China

Saturday

Daniel DePetris

Macron tries to be the Xi whisperer

God bless Emmanuel Macron for his perseverance and self-confidence. The French president seeks to lead Europe and turn the continent into a strong, independent player in its own right. And he is eager to take on the hard, thankless diplomatic work that few of his peers are willing to do. Whether it was his ploy in 2019 to connect then-US president Donald Trump and then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on the phone or his months-long, intensive personal dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the war in Ukraine, Macron invests a lot of time and capital into these gambits. Unfortunately for him, many of them fail to accomplish anything of substance. Macron wasn’t able to convince Rouhani to speak with Trump (although Trump reportedly agreed to the call).

napoleon macron tantrum diplomacy

Tuesday

Roger Kimball

The truth comes out about Beijing’s balloon

Well, well, well. The world seems amazed at the news that the Chinese spy balloon that meandered over the entire continental United States this winter was, you know, spying. That’s what spy balloons do: they spy. They collect intelligence — in this case, information from some of America’s most sensitive sites (I was going to say “secure sites,” but that would clearly be inaccurate). What do they do then? Like bees collecting pollen, they transmit what they collected back to the hive, which, mirabile dictu, just happens to be located in Beijing.  Anyone who was paying attention knew this. Did secretary of state Antony Blinken? Did puppet-in-chief Joe “Chocolate-Chip” Biden? Probably.

spy balloon

Monday

Cindy Yu

Hollywood and China: happily ever after?

From our UK edition

32 min listen

Until a few years ago, Hollywood dominated Chinese cinemas. In the People’s Republic, Marvel’s superhero romps were the people’s favourite, with Avengers: Endgame taking in over £510 million at Chinese box offices. Hollywood is desperate to crack the Chinese market – after all, it’s a country with a fifth of the world’s population and a growing middle class. But there’s just one problem – the small issue of the Chinese Communist Party, which tightly controls the films people can see. Since the success of Avengers: Endgame, Marvel films had effectively been blacklisted until earlier this year, with other Hollywood blockbusters failing to break through either. On this episode, we’ll be talking about the complicated love affair between Beijing and LA.

Sunday

Ian Williams

It’s time for a reckoning with Chinese big tech

From our UK edition

It has been a bumpy week for China’s beleaguered technology giants. They are under increasing scrutiny overseas, and the communist party continues to tighten the screws on them at home. In many ways they are also their own worst enemies. The UK has become the latest government to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok from government devices over security concerns. Parliament has also banned the app from its network. This follows similar bans from the European Union and 11 countries, including France, New Zealand, Denmark and the US. Western lawmakers are unconvinced by TikTok’s often cack-handed attempts to distance itself from its Chinese parent, ByteDance, and that company’s obligations to the Chinese communist party.

Friday

Oliver Wiseman

TikTok’s terrible, no good, very bad day

TikTok’s terrible, no good, very bad day TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew arrived for a hearing on Capitol Hill yesterday with his company facing a forced sale or a ban in the US. In other words, it was an important day for Chew and his company: a chance to put the best case forward for TikTok’s continued existence in America. Chew assembled a formidable force for his Congressional D-Day. TikTok has paid for the best in the business if that business is getting Democratic administrations to do what you want: retaining SKDK, the lobbying firm founded by top Biden advisor Anita Dunn. They also have progressive lawmaker Jamaal Bowman on their side.

tiktok
tiktok shou zi chew
Matthew Foldi

Congress flattens TikTok CEO. So why won’t Biden ban his app?

Thursday was a sickening day for TikTok. Its CEO Shou Zi Chew came to Congress flanked by low-energy and likely highly-compensated “influencers.” He left looking queasy, like he'd just been force-fed a dish of FDA-condemned “NyQuil Chicken” — the infamous recipe popularized by users of his platform. Time after time, Chew was thanked by both Republicans and Democrats for doing the impossible: making members of both parties on the Energy and Commerce Committee unite against his own company. While TikTok’s fate is still uncertain, the Biden White House’s distance from his fellow Democrats is curious.

