, said a senior EU official who requested anonymity.

The EU and China are locked into a growing number of trade disputes. Brussels last year imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles after it found the industry benefited from huge state subsidies. In response, China imposed anti-dumping duties on EU brandy and opened anti-subsidy investigations into pork and some dairy products, which could lead to further tariffs.

In recent weeks, the EU has banned Chinese medical devices from most public procurement contracts and placed anti-dumping duties on Chinese hardwood plywood, a construction material.

Tensions had been exacerbated by Chinese restrictions on rare earths exports, which Beijing introduced in retaliation for US tariffs in April, the people said.

China holds a near monopoly on production and processing of many rare earths, which are used in electronics, electric vehicle motors, wind turbines and defence applications. Beijing’s slow issuance of export licences has prompted some European producers to warn of shutdowns.

The omission of the talks will lower expectations for any concrete gains at the leaders’ summit, though another EU official who asked not to be named noted that the economic dialogue was held irregularly and did not always precede the summit.

China will be represented at the summit by premier Li Qiang, the country’s second-highest ranking official, rather than President Xi Jinping, despite the meeting taking place in Beijing and the historic half-century anniversary, which was seen as a snub in Brussels.

The last EU-China leaders summit in December 2023 was preceded by talks between economy and trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis and Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng.

At that meeting, Dombrovskis raised the issue of European businesses’ access to the Chinese market, particularly for agrifood exports, medical devices, cosmetics and infant formula.

Most of these issues remain unresolved, according to Maria Martin-Prat, the EU’s top China trade official.

“There’s a huge amount of work that needs to be done between now and the summit,” she told a conference in Brussels on June 5.

She added that much of that work consisted of “issues which we have been discussing with them for a long time”.

63. ‘A new China shock’: von der Leyen revives hard line on Beijing at G7 summit

    Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, June 17, 2025

After months of soft-pedalling, EC chief urges leaders to unite against China’s dominance of rare earths supply chains.

64. China premier pledges to make country a 'consumption powerhouse'
    Wataru Suzuki, Nikkei Asia, June 24, 2025

65. China Tightens Fentanyl Controls in Goodwill Gesture to Trump
    Josh Xiao, Bloomberg, June 21, 2025

66. Honda Supplier Rethinks China Relationship as Trade War Bites
    Nicholas Takahashi, Bloomberg, June 22, 2025

67. Chinese Stocks and American Exchanges Head for a Breakup
    James T. Areddy, Wall Street Journal, June 22, 2025

68. A Toy Maker Sued Trump Over Tariffs and Won. Its Operations Are Still in Tatters.
    Theo Francis, Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2025

69. China races to calm worries over end to $42bn consumer subsidies
    Wataru Suzuki, Nikkei Asia, June 19, 2025

70. EU to Restrict China’s Participation in Medical Devices Procurement
    Andrea Figueras, Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2025

71. US warns Britain over Chinese wind farm security risks
    Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times, June 18, 2025

72. How middlemen funnel illegal Chinese vapes into the United States
    Tom Polansek, Reuters, June 23, 2025

73. Israel-Iran Conflict Spurs China to Reconsider Russian Gas Pipeline
    Georgi Kantchev, Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2025

74. China’s premier vows to ‘open its doors wider’ to trade and tech industry
    Eleanor Olcott, Financial Times, June 25, 2025

75. China is working to undermine UK democracy, British government says
    David Sheppard, Financial Times, June 25, 2025

76. China Tightens Controls on Fentanyl but Calls It a U.S. Problem
    David Pierson and Keith Bradsher, New York Times, June 25, 2025

77. From blacklist to backchannels: inside the European Parliament’s unlikely China reset
    Finbarr Bermingham, South China Morning Post, June 25, 2025

78. ‘Summer Davos’ panel mulls secret sauce of US economy – did China crack the recipe?
    Frank Chen, South China Morning Post, June 24, 2025

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Cyber and Information Technology

79. China on Cusp of Seeing Over 100 DeepSeeks, Ex-Top Official Says
    Bloomberg, June 24, 2025

80. AUDIO – Can China Catch Up on AI?
    Ravi Agrawal, Jared Cohen and George Lee, Foreign Policy, June 13, 2025

81. DeepSeek aids China's military and evaded export controls, US official says
    Michael Martina, Reuters, June 23, 2025

82. Chipmaker Melexis bets on Malaysia's 'neutrality' to power China growth
    Norman Goh, Nikkei Asia, June 24, 2025

83. Japan teams with NATO to counter China, Russia cyber threats
    Shinnosuke Nagatomi, Nikkei Asia, June 24, 2025

84. Artificial Eyes: Generative AI in China’s Military Intelligence
    Recorded Future, June 21, 2025

Key Findings

PLA media and researchers affiliated with the PLA have argued that the application of generative AI to military intelligence has a wide range of potential benefits, including improving the collection and analysis of intelligence and providing enhanced decision-making capabilities to military commanders, but have also recognized various challenges and risks associated with using this technology for intelligence work.

