China Note Archive

With China-Vietnam relations deteriorating as a result of Beijing's provocations, Hanoi has signaled a possible shift in alliances. Whether Vietnam actually follows through, though, likely depends on who takes over the ruling Communist Party during next year's National Congress. In a major new defense white paper, its first in 10 years, Vietnam has begun signaling that it could abandon its long-standing foreign policy strategy of hedging between major powers like China and the United States and move more definitively into Washington’s orbit. These documents are generally full of turgid jargon, but this one, released late last year, is unusually blunt, […]

The Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread rapidly in China, where more than 6,000 cases have now been confirmed and more than 100 people have died from the disease. Dozens of cases have also been reported in other parts of the world, including other Asian countries as well as Europe and North America. Chinese authorities have moved swiftly to contain the outbreak, placing travel restrictions on more than 48 million people in over a dozen cities, including the central metropolis of Wuhan. The director-general of the World Health Organization says he is confident that China is taking appropriate response measures, and […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. The European Union on Wednesday recommended its member states limit the involvement of “high-risk” 5G vendors like Huawei in their telecommunications infrastructure, but it did not suggest banning the Chinese company outright. The EU’s new guidelines come a day after the United Kingdom announced it would not ban Huawei from its 5G network, a serious blow to the U.S. pressure campaign against China’s telecom giant. In a package of recommendations it refers to as its “5G toolbox,” the European […]

Two weeks after it was signed, President Donald Trump’s phase-one trade deal with China, which the White House typically hyped as a “landmark” and “historic agreement,” is looking more suspect. There were always questions about what was left out of the deal—especially industrial subsidies in China and continued tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars in imports from China. But now there is growing skepticism about the value of what is actually in the deal. What happened to the $40 billion to $50 billion in additional sales that Trump promised American farmers? Can Beijing really deliver on its commitment to […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. China is scrambling to contain the spread of a new and deadly viral outbreak as hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens plan to travel for the busy Lunar New Year holiday this weekend. Residents in the central city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus originated, are being urged not to leave, and authorities will shut down public transportation networks and suspend outbound flights in the city starting Thursday. A total of 540 cases of the disease have been confirmed around […]

Trade disruptions and sluggish investment helped drive global economic growth last year to its lowest level since the Great Recession. Even with the recent cease-fire in the U.S.-China trade war, the World Bank expects only a modest uptick in growth globally in 2020—if trade tensions don’t flare back up and spook investors again. These are among the key conclusions of the Bank’s latest Global Economic Prospects report. Among the reasons for pessimism is that the “phase one” deal signed last week between the U.S. and China will not remove the tariffs on most U.S. imports from China. Meanwhile, continued weakness […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein and Freddy Deknatel talk about the “phase one” trade deal signed by the U.S. and China this week, and whether it lives up to President Donald Trump’s pronouncements. They also discuss what the surprise resignation of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev reveals about President Vladimir Putin’s plans after his current term expires in 2024. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get our uncompromising analysis delivered straight to your inbox. The newsletter […]

By reigniting a dispute with Indonesia over control of the Natuna Islands, China appeared to be asserting its expansive territorial claims and challenging Indonesia's newly re-elected president. The move could backfire, though, by undermining Beijing's regional diplomatic goals. China sparked a major maritime confrontation with Indonesia near the South China Sea last month when dozens of Chinese fishing vessels, along with a coast guard escort, entered waters off the Natuna Islands, which are within Jakarta’s exclusive economic zone but are also claimed by China. Indonesian authorities responded swiftly, summoning China’s ambassador on Dec. 30 to lodge a protest and subsequently […]

In order to understand the mounting tensions in both Taiwan and Hong Kong over their relationships with mainland China, one must abandon the usual time frames of weeks, months or at most a handful of years and instead imagine the scenarios that open up over decades—five decades, to be precise. Over the next 50 years, interlocking dreams and nightmares will hang even more heavily over Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province, and Hong Kong, over which Beijing wants to assert more direct control, with possibly tragic outcomes. China has all but announced that a new common reality must be […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. With the signing of a “phase one” trade deal Wednesday, the United States and China have finally pressed pause on their protracted trade war. At a White House signing ceremony that was attended by Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, President Donald Trump called the pact a “sea change in international trade.” But what does it actually accomplish? At the center of the agreement are commitments from China to purchase an additional $200 billion in American goods and services over […]

Unless President Donald Trump decides to blow things up, a “phase one” trade deal between the United States and China will finally be signed this week. The agreement has remained somewhat up in the air because its text still hasn’t been released and Chinese officials have been unwilling to confirm key elements that the White House asserts are in it. Assuming that things do go as planned, though, this is far from the end of the story. Trump and his advisers insist there will be a “phase two” deal that addresses the big, structural issues in China’s economic policies, from […]

Imagine this scenario: A viral disease emerges and spreads rapidly across borders. It has a nearly 100-percent fatality rate, with symptoms that include high fever, blotchy skin lesions, coughing, diarrhea, vomiting and hemorrhaging. There is no treatment or preventative vaccine for the disease, so it results in widespread loss of life and a staggering economic toll. The international system struggles to come together to stop it from spreading even further. This might sound like any of a number of infectious diseases among humans, including SARS, Ebola and H5N1 influenza, also known as bird flu. But it actually describes African swine […]

Just over a year ago, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s political fortunes were stuck in a downward spiral. She resigned as leader of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, after it suffered a historic rout in local elections in 2018, losing 16 out of 22 key municipal and county-level leadership races. In the weeks following that drubbing, her approval rating dropped to an all-time low of 24 percent. It looked as though Taiwan’s first female president would also be the first to serve only a single term in office. Who could have predicted then that Tsai would “rise from the […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. As tensions rise between the United States and Iran, China is urging both countries to exercise restraint while it carefully avoids words or actions that could be construed as taking sides. Beijing’s measured response to this escalating confrontation is a sign of its delicate diplomatic balancing act in a region where it has considerable economic interests. After Iran launched a missile strike early Wednesday against two military bases in Iraq hosting U.S. troops, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson called […]

PRAGUE—With its foggily lit Gothic alleyways, Prague has long had the image of a hotbed of international espionage. A recent report by the Czech Republic’s national intelligence agency, the Security Information Service, or BIS, does little to dispel that narrative. It cautions that Russia and China are steadily increasing their efforts to sow division and win influence in this small country in the heart of Eastern Europe, which is a member of the European Union and NATO. Both Moscow and Beijing are widely suspected of seeking to provoke instability across the West, but in few countries are these tussles playing […]