Thursday

Matthew Foldi

TikTok’s powerful friends in DC

TikTok’s CEO is gearing up for a grilling in Congress, but he’s got some new, powerful allies in his corner: a political consulting firm whose founder lavished praise on Mao Zedong and is now one of Biden’s top aides — and a socialist congressman who thinks banning the Chinese spyware is racist. Shou Zi Chew, the company’s CEO, is headed for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where Republicans are planning to press him on the national security concerns posed by the video app’s parent company ByteDance’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Chew is an odd person to push back against claims by Republicans — and, increasingly, some Democrats — that TikTok is inextricably linked to the CCP.

jamaal bowman tiktok anita dunn

Wednesday

John Pietro

The Paraguay predicament over Taiwan

On April 30, Paraguayans will go to the polls to select a new president. Though elections in the landlocked South American nation do not typically make headlines around the world, this vote carries outsized geopolitical importance: it could mean Taiwan loses yet another country to China. Opposition candidate Efraín Alegre of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, or PLRA, has said that, should he win, he will retract Paraguay’s recognition of Taiwan as a country. At present, Paraguay is the largest of just fourteen countries to have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and the only one in South America. Paraguay first recognized Taipei in 1957 while under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner.

paraguay
Mark Galeotti

After his trip to Moscow, Xi Jinping still holds all the cards

From our UK edition

After his arrival in Moscow on Monday, President Xi Jinping said that China is ready, along with Russia, ‘to stand guard over the world order based on international law’. This statement came closer than ever before to articulating his view that a normative struggle is going on between a western-dominated order, and one more suited to Beijing’s interests. As he departed yesterday, he went further: ‘Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years. And we are the ones driving these changes together.’ Having positioned himself as a potential peacemaker, Xi clearly believes the war in Ukraine presents him with a win-win situation ­­­– or even a win-win-win one.

Tuesday

John Pietro

Putin and Xi: authoritarian bros

Relationships between dictators are bound to be a bit strange, but Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin’s stands out for its theatrical quality. Meetings are carefully choreographed for maximum propaganda effect. Lavish gifts and gilded state rooms are the norm. Fluent in the language of autocratic flattery, the two always have gushing praise for each other. In 2019, before traveling to Russia, Xi said that Putin was his “best and bosom friend,” while just a year earlier Putin praised Xi as being a “remarkable thinker” and “a good friend I can count on.” Leading up to this week’s visit, Putin referred to Xi as his “good old friend,” and recalling Confucius, wrote, “Isn’t it a joy when a friend comes from afar!

putin xi authoritarian bros

Monday

Cindy Yu

What Beijing wants out of the Russian invasion

From our UK edition

52 min listen

As Xi Jinping visits Vladimir Putin in Russia this week, this episode of Chinese Whispers is returning to one of the missions of this podcast series – to look at things as the Chinese see them.  My guest today is Zhou Bo, a retired Senior Colonel of the People’s Liberation Army whose military service started in 1979. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University. He’s an eloquent and informed advocate of Beijing’s perspective. On the podcast, we discuss why China hasn’t criticised Russia more, despite its purported support for sovereignty, to what extent it really means its peace plan, and whether China is about to invade Taiwan.

Saturday

Bill McMorris

Why the national divorce worked: a future history

The following is an excerpt from Yale University law professor Elizabeth Friedkin’s remarks to the 2026 International Federation of United Conscious Uncoupling Professionals. When then-Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene first proposed the dissolution of the United States of America in 2023, many feared she was threatening a second Civil War, including most of us in this room. Over the past two years, however, we have witnessed a benign break-up that is now a beacon to dissatisfied land conglomerates the world over. I was skeptical when I was chosen to serve as arbitrator, but I will be the first to admit that I underestimated the shrewdness of Ms. Taylor Greene.

national divorce

Wednesday

Oliver Wiseman

Why DeSantis’s Ukraine statement matters

Why DeSantis’s Ukraine statement matters Ron DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine issued Monday night, an answer to Fox host Tucker Carlson’s policy questionnaire for possible presidential candidates, is proving to be one of the most significant moments yet in the still nascent 2024 campaign.  The closer DeSantis gets to formally announcing his bid, the less he can stick to the policy ambiguity which being a state executive, rather than a Washington lawmaker, affords you. The Florida governor took Tucker’s invitation to expound on Ukraine and ran with it, issuing a statement that outlined a far less hawkish position than many had expected him to adopt.