Likely realizing the intelligence limitations of general-purpose generative AI models, the PLA and China’s defense industry are likely prioritizing the development and use of specialized models that have been fine-tuned for intelligence tasks.

The PLA and China’s defense industry have very likely used a mix of proprietary and open-source LLMs from foreign and domestic developers to create generative AI-based intelligence tools. Foreign LLMs used this way very likely include models from Meta, OpenAI, and BigScience, among others, while domestic LLMs very likely include models from DeepSeek, Tsinghua University, Zhipu AI, and Alibaba Cloud, among others.

PLA patent applications reveal that the PLA has designed methods and systems that use generative AI to facilitate intelligence tasks such as generating open-source intelligence (OSINT) products, processing satellite imagery, supporting event extraction, and processing event data.

In a patent application filed in December 2024, a Chinese state-owned defense industry research institute proposed using OSINT, human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), and technical intelligence (TECHINT) data to train a military LLM to specialize in intelligence tasks, purportedly enabling the enhanced military LLM to support every phase of the intelligence cycle and improve decision-making during military operations.

The PLA and China’s defense industry have likely procured generative AI technology to support OSINT and science and technology (S&T) intelligence, an indicator that at least some elements of China’s military are likely beginning to apply generative AI to intelligence tasks.

The PLA — which very likely rapidly adopted DeepSeek’s generative AI models in early 2025 — is likely using DeepSeek’s LLMs for intelligence purposes, based on claims by a Chinese defense contractor that it has provided a DeepSeek-based OSINT model to the PLA.

The PLA is likely concerned that foreign counterintelligence organizations could use generative AI to produce convincing inauthentic content to mislead Chinese intelligence personnel and degrade the intelligence value of open-source information. Chinese counterintelligence organizations could apply generative AI in a similar manner.

85. Unitree Robotics reaches unicorn status with ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent funding
    Hannah Wang, South China Morning Post, June 19, 2025

86. How Huawei’s Ascend AI chips outperform Nvidia processors in running DeepSeek’s R1 model
    Wency Chen, South China Morning Post, June 19, 2025

87. Chinese Tech Giants Have Big Ambitions in Brazil
    Meaghan Tobin, South China Morning Post, June 19, 2025

88. Chinese cyber threat to Europe on par with Russia’s, warns Czech president
    Raphael Minder, Financial Times, June 20, 2025

89. Trump Delays TikTok Ban for a Third Time
    Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2025

90. China made millions of drones. Now it has to find uses for them
    William Langley, Financial Times, June 19, 2025

91. US may target Samsung, Hynix, TSMC operations in China, sources say
    Karen Freifeld, Reuters, June 20, 2025

92. Cyber Crossroads in the Indo-Pacific
    Vivek Chilukuri, et al., CNAS, June 24, 2025

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Military and Security Threats

93. Chinese Platforms in the Yellow Sea’s South Korea-China PMZ
    Jennifer Jun, Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative and Victor Cha, Beyond Parallel, June 23, 2025

94. ​China Calls Them Fish Farms. South Korea Fears They Have Another Use.
    Choe Sang-Hun, New York Times, June 24, 2025

95. Japan Protests New Chinese Construction in East China Sea
    Alastair Gale and Sakura Murakami, Bloomberg, June 25, 2025

96. Beijing’s ‘massive’ build-up raises threat of Taiwan Strait conflict: Nato chief
    Seong Hyeon Choi, South China Morning Post, June 24, 2025

97. UK Royal Navy vessel sails through Taiwan Strait
    Reuters, June 20, 2025

98. Japan destroyer sails Taiwan Strait after China jet encounter
    Kyodo News, June 20, 2025

99. Taiwan welcomes British naval vessel HMS Spey's Taiwan Strait transit
    Focus Taiwan, June 19, 2025

100. Why more young Chinese have military academies in their sights
     Carl Zhang and Edith Mao, South China Morning Post, June 21, 2025

