Based on open sources, Tim Walz, the potential next Vice President of the United States, taught English for a year in China, spent his honeymoon in China, ran a business that took students to China, and traveled to China every year until 2003, & speaks a bit Chinese.
SHORT THREAD Tim Walz taught at Foshan No. 1 High School in Guangdong Province, north of Hong Kong.

“China was coming, and that’s the reason that I went,” said Walz, who was then a rare Westerner... His Chinese students nicknamed him “Fields of China.”

thehill.com/capital-living…

A U.S. defense contractor who almost became Undersecretary of Commerce for Industry and Security recently reported on the "national security risks" of @WuXi_AppTec @WuXiBiologics
I looked at the Chinese companies' alleged "military connections."
THREAD
pekingnology.com/p/james-mulven… @WuXi_AppTec @WuXiBiologics are in the crosshairs of the House. Lawmakers have introduced a bill and written letters to the U.S. government including the Department of Defense, asking for Wuxi to be sanctioned "over alleged ties to the Chinese military."
wsj.com/business/u-s-l…

Xu Gao, Chief Economist & Assistant President of Bank of China International, says blocked income transfer from enterprises, especially SOEs, to households is the key culprit behind China's unusually high savings, low consumption, & thus slowdown.
THREAD
eastisread.com/p/part-i-of-xu… Xu was speaking in mid-March at National School of Development (NSD), Peking University alongside several prominent economists, immediately after the "Two Sessions" in Beijing.

The Chinese transcript of his speech is available on his WeChat blog and NSD's.

Welink, @Huawei 's internal office software, suffered an outage in July that briefly paralyzed corporate communications.
How do we know that? From a publicly available, employees' forum that offers unique transparency among technology giants.

THREAD 🧵
pekingnology.com/p/a-unique-win… Perhaps one of the least-known facts about the world’s most scrutinized company is that, for years, Huawei has kept its forum for employees open to the public.

心声社区 Xinsheng Community sets the Chinese employee-owned company apart xinsheng.huawei.com/cn/index/guest…

Huang Jikun, Director of China Center for Agricultural Policy at PKU, recently delivered a comprehensive review of China's agricultural policies, highlighting "assertions of an ongoing food security crisis may be somewhat overstated."

THREAD
eastisread.com/p/beijings-foo… First, China is the world's largest producer of main agricultural products, for instance, rice, wheat, vegetables, fruits, and tea. Although China's population takes up only 18% of the world’s total, its production figures for various agricultural products in 2020 exceeded this

This paid-promoted video has been watched 1.1 million times.
Desmond Shum said, "Huawei started its meteoric rise because state-owned telecom companies were ordered by the Chinese govt to buy from local manufacturers, in exclusion of int'l telecom equipment."

That's false.

🧵

https://twitter.com/VOAChinese/status/1679706963163111425

The video received thousands of likes, retweets, and comments, with zero dispute - despite his description of the circumstances involving Huawei was demonstrably false.

Shum was looking back at events over two decades ago as he cited an event from 2000.
pekingnology.com/p/huawei-was-d…

I am no expert on climate policy but can still tell there is a lot to unpack from Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech on the environment and carbon goals today:

1. china is unwavering towards its carbon goals, but how it approaches them will never be influenced by others the original quote 我们承诺的“双碳”目标是确定不移的，但达到这一目标的路径和方式、节奏和力度则应该而且必须由我们自己作主，决不受他人左右。

Finally, an articulated response to de-risking from Beijing. Li Qiang, China's premier told German CEOs in Berlin:

"we understand that all parties have their own security concerns, and the key is how to define and guard against risks reasonably. If mishandled, risks will be amplified, resulting in more and bigger problems. Enterprises have the most direct and acute perception of risks. They know how to avoid and deal with them, so the lead in risk prevention should be given back to the enterprises.

advice to those who wish to or have to say "we oppose unilateral changes to the status quo in Taiwan Strait": follow it by saying "we don't support Taiwan independence," which is official policy of every country's respective "one-china policy" & eases Beijing's nerves.
cue SKorea beijing's irritation that "you are meddling in our internal affairs" will likely be assuaged like "...well, okay?"

you get your first part, beijing gets the second part. win-win. everyone lives to see another day.

Chinese readout of Wang Yi-Anthony Blinken meeting

THREAD
open.substack.com/pub/pekingnolo… On June 19, Chinese Communist Party Central Committee Politburo Member and Director of the Central Foreign Affairs Office, Wang Yi, met with the U.S. Secretary of State in Beijing.

Wang Yi stated that Mr. Secretary's visit to Beijing comes at a crucial juncture in U.S.-China

Beijing's readout is more detailed than Washington's, and is substantive and positive.

