NEW: The Trump administration has just told a federal judge in a court filing that it will not comply with the court's order to resume funding for USAID and State Department foreign assistance. Last Thursday, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali wrote in a filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the Trump administration must unfreeze foreign assistance payments to USAID and State Department grantees.

Because of the U.S. funding freezing, the entire global ecosystem of China nonprofits is facing an extinction event.

I'm not exaggerating for clicks. This is really what is happening. Read my piece below: In many cases, these orgs provide our last window into what is actually happening in China. They do the painstaking, risky work of tracking Chinese censorship, tallying local protests, uncovering rights violations, & documenting the Uyghur genocide.

aspistrategist.org.au/with-us-fundin…

Tim Walz brings a level of interest in China that is rare in a politician nominated for so high an office. In recent years, Walz has focused on China's human rights record. This is a man who will be unlikely to value market access over democratic values.

edition.cnn.com/2024/08/06/pol… Criticism that Walz is pro-CCP is silly, and I don't say that lightly. Walz was pro-engagement with China for a long time. So was I, and no one would ever call me pro-CCP. China changed, and my views (and that of many others) changed with it.

Friday is my last day at Axios, after 4 wonderful years. I'm looking for new opportunities to continue doing journalism and/or investigations related to China. Please DM with leads if you have any!

A thread of my best work at Axios over the years: Our editor-in-chief said this week that I "led some of our most ambitious investigative stories and journalism." Another colleague described me as a "one-woman investigative powerhouse."

If you're interested in bringing that powerhouse to your own newsroom, DM me.

I'm so proud of this amazing reporting series we did at Axios — five beautifully laid out longform dispatches from Tanzania, Okinawa, and Micronesia — with support from the @pulitzercenter.

First up, Tanzania:

https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1693213672519463147

@pulitzercenter This story about the CCP-funded party training school was very difficult to report out. But through ingenuity and dedication, we did it — we managed to get an inside look at the closed-door CCP-led training sessions despite being blocked at every turn by Tanzania's ruling party.

I'm so thrilled that 2023 is the year the New York Times, Washington Post, and AP have started writing about China's United Front work in diaspora Chinese communities. It was lonely out here for a while! In 2017-2018, I published an investigative series (for @ForeignPolicy) about China's United Front work among Chinese communities in the United States.

The Chinese government blacklisted me in 2019, almost certainly because of that series.

It's been lonely out here!

I actually think we have a pretty healthy debate going on regarding China right now in DC. There's the usual mudslinging, but what we're doing is actively debating what kinds of policies the U.S. should take, while operating on a reasonably overlapping set of accepted facts. We've gotten so accustomed to differing sides operating on such completely different planes of reality (climate change is real vs hoax, Obamacare is wonderful vs actual slavery) that operating from a reasonably similar set of accepted facts now feels uncomfortable to some.

Semafor is partnering with a Chinese think tank that has a track record of misleading Western audiences about its affiliation with the Chinese Communist Party.

From Axios' @sarafischer and me.

axios.com/2023/03/07/sem… @sarafischer Semafor is partnering with the Center for China and Globalization (CCG) in an initiative called “China and Global Business," a platform for business leaders to discuss U.S.-China relations.

CCG's founder and director, Wang Huiyao, also sits on the board of the new initiative.

I'd heard that landlords in Taiwan sometimes feel reluctant to rent to foreigners but i had no idea it would be such a real-world obstacle to being able to get a place to live. If I get turned down again, I'm seriously considering calling them crying and asking them to please just rent their apartment to this foreign mama and her sweet baby. I'm not scary and we need a place to live that is close to a daycare.

Over the weekend I traveled to Liuqiu, a tiny island less than 6 miles away from one of the "danger zones" where China was conducting live-fire drills.

Liuqiu is closer to the drills than any other part of Taiwan.

Were people there scared? Nope!

axios.com/2022/08/07/chi… Tourists were still flocking to this islet about 8 miles off Taiwan's southwest coast, even as the drills were underway.

Divers swam with sea turtles close to the shore. Fishing boats traversed the nearby waters as usual. Seaside restaurants and bars were filled to capacity.