101. China Backs Iran in Fight Against Israel
     James Palmer, Foreign Policy, June 17, 2025

102. China’s Continental Conundrum: Nuclear Geopolitics and American Strategy in the Western Pacific
     Kyle Balzer, AEI, June 24, 2025

103. A U.S. Attack on Iran Would Show the Limits of China’s Power
     David Pierson, Keith Bradsher, and Berry Wang, New York Times, June 20, 2025

104. Taiwan reports China coast guard incursions near outlying islands
     Taiwan News, June 22, 2025

105. Donald Trump signals sanctions relief for China to buy Iran’s oil
     Demetri Sevastopulo, Financial Times, June 24, 2025

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One Belt, One Road Strategy

106. China has influence over ports across Latin America, US think-tank reports
     Michael Stott, Financial Times, June 24, 2025

107. Taliban cancel oilfield deal with Chinese in Afghanistan's north
     Tahir Khan, Nikkei Asia, June 25, 2025

108. The growing risks for Chinese companies in conflict-ridden African nations
     South China Morning Post, June 21, 2025

109. China is trying to win over Africa in the global trade war
     The Economist, June 19, 2025

110. Latin America and the Struggle for Influence Between Washington and Beijing
     Sam Olsen, States of Play Substack, June 23, 2025

111. Belt and Road to Generate $1.6 Trillion in Annual Revenue by 2030, Official Says
     Lu Yutong and Ding Yi, Caixin Global, June 25, 2025

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Opinion

112. Is China a just society? Economic woes erode public perception of fairness
     Zhou Xin, South China Morning Post, June 24, 2025

The case of Chinese actress Nashi, who was found to have used subterfuge to get ahead in her studies, touched a raw nerve on the mainland.

…

For many Chinese, especially those in the middle class, the sense of unfairness appears acute and widespread, as their chances to succeed seem to be shrinking, while the privileged get more opportunities to stay ahead. It is often the low-income groups and small businesses that bear the brunt of economic downturns.

For example, Beijing’s crackdown on official gift-giving and lavish banquets has dealt a heavy blow to the country’s struggling catering industry.

Meanwhile, China’s strategy of concentrating resources into the hands of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) has not helped job creation or even wealth distribution. According to data released by China’s state-owned asset watchdog, SOEs hired just 760,000 fresh graduates in 2022, or 7 per cent of all fresh graduates during that year.

113. Will China succeed in building a parallel order to US dominance?
     Hiroyuki Akita, Nikkei Asia, June 15, 2025

Few now dispute that the U.S. and China have entered a new cold war. The pressing question is whether these two superpowers, locked in an escalating rivalry, can manage their competition and prevent tensions from spiraling out of control.

Recent developments have only heightened these concerns. China is increasingly working to challenge the U.S.-led international order and establish a parallel system more closely aligned with its own interests.

This troubling trend became evident at this year's Asia Security Summit, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, held in Singapore through June 1. Hosted annually by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, a think tank focused on security policy, the conference brings together defense ministers and senior military officials from the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Since 2019, China has consistently sent its defense minister to this high-profile forum, except in 2020 and 2021 when the event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing aims to use the platform to achieve two key objectives: to articulate its stance on contentious issues such as Taiwan and the South China Sea, and to soften its image as a regional and global threat.

Successive U.S. defense chiefs have attended the forum, often using the opportunity to hold sideline talks with their Chinese counterparts. In this way, the Shangri-La Dialogue has served as a fragile but crucial conduit between the military leaderships of two increasingly adversarial nations.

This year, however, marked a dramatic shift: China did not send its defense minister -- or even a top-ranking uniformed official. Instead, it was represented by Rear Adm. Hu Gangfeng, vice president of the People's Liberation Army National Defense University.

In effect, Hu lacks the authority to speak on behalf of the Chinese military as a whole, rendering China's presence largely symbolic. In previous years, Chinese delegations engaged with the media, but such interactions were markedly limited this time.

According to sources close to the organizers, a program slot was left open until the final moment in the hope that China's defense minister would attend. Beijing's decision to forgo participation in the dialogue raised eyebrows and quickly became a dominant topic of conversation during coffee breaks and meals throughout the summit.

In response to inquiries about the downgraded delegation, Hu stated that China sends representatives of varying ranks depending on the year, describing this year's participation as part of "normal" arrangements. However, Western participants offered a different interpretation, with analyses generally falling into two main camps.

One explanation points to China's complex domestic political landscape. Under President Xi Jinping's leadership, a sweeping anti-corruption campaign has unsettled the military establishment, leading to the downfall of several senior officers.

