Xi Jinping's Power Grab

From Jude Blanchette, at Foreign Affairs, "Xi’s Gamble: The Race to Consolidate Power and Stave Off Disaster":

Xi Jinping is a man on a mission. After coming to power in late 2012, he moved rapidly to consolidate his political authority, purge the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of rampant corruption, sideline his enemies, tame China’s once highflying technology and financial conglomerates, crush internal dissent, and forcefully assert China’s influence on the international stage. In the name of protecting China’s “core interests,” Xi has picked fights with many of his neighbors and antagonized countries farther away—especially the United States. Whereas his immediate predecessors believed China must continue to bide its time by overseeing rapid economic growth and the steady expansion of China’s influence through tactical integration into the existing global order, Xi is impatient with the status quo, possesses a high tolerance for risk, and seems to feel a pronounced sense of urgency in challenging the international order.

Why is he in such a rush? Most observers have settled on one of two diametrically opposite hypotheses. The first holds that Xi is driving a wide range of policy initiatives aimed at nothing less than the remaking of the global order on terms favorable to the CCP. The other view asserts that he is the anxious overseer of a creaky and outdated Leninist political system that is struggling to keep its grip on power. Both narratives contain elements of truth, but neither satisfactorily explains the source of Xi’s sense of urgency.

A more accurate explanation is that Xi’s calculations are determined not by his aspirations or fears but by his timeline. Put simply, Xi has consolidated so much power and upset the status quo with such force because he sees a narrow window of ten to 15 years during which Beijing can take advantage of a set of important technological and geopolitical transformations, which will also help it overcome significant internal challenges. Xi sees the convergence of strong demographic headwinds, a structural economic slowdown, rapid advances in digital technologies, and a perceived shift in the global balance of power away from the United States as what he has called “profound changes unseen in a century,” demanding a bold set of immediate responses.

By narrowing his vision to the coming ten to 15 years, Xi has instilled a sense of focus and determination in the Chinese political system that may well enable China to overcome long-standing domestic challenges and achieve a new level of global centrality. If Xi succeeds, China will position itself as an architect of an emerging era of multipolarity, its economy will escape the so-called middle-income trap, and the technological capabilities of its manufacturing sector and military will rival those of more developed countries. Yet ambition and execution are not the same thing, and Xi has now placed China on a risky trajectory, one that threatens the achievements his predecessors secured in the post-Mao era. His belief that the CCP must guide the economy and that Beijing should rein in the private sector will constrain the country’s future economic growth. His demand that party cadres adhere to ideological orthodoxy and demonstrate personal loyalty to him will undermine the governance system’s flexibility and competency. His emphasis on an expansive definition of national security will steer the country in a more inward and paranoid direction. His unleashing of “Wolf Warrior” nationalism will produce a more aggressive and isolated China. Finally, Xi’s increasingly singular position within China’s political system will forestall policy alternatives and course corrections, a problem made worse by his removal of term limits and the prospect of his indefinite rule.

Xi believes he can mold China’s future as did the emperors of the country’s storied past. He mistakes this hubris for confidence—and no one dares tell him otherwise. An environment in which an all-powerful leader with a single-minded focus cannot hear uncomfortable truths is a recipe for disaster, as China’s modern history has demonstrated all too well...

Keep reading.

PHOTO CREDIT: "Xi giving a speech at the U.S. Department of State in 2012, with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then Vice-President Joe Biden in the background. Seated in the front row is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger." (Wikipedia.)

Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China

At Amazon, Ezra Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China.

How Chinese Grand Strategy Exploits U.S. Power

 From Mark Pottinger, at Foreign Affairs, "Beijing’s American Hustle":

Although many Americans were slow to realize it, Beijing’s enmity for Washington began long before U.S. President Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and even prior to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012. Ever since taking power in 1949, the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has cast the United States as an antagonist. But three decades ago, at the end of the Cold War, Chinese leaders elevated the United States from just one among many antagonists to their country’s primary external adversary—and began quietly revising Chinese grand strategy, embarking on a quest for regional and then global dominance.