Friday

Matthew Foldi

GOP seeks answers from NBA over Chinese soft power display

House and Senate Republicans, along with a basketball star, are demanding answers from the NBA about its financial relationship with the Chinese Communist Party following an “in-your-face” display of CCP soft power in the nation’s capital. Following reporting from The Spectator, eight congressmen and four senators wrote to NBA commissioner Adam Silver to express “grave concerns about Chinese Communist Party propaganda being broadcasted and promoted at National Basketball Association games.

China's National People's Congress - Press Conference

Thursday

Ross Clark

Why is Whitehall intent on burying the Covid lab leak theory?

From our UK edition

Why does our government have so much trouble criticising China? It doesn’t seem to have had a problem calling out Vladimir Putin. But Downing Street – along with the rest of Whitehall – seems determined to do Xi Jinping’s regime’s dirty work. Over the past ten days we have become used to seeing Matt Hancock as a mad, authoritarian figure determined to lock Britain down during Covid, even when scientific advice did not call for it. Yet it does seem that he was able to consider the prospect that Covid originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. The evidence is not conclusive or overwhelming, not least because the Chinese have used every tactic to prevent scientists finding the truth.

Wednesday

Matthew Foldi

Banning TikTok: a how-to guide

“Whoever controls big data technologies will control the resources for development and have the upper hand,” Xi Jinping declared shortly after assuming control of China. In the years since, the Chinese surveillance state has exploded at home and abroad, thanks to espionage-adjacent apps such as WeChat, but none has raised as much ire as TikTok. Following reams of data showing that your teenager’s favorite app is poisoning their mind and spying on them, the calls to ban TikTok are now coming from inside the House… and Senate. But how would such a ban actually work? What does it mean to ban an app that is supported by the technological infrastructure of the CCP?

tiktok
Philip Pilkington

Britain could come to regret moving away from China

From our UK edition

China’s relationship with America is getting worse and worse. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, warned yesterday that ‘containment and suppression will not make America great. It will not stop the rejuvenation of China’. The Biden administration, meanwhile, recently accused China of readying to send weapons to Russia, and Americans are still fuming about the Chinese balloon that entered their airspace. China thinks they’re being hysterical. Britain will soon be forced to decide whether it will decouple from China. The Americans no doubt want Britain to join them in cutting ties to Beijing, but it is not clear that British policymakers are ready to do this yet. In 2020, China accounted for around 7 per cent of British trade.

Tuesday

Peter Van Buren

The coming fight over the government’s surveillance powers

You've been warned: a fight over the government’s ability to spy on its own citizens is coming to Congress. Section 702 is up for renewal again in December. Section 702 grew out of an illegal post-9/11 program called Stellarwind, exposed by NSA whistleblower Tom Drake. It refers to a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was enacted in 2008. It authorizes the government to collect the communications of non-Americans located outside of the United States for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information. But the program also allows for the incidental collection of information about Americans who may be communicating with the targeted foreigners.

Monday

Cindy Yu

Spy planes and infiltrators: a history of the CIA in China

From our UK edition

47 min listen

The Chinese Communist Party likes to blame its domestic political problems on foreign interference, and it has done so since the days of Chairman Mao. But sometimes, does this paranoia, this narrative, have a point? Or at least during the depths of the Cold War, when the United States, via the CIA, was countering communism across the world through so-called ‘covert operations’. My guest today is Professor John Delury, a historian at the Yonsei University in Seoul, and author of a new book looking at the history of the CIA in China. It’s called Agents of Subversion, and I’d highly recommend it because some of the incredible exploits detailed in there are nothing short of what you'd find in a spy thriller.

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

TikTok may be the real test of the China Select Committee

The primetime launch event for the House China Select Committee shows the bipartisan consensus that has formed in Washington on the threat represented by China. It also illustrates the priorities for members of Congress, and their divisions over the appropriate response to Chinese influence as a military, economic and cultural adversary. Witnesses, including former Trump deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, encouraged members to take Xi's words at face value — and emphasized that for too long Washington has looked the other way while China ate America's lunch.

china select committee