He Weidong -- the second-highest-ranking uniformed officer and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission -- has not made a public appearance in nearly three months, and his whereabouts remains unknown. In November, Miao Hua, then head of the commission's Political Work Department, was suspended and placed under investigation for "serious violations of discipline."

Both officials are reportedly under scrutiny for corruption. In this climate, many observers believe that China's top military leadership is in no position to take part in major international forums.

The other interpretation emphasizes external factors. The tariff war launched by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has sparked global backlash and diminished America's international standing. From this perspective, Beijing may have calculated that China can afford to forgo Western-led forums without risking diplomatic isolation.

Both explanations are certainly relevant, but the latter may offer a more accurate reading of the situation, especially given that Xi's military purges are not a recent development.

114. TikTok and the Decline of Congress
     Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2025

Trump refuses to enforce the app’s required sale, and the Members barely mumble an objection.

President Trump last week granted TikTok a third reprieve from Congress’s statutory ban on the popular Chinese-owned app. Talk about sending a bad signal to Beijing about the rule of law and national security.

A large bipartisan majority of Congress last spring passed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act after years of hearings about TikTok’s national-security risks. The platform vacuums loads of data on Americans, and its algorithms promote content that spreads American division while downplaying news that offends the Chinese Communist Party.

The law required TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance within 270 days—Jan. 19, 2025—or be banned from U.S. app stores and servers. Rather than try to negotiate a divestiture, TikTok challenged the law in court. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law in January shortly before it was supposed to take effect.

Enter Mr. Trump, who immediately granted TikTok a stay of execution for 75 days. The law allows a one-time extension on the divestiture deadline by 90 days if the President certifies to Congress “evidence of significant progress” toward “a qualified divestiture.” That progress must include “relevant binding legal agreements to enable execution” of such a deal in the 90 days.

Mr. Trump didn’t make such a certification and couldn’t because there had been no progress. Incredibly, he then instructed his Attorney General not to enforce the law against U.S. companies hosting TikTok to give his Administration time to negotiate a sale.

Some U.S. companies and investors sought to negotiate a deal this spring to buy TikTok, but no agreement was struck. Mr. Trump’s tariff offensive against China complicated negotiations, though it’s uncertain whether Beijing would approve a sale in any event since Chinese law treats its algorithms as state secrets.

Mr. Trump in April nonetheless extended the deadline again for another 75 days. If a deal wasn’t struck by his new deadline, no worries. He promised to grant another extension. Never mind the law doesn’t let him do this, or that he was giving away his leverage to force ByteDance and Beijing to agree to a deal by taking a ban off the table.

True to his word, Mr. Trump on Thursday issued another 90-day extension. Worse, he directed the Attorney General to “exercise all available authority to preserve and defend the Executive’s exclusive authority to enforce the Act” because of “the national security interests at stake.” If he really worried about national security, he’d enforce the ban.

It’s true the law gives the AG exclusive authority to enforce its steep penalties against U.S. app stores and servers. But as we reported, AGs in Tennessee, Montana and Alabama have subpoenaed Apple and Google for documents related to their noncompliance with the ban and strongly hinted they could be sued for violating state consumer and privacy laws.

Their goal is to amp up legal pressure on the platforms to stop hosting TikTok. But now Mr. Trump is telling the platforms to continue breaking the law and he’ll protect them from legal consequences. Sorry, but the Constitution doesn’t let the President order around state officials, nor immunize companies from state or private lawsuits.

Whatever one thinks of TikTok, this is an extraordinary moment for the rule of law. The President is simply suspending a law on his own in a way that caused a revolt against English kings. Yet Congress meekly goes along. Republicans howled when Barack Obama and Joe Biden refused to enforce immigration laws, but what Mr. Trump is doing may be worse because of its national-security implications.

What’s the point in having a Congress if its Members don’t care whether the executive branch enforces the laws they pass?

COMMENT - That is a good question.

115. How U.S. Export Policy Backfired
     James A. Lewis, Technology and Security, June 23, 2025

116. Can We See Our Future in China’s Cameras?
     Megan K. Stack, New York Times, June 21, 2025

117. China’s Central Bank Seeks Bigger Role for Yuan on Global Stage
     Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2025

118. A carbon tariff is the right way to confront China on trade
     Ely Sandler and Daniel Schrag, Washington Post, June 23, 2025

119. Taiwan has upped the ante in the cold war over chips
     June Yoon, Financial Times, June 25, 2025