The United States and other free societies have belatedly woken up to this contest, and a rare spirit of bipartisanship has emerged on Capitol Hill. But even this new consensus has failed to adequately appreciate one of the most threatening elements of Chinese strategy: the way it exploits vital aspects of American and other free societies and weaponizes them in the service of Chinese ambitions. Important U.S. institutions, especially in finance and technology, cling to self-destructive habits acquired through decades of “engagement,” an approach to China that led Washington to prioritize economic cooperation and trade above all else.

If U.S. policymakers and legislators find the will, however, there is a way to pull Wall Street and Silicon Valley back onside, convert the United States’ vulnerabilities into strengths, and mitigate the harmful effects of Beijing’s political warfare. That must begin with bolder steps to stem the flow of U.S. capital into China’s so-called military-civil fusion enterprises and to frustrate Beijing’s aspiration for leadership in, and even monopoly control of, high-tech industries—starting with semiconductor manufacturing. The United States must also do more to expose and confront Beijing’s information warfare, which spews disinformation and sows division by exploiting U.S. social media platforms—platforms that are themselves banned inside China’s own borders. And Washington should return the favor by making it easier for the Chinese people to access authentic news from outside China’s so-called Great Firewall.

Some have argued that because the CCP’s ideology holds little appeal abroad, it poses an insignificant threat to U.S. interests. Yet that ideology hardly appeals to the Chinese people, either, and that hasn’t prevented the party from dominating a nation of 1.4 billion people. The problem is not the allure of Leninist totalitarianism but the fact that Leninist totalitarianism—as practiced by the well-resourced and determined rulers of Beijing—has tremendous coercive power. Accordingly, U.S. leaders should not ignore the ideological dimension of this contest; they should emphasize it. American values—liberty, independence, faith, tolerance, human dignity, and democracy—are not just what the United States fights for: they are also among the most potent weapons in the country’s arsenal, because they contrast so starkly with the CCP’s hollow vision of one-party rule at home and Chinese domination abroad. Washington should embrace those strengths and forcefully remind American institutions that although placating China might help their balance sheets in the short term, their long-term survival depends on the free markets and legal rights that only U.S. leadership can secure.

THE ART OF POLITICAL WARFARE

The West’s sluggishness in realizing that it has been on the receiving end of China’s elaborate, multidecade hostile strategy has a lot to do with the hubris that followed the United States’ triumph in the Cold War. U.S. policymakers assumed that the CCP would find it nearly impossible to resist the tide of liberalization set off by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. According to this line of thought, by helping enrich China, the United States would loosen the party’s grip on its economy, people, and politics, setting the conditions for a gradual convergence with the pluralistic West.

That was, to put it mildly, a miscalculation, and it stemmed in part from the methods the CCP employs to prosecute its grand strategy. With enviable discipline, Beijing has long camouflaged its intention to challenge and overturn the U.S.-led liberal order. Beijing co-opted Western technologies that Americans assumed would help democratize China and instead used them to surveil and control its people and to target a growing swath of the world’s population outside China’s borders. The party now systematically cultivates Western corporations and investors that, in turn, pay deference to Chinese policies and even lobby their home capitals in ways that align with the CCP’s objectives.

Beijing’s methods are all manifestations of “political warfare,” the term that the U.S. diplomat George Kennan, the chief architect of the Cold War strategy of containment, used in a 1948 memo to describe “the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives.” Kennan credited the Soviet Union with “the most refined and effective” conduct of political warfare. Were he alive today, Kennan would marvel at the ways Beijing has improved on the Kremlin’s playbook.

Kennan’s memo was meant to disabuse U.S. national security officials of “a popular attachment to the concept of a basic difference between peace and war.” He was hopeful that Americans could shed this handicap and learn to fight in the political realm to forestall a potentially catastrophic military conflict with the Soviets. To a great extent, Washington did exactly that, marshaling partners on every continent to contain Soviet influence.