Pretty stunning analysis: China must withdraw its support for Putin and publicly side with the west against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, writes Hu Wei, vice-chair of the Public Policy Research Center of the Counselor’s Office of China's State Council.

uscnpm.org/2022/03/12/hu-… I'm fascinated that Hu Wei wanted this to be published publicly — and interesting choice to do so on a platform outside of China.

Today in my series on Chinese language media covering Ukraine, I'm looking at the Central/Eastern Europe edition of 欧洲时报 (Times of Europe), a Europe-based Chinese language newspaper that has a, um, special affinity for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is the cover of the March 4, 2022 weekly paper edition.

The top headline reads "Voice of overseas Chinese: Chinese passports are hard currency"

Not particularly subtle!

oushinet.com/web/product/ZD…

Pinning my ongoing Twitter series looking at Chinese-language coverage around the world of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1501273799915941890

https://twitter.com/BethanyAllenEbr/status/1501287469282697227

More in my series looking at Chinese-language coverage of the war in Ukraine:

Today I'm looking at 侨报 (US China Press), a US news outlet based in California that is widely understood to have a, um, special affinity for the Chinese government Overseas Chinese Affairs Office. Many community Chinese-language outlets in the US have faced financial difficulties during the internet era, & many have turned to free content sharing offered by Chinese state media, thus rendering the Chinese-language news environment in the US less free than it once was.

"For Washington to successfully engage with China, it must apply a gender lens to its relations," write Kinsey Spears and @eepreylove.

newlinesinstitute.org/china/why-u-s-… @eepreylove "The Chinese Communist Party relies on patriarchal authoritarianism to maintain its control, working to reinforce 'traditional' masculine norms and going so far as to say that 'feminized' men would 'inevitably endanger the survival and development of the Chinese nation.'"

SCOOP: Chinese state broadcaster CGTN ran at least 21 Facebook ads in recent weeks promoting pro-Russia, anti-NATO talking points on the invasion of Ukraine.

By my colleague @ashleyrgold

axios.com/chinas-state-m… @ashleyrgold Some ads targeted users in Hong Kong, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.

A few snapshots of China's information environment on Ukraine right now:

This is a list of 10 top-performing WeChat public account posts today. 4 of the 10 are about Ukraine.

(A public account post is an article published just to WeChat, China's most popular messaging app). #2: China urging its nationals to leave Ukraine

#5: Russia and Ukraine facing off at an international court

#7: Russia losing 10 planes in one day

#8: Ukraine delegation says no longer committed to applying for NATO membership

The Chinese government has deployed its massive propaganda & censorship apparatus to push pro-Russia messaging in China and delete pro-Ukraine information.

But Beijing made a major miscalculation in the early days of Russia's invasion:

axios.com/beijings-ukrai… Beijing seems to have significantly underestimated Europe's resolve.

Initial Chinese state-backed narratives emphasized the unreliability of the west, with Chinese state media pushing the headline “Ukrainian president says the West has given up on Ukraine" & similar stories.

I spent many days (& nights) aboard China's very economical slow trains. I remember the fascinating conversations I had with migrant workers, Buddhist nuns, & other passengers, the card games we played, filling up my tea bottle with hot water over & over.

ft.com/content/02dfbe… After these experiences, slow trains became my favorite way to travel. I prefer them to planes, cars, buses, boats, and bullet trains. Though if I traveled all the time, I'm sure I would prefer bullet trains.

In January 2020, I reported that a Chinese student at a US university had been jailed for 6 months in China for tweets he had posted while in the US.

It was the first example I had seen of a Chinese person jailed for tweets posted abroad.

Thread:

axios.com/china-arrests-… The student's tweets came to the attention of a local police station through a rather roundabout means, not through mass data collection technology.

But new reporting indicates that we should expect much, much more of this in the future, conducted in a systematic way.

This is totally stunning. A Chinese govt office in Britain has told a British newspaper that an article it published may be illegal under Hong Kong law.

I wrote last year about the sweeping extraterritoriality shrined in Hong Kong national security law's article 38.

In action:

https://twitter.com/hkfp/status/1469333399462502400

The law cited in the letter isn't the national security law, it is the "Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Conduct) Ordinance," Article 27A, which reads:

"Illegal conduct to incite another person not to vote, or to cast invalid vote, by activity in public during election period."