China Note Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Plummeting relations between the United States and China hit a new low after the tit-for-tat closures of consulates in Houston and Chengdu last week. Though the closures are mostly symbolic, any détente between Washington and Beijing looks even more unrealistic now. With the U.S. presidential election just months away and President Donald Trump suffering in the polls, it has become increasingly difficult to guess what comes next. When the Trump administration ordered China to shut its consulate in Houston […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Elliot Waldman and Prachi Vidwans talk about the implications of the European Union’s new seven-year budget and coronavirus recovery fund, which were agreed after four days and nights of contentious negotiations in Brussels. They also discuss the Trump administration’s sudden decision to shut down China’s consulate in Houston, and what that could mean for the downward spiral in U.S.-China relations. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles on WPR:Is the EU’s COVID-19 Response Losing Central and Eastern Europe to China?The U.S. Can No Longer Ignore […]

At the opening of the World Health Assembly in mid-May, Chinese leader Xi Jinping announced his country would spend $2 billion over two years to help other countries fight the coronavirus pandemic. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, had already announced the U.S. would halt funding to the World Health Organization. His administration began the process of withdrawing from the WHO in early July. A week after Xi’s announcement, a 14-person medical team from China arrived in Tajikistan, which has had over 7,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 56 deaths. The Chinese squad brought 9 tons of medical equipment, bringing its total […]

Over the past several months, China watchers have been closely following as Beijing tightened its grip on Hong Kong and continued its steady strangulation of the Uighur Muslim ethnic minority in Xinjiang. But the regime successfully avoided international attention and opprobrium as it carried out what could prove to be its most devastating push elsewhere, in Tibet. Years ago, Tibet had more success capturing the world’s attention. Under the leadership of the exiled Dalai Lama, Tibetans pared down their demands from China, from full-blown independence to genuine autonomy. The Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and […]

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 expanding its amphibious military capabilities with an aim to “project power far from home,” Reuters reported this week, posing a challenge to America’s naval dominance. For decades, China’s main aspiration for its military was to secure its borders and dominate its coastal waters. But recent evidence suggests that under the ambitious leadership of Xi Jinping, Beijing’s military ambitions are going global. In the past year, China has launched two new Type 075 amphibious assault ships. Akin to […]

When the Trump administration began publicly bandying about the idea of barring the popular Chinese social media app TikTok from the American market a couple of weeks ago, the mere possibility of it happening sent shock waves through Chinese society. One might have expected that most of the attention, including lots of predictable fury, would have centered on nationalist sentiments—which are easily aroused in China nowadays—about the alleged unfairness with which the country is being treated by Western competitors, none more so than the United States. Unbeknownst to Americans, who mostly see it as an almost addictive platform for distracting […]

Foreign ministers from China and the Arab world held their ninth meeting of the biennial China-Arab States Cooperation Forum earlier this month, at which they pledged to “deepen cooperation in various fields, and embrace new prospects in building a China-Arab community with a shared future,” according to Chinese state media outlet Xinhua. The meeting is sure to renew debates over the nature of Chinese influence in Gulf Arab states. China hawks in the United States often overemphasize China’s economic power in the region by focusing on the threats posed by companies like the telecommunications giant Huawei or BGI Group, a […]

When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison unveiled his country’s updated defense strategy earlier this month, his remarks mentioned China only in passing. But according to Sam Roggeveen, director of the International Security Program at the Lowy Institute, Beijing’s mounting military prowess is becoming an increasingly serious concern for Australia’s national security community. On the Trend Lines podcast this week, Roggeveen joined WPR’s Elliot Waldman from Canberra to discuss the Morrison government’s recent strategic reset in the context of China’s rise and the relative decline in the United States’ influence in the Asia-Pacific. Listen to the full conversation here: And if […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. The “tech war” between the United States and China has shifted to Europe, where the United Kingdom this week announced, in an abrupt reversal, that it would ban the use of equipment from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei in its high-speed wireless network. The British government’s decision is a major victory for the Trump administration, which has been campaigning to steer countries away from China as they develop their 5G infrastructure. Europe has been one of Huawei’s key markets as […]

In a recent speech outlining his government’s national defense and regional strategy, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison emphasized the need to “prepare for a post-COVID world that is poorer, that is more dangerous, and that is more disorderly.” But the coronavirus pandemic is not the only challenge confronting Australia. A rising China appears increasingly willing and able to project power in East Asia and the South Pacific. Meanwhile, as President Donald Trump’s administration has shown, Australia may not always be able to rely on its No. 1 ally for support. For this week’s interview on Trend Lines, WPR’s Elliot Waldman […]

In this week’s editors’ discussion on Trend Lines, WPR’s Judah Grunstein, Freddy Deknatel and Prachi Vidwans talk about the new national security law that China imposed on Hong Kong, and the chilling effect it has already had on dissent and speech there. They also discuss a new proposal for a one-state solution for Israel and Palestine based on equal citizenship rights for all, and how the debate over ways forward in that conflict has broadened recently, in part due to Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank. Listen: Download: MP3Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify Relevant Articles […]

Editor’s Note: In accordance with a recent change in policy by the Japanese government, WPR is changing its style to render Japanese names in English with the family name first. Hence, in this article and in others, the Japanese prime minister’s name will appear as Abe Shinzo, not Shinzo Abe. Just over a week after China’s decision to impose a sweeping new security law on Hong Kong, the scale of the fallout is coming into full view. As WPR columnist Howard French wrote this week, “the law sharply curtails what was left of Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status, which was promised […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Chinese police on Monday detained prominent legal scholar Xu Zhangrun, one of the few academics in China who still dared to openly criticize Xi Jinping’s leadership. Xu’s arrest is further evidence that under Xi, times have changed for well-known intellectuals who were once spared detention for airing measured grievances about the government. Xu first drew widespread attention in 2018 when he denounced Xi’s hard-line policies in an essay that The New York Times described as a “rare rebuke” of […]

With the unrelenting news of soaring coronavirus cases in the United States, and the historic push to address long-ignored questions of racial and social justice, one of this era’s most consequential issues has received less attention, but it will soon stand out again. How should the United States and the West more broadly respond to the continuing rise of China? Consider some major developments in recent weeks, starting with the imposition by Beijing of a new security law on Hong Kong. The law sharply curtails what was left of Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status, which was promised to last for 50 […]

Had Scott Morrison traveled to New Delhi as planned in January, it would have been the fourth such trip by an Australian prime minister in a decade, a testament to the considerable effort successive governments in Canberra have made to build a viable strategic partnership with India. But a bushfire crisis at home, as well as the coronavirus pandemic, forced Morrison and his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, to settle for a virtual summit on June 4. If the two leaders were disappointed by this outcome, they certainly did not show it. Both took to social media to make a show […]

India and China’s ties took a dangerous turn with the fatal clash last month at their disputed border in the Himalayas. Despite being the first time in 45 years that blood was spilled between the two rivals, the incident, in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed alongside an undisclosed number of Chinese casualties, is unlikely to go down as an aberration. It should be seen instead as a critical inflection point between Asia’s two premier powers. The path ahead in their relationship will be as rocky and treacherous as the site of last month’s confrontation: a sheer cliff at an […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Amid all the focus this week on Hong Kong, where Beijing’s plan to clamp down on political dissent came to fruition when controversial national security legislation went into effect Tuesday night, there were more troubling developments about China’s actions toward its Muslim minorities. The Associated Press reported that the Chinese government is carrying out a “systematic” campaign to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in the autonomous region of Xinjiang, a discovery that some experts called […]