Thread open.substack.com/pub/pekingnolo… On June 18th, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang held talks with U.S. Secretary of State Blinken in Beijing.

Qin Gang stated that currently, China-U.S. relations are at their lowest point since the establishment of diplomatic ties, which is not in line with

Full transcript of leading Chinese economists' on-the-record discussion of the current state of the economy at @Tsinghua_ACCEPT headed by Prof. David Daokui Li yesterday. In Chinese.

docs.google.com/document/d/1Pj… video recording available
51xueshuo.com/#/viewLive?pla…

two things stand out to me in China' new space crew.
1. for the first time there is a crew member who is not a professional astronaut - so a CIVILIAN astronaut, a new chapter
2. he wears eye glasses, which is also unprecedented and breaks the taboo in space - and plane flying ? China's space program is for civilian use but its people are drawn from the military, which is understandable given the circumstances.
The non-professional astronaut Prof. Gui Haichao is a civilian.
(no, your seven sons of defense argument doesn't cut it)
And that's huge.

拿这条稿子讲讲narrative"叙事":

首先，从标题到全文没有"失实"的问题，所以事实层面显然是没有问题的。

但关键也恰恰在此: 如何在不对事实动手脚，也就是在新闻专业层面遵守真实完整的前提下，建立（至少是客观上）有利于一方的"叙事"？

从标题开始
wsj.com/articles/china… 标题China Rebuffs Pentagon Chief, Blunting Push for Repprochament的导向很清楚，是中方在rebuff美方的善意，blunt粗暴阻止美方试图改善双方关系的努力。

Global Times says the Chinese passenger jet C919 is not only Chinese success but also the suceess of int'l cooperation including China-U.S. cooperation.
B/c Boeing & Airbus openly congratulated Comac, manufacturer of C919.
how far a few inexpensive, nice words could go in China. Like it or not, China has grown incredibly sensitive to even a few words from the outside especially Americans. That's just a fact and nobody is able to change it in the foreseeable future. It's done.
Pragmatism calls for ways to cope with it, like it or not.

so when will the U.S. impose export control on parts and technology to torpedo the production of Chinese passenger jets C919?
that will put the nail in the coffin, i guess. frankly very surprised this hasn't become a thing

Fmr vice minister in trade said publicly at a forum
"Central Committee of the Communist Party of China still holds hope for improving China-U.S. ties."
He interpreted Xi's words to Biden as China doesn't challenge the int'l order where the US is the boss
open.substack.com/pub/pekingnolo… Xi told Biden in their last face-to-face meeting in Bali, Indonesia
“China does not seek to change the existing international order or interfere in the internal affairs of the United States, and has no intention to challenge or displace the United States.”
fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_6…

quite unbelievable to see the wild exaggeration in Chinese social media of Beijing's red-tape cutting enabling companies to ship goods from Jilin through Vladivostok by sea as an alternative to the costly land transport.
it's simply not new and not an ice-breaking development. What Beijing did was, basically, considering the goods' passage out of Chinese border to Russia and then coming back to China as domestic travel.

Jilin already got two routes approved before.

It's a smart decision but not huge news.

Long Yongtu, China's negotiator on WTO accession, says Xi's words "China does not seek to change the existing international order...and has no intention to challenge or displace the United States" mean China doe NOT challenge U.S. as THE NO.1 WORLD LEADER
mp.weixin.qq.com/s/g7FL0bKCvAJT… Long Yongtu says " (Xi said) China does not seek to change the existing international order." What is the core of the existing international order? It is that the United States is the boss."
龙永图：中国从来不寻求改变现有的国际秩序”，现有的国际秩序的核心是什么？就是美国是老大

I do not believe the Xi-Zelensky call could have anything to do with that.

& I humbly submit that no serious person could have believed that Beijing was disvowing the sovereignty of those countries, so the fierce reaction was a result of anger toward China & Lu himself

https://twitter.com/shirleyzeyu/status/1651383643586334721

China has long established diplomatic relations with those countries - how could it suddenly stop recognizing them? That would just be impossible and I assume everyone understands it. Then Lu apparently misspoke - that's the only explanation.

But why did Europe make a big fuss?

As promised, @JiangJiang43, I, & our interns at @pekingnology & @review_ginger - have come up with a detailed look at the overwhelming majority of the points made by John Pomfret & Mattew Pottinger in a recent Foreign Affairs article
open.substack.com/pub/pekingnolo… One of the most novel points by the former Beijing Bureau Chief of WaPo and the former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor is that Chinese leaders' declaration of their wish to cut grain import - which they found to be part of war preparation