Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech on Tuesday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing marked the 40th anniversary of a watershed moment in modern Chinese history. At a meeting in December 1978, Deng Xiaoping and other reformist Communist Party leaders, who had fallen from grace during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, laid the groundwork for the program of economic liberalization that later became officially known as “reform and opening up.” Four decades later, amid slowing economic growth and [...]
Newsletter
Editor’s Note: Every Friday, WPR Senior Editor Robbie Corey-Boulet curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. The scene did not inspire much confidence in the credibility of upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo. On Thursday morning, residents of the Central African country’s capital, Kinshasa, awoke to smoke billowing out of a warehouse where ballot boxes and voting machines were being stored. The election commission reported that at least 8,000 voting machines had been destroyed, but said the elections, scheduled for Dec. 23, would go ahead as planned. The immediate reaction to the fire, [...]
Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. The arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou in Canada at the United States’ request has dominated headlines since the story broke last Wednesday afternoon. But it is only the latest chapter in both the Chinese telecommunication giant’s rise to global prominence and Washington’s broader high-tech trade war with Beijing. Meng, who is also the daughter of Huawei’s billionaire founder, Ren Zhengfei, was arrested earlier this month while changing planes in Vancouver. U.S. authorities believe she violated sanctions [...]