Lucas Niewenhuis is the Newsletter Editor at SupChina. Previously, he has researched China-Africa relations at the Social Science Research Council, interned at the Council on Foreign Relations, and studied Chinese language and culture in Shanghai and Beijing.
LinkedIn, which since 2014 has represented the largest social media portal through Beijing’s Great Firewall, has decided to close down its localized China version. Increased censorship pressure, compliance costs for new laws, local competition, and bad PR outside of China may have all contributed to the move.
Another deadly deluge has hit a Chinese province, three months after the Henan floods. At least 29 have died and hundreds of “immovable cultural relics” have been damaged in the flooding in Shanxi.
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and Chinese leader Xi Jinping both gave speeches over the weekend that addressed the future of Taiwan. Xi described “Taiwan independence” as a “grave hidden danger” to his future plans, while Tsai insisted, “nobody can force Taiwan to take the path China has laid out for us.”
A contingent of about two dozen U.S. troops have been conducting training in Taiwan in secret for over a year, the Biden administration revealed publicly for the first time via a Wall Street Journal report.
Some are alarmed by the number of Chinese military planes that flew near Taiwan over the weekend. But Taiwan's ADIZ (air defense identification zone) is not the same as its sovereign airspace: there have been no PLA jets over Taiwanese land, a fact that has been lost in some of the breathier news coverage.
Does the Biden administration have its own China trade strategy, or is it just “Trump with allies”? U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai gave a speech on China that recalled Trump’s tactics: castigating “state-centered” economics while demanding that Beijing direct more purchases of American goods, and offering both fig leaves and threats on tariffs.
A comprehensive report from AidData estimates that $385 billion in debt from Chinese loans have been hidden from official balance sheets, and 35% of China’s Belt and Road projects have “major implementation challenges.”
The U.S. deal that allowed Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to leave Canada and escape extradition was swiftly followed by China’s release of two Canadian detainees, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The apparent prisoner swap resolved a pressure point in U.S.-China relations, but only heightened concerns about China’s “hostage diplomacy.”
Since mid-August, flows of foreign aid have been interrupted to Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region and to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The U.S. has threatened sanctions to try to pressure a resolution to the Ethiopia conflict, and is reluctant to lift restrictions on the Taliban. China has objected to all foreign sanctions, calling them unilateral interference.
At the UN General Assembly, China’s leader pledged to end support for coal projects overseas in favor of green and low-carbon energy. But while the single sentence effectively marked the end of coal financing abroad, China continues to build new coal power plants at home.