Today, free and open societies are once again coming to terms with the reality of political warfare. This time, however, the campaign is directed by a different kind of communist country—one that possesses not just military power but also economic power derived from its quasi-marketized version of capitalism and systematic theft of technology. Although there are holdouts—financiers, entertainers, and former officials who benefited from engagement, for example—polls show that the general public in the United States, European countries, and several Asian countries is finally attuned to the malevolent nature of the Chinese regime and its global ambitions. This should come as no surprise, given the way the CCP has conducted itself in recent years: covering up the initial outbreak of COVID-19, attacking Indian troops on the Chinese-Indian border, choking off trade with Australia, crushing the rule of law in Hong Kong, and intensifying a campaign of genocide against Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China.

HIDE AND BIDE NO MORE

Those aggressive moves represent merely a new phase of a decades-old strategy. In writing his recent book The Long Game, the U.S. scholar Rush Doshi pored over Chinese leaders’ speeches, policy documents, and memoirs to document how Beijing came to set its sights on dismantling American influence around the globe. According to Doshi, who now serves on the National Security Council staff as a China director, three events badly rattled CCP leaders: the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square; the lopsided, U.S.-led victory over the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s forces in early 1991; and the collapse of the Soviet Union that same year. “The Tiananmen Square protests reminded Beijing of the American ideological threat; the swift Gulf War victory reminded it of the American military threat; and loss of the shared Soviet adversary reminded it of the American geopolitical threat,” writes Doshi. “In short order, the United States quickly replaced the Soviet Union as China’s primary security concern, that in turn led to a new grand strategy, and a thirty-year struggle to displace American power was born.”

China’s new grand strategy aimed first to dilute U.S. influence in Asia, then to displace American power more overtly from the region, and ultimately to dominate a global order more suited to Beijing’s governance model. That model isn’t merely authoritarian; it’s “neo-totalitarian,” according to Cai Xia, who served for 15 years as a professor in the highest temple of Chinese communist ideology: the Central Party School in Beijing...

Keep reading.

 

Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy

At Amazon, Edward N. Luttwak, The Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy.

Eileen Gu or the Chained Woman?

I've already blogged about Eileen Gu, but nothing like this. 

There are at least 600,000 million Chinese living in abject poverty, but Chairman Xi can't let the cat out of the bag. So, Ms. Gu is promoted to the top of Wiebo while human-trafficking victim Xiaohuamei (little flower plum) is censored and crushed under the boot-heel of totalitarianism.

Absolutely unreal story. I already loathe China. I'm to the point of no longer reporting on the regime because it makes me furious. The diabolical hypocrisy is stunning. Americans like Eileen Gu to the cretins of the International Olympic Committee --- with this whole Olympics propaganda regime --- have blood on their hands. And that's to say nothing of the Chinese Communist Party thugs who should be destroyed rather than coddled. This is all so sickening, even anti-American. 

At the New York Times. "Who Is the Real China? Eileen Gu or the Chained Woman?":

Two women have dominated Chinese social media during the Beijing Winter Olympics.

One is Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old skier born and raised in California who won a gold medal for China. The other is a mother of eight who was found chained around her neck to the wall of a doorless shack.

The Chinese internet is exploding with discussions about which of the two represents the real China. Many people are angry that the government-controlled algorithms glorify Ms. Gu, who fits into the narrative of the powerful and prosperous China, while censoring the chained woman, whose deplorable conditions defy that narrative.

The two women’s starkly different circumstances — celebrated vs. silenced — reflect the reality that to the Chinese state, everyone is a tool that serves a purpose until it does not.

Whether she wants it, Ms. Gu has become a powerful propaganda tool for Beijing to demonstrate its appeal to global talent and the benefits of being loyal to China. She represents the successful China that Beijing would like the world to admire.

The chained woman represents the poor and backward China that hundreds of millions still inhabit. They sometimes appear in the state media to demonstrate the country’s success in eradicating extreme poverty until their miseries become an inconvenient truth.

“Does Eileen Gu’s success have anything to do with ordinary Chinese?” goes the headline of one viral article that was censored later.

“Can we remember these women while cheering for Eileen Gu?” asks another headline.

“To judge whether a society is civilized or not, we should not look at how successful the privileged are but how miserable the disadvantaged are,” the article said. “Ten thousand sports champions can’t wash away the humiliation of one enslaved woman, not to mention tens of thousands of them.”

The Chinese government doesn’t like where the debate is heading. The juxtaposition of the two women highlights that underneath the glamorous surface of one of the world’s largest economies lie jarring poverty and widespread abuse of women’s rights.

It defeats the purpose of recruiting star athletes like Ms. Gu: to showcase a powerful China with global appeal.

“The reality is that the vast majority of Chinese won’t have the opportunity to become Eileen Gu,” Li Yinuo, founder of a prominent education company in Beijing, wrote in an article. But the tragedy of the chained woman, she wrote, could happen to anyone.

A few hours later, her article was deleted.

Embedded in the debate is a deep disappointment among middle-class Chinese who are usually willing to go along with the government’s narratives but are incensed by the repeated lies, lack of action and subsequent censorship in the case of the chained woman.

They feel that the government is pouring too many resources behind a privileged member of the society while neglecting another member in dire need of help. They’re worried that the latter’s misfortune could happen to them or their daughters.

Many social media users, including some self-claimed nationalistic little pinks, posted a quote from a famous Chinese novel: “I love the country. But does the country love me?”

The story of the chained woman — whose name, according to the government, is Xiaohuamei (little flower plum) — has captivated the Chinese internet since a short video went viral in late January. In it, a middle-age woman with a dazed expression stood in the dark shack with a chain on her neck. Subsequent videos revealed that she had lost most of her teeth and seemed to be mentally disturbed.

The local authorities issued four conflicting statements in the following two weeks. In the latest statement on Thursday, the authorities reported that Xiaohuamei could be a victim of human trafficking and that her husband was under investigation for false imprisonment. The government had denied both earlier.

The fates of the two women converged online last week after Ms. Gu won her gold medal.

At one point, Ms. Gu, who grew up in an upscale neighborhood in San Francisco and represents some of the biggest brands, like Louis Vuitton and Tiffany & Company, occupied 10 of the 20 hottest hashtags on Weibo. The hashtag about Xiaohuamei was nowhere to be seen, even though many people were still talking about her.

Some social media users were outraged by the lopsided treatment of the two women. They felt that even though they had tried their best to be the obedient and useful tools in the giant machinery of the Chinese state, Xiaohuamei’s tragedy showed that the state won’t necessarily offer them protection...

And watch here, "To give the full story, here is the original video that caused the social media storm, which is still ongoing today (tw distressing content, not sure why the lock is blurred, as if that is the most shocking thing about this video..)."

Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year

At Amazon, Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid.

The Unbearable Pressure of Winning the Olympics (VIDEO)

It's not just the Olympics, of course. But as these games come only once every four years, the pressure to excel and take home medals is astronomical. Most of those competing are kids. I mean, Lindsey Jacobellis, now 36, probably would've retired years ago if she hadn't blown her near-victory run in 2006, 16 years ago, when she was just 19-years-old. (She finally won her gold medal. It's a good thing. Another wipe out in Beijing would have left a permanent scar on her psychiatric frame for the rest of her life.)

And now we have this poor woman Mikaela Shiffrin who, in Beijing, when the pressure was on, just couldn't cut it this one time --- and she'd been dominating her sport for years and has been called one of the world's greatest skiers of all time.

But she's utterly broken, emotionally drained and psychologically mauled, questioning her very life at this point. 

She can barely talk at the video here, her voice starts cracking with sobs, and all the idiot NBC interviewer can ask is, "What are you feeling?" What the fuck  d'you think she's feeling?!!. She said she's questioning the last 15 fucking of her life. My god, no wonder people were up in arms at NBC's merciless coverage of her wallowing in pain --- for a full 20 minutes --- at the side of the course, simply trying to comprehend it all. 

Oh, the agony of defeat. 

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Olympic athletes deal with expectations, which leads to crushing pressure":

The girl who failed… could also fly. pic.twitter.com/EZJVY03DPc

— Mikaela Shiffrin (@MikaelaShiffrin) February 11, 2022

BEIJING — The world’s most famous skier had kicked off her skis and dropped her poles. Sitting alone in the snow, she buried her head in her hands. Other racers zipped past as the women’s slalom event at the Beijing Olympics continued. But Mikaela Shiffrin, who had skidded out of control and missed a gate near the top of the course, did not move. She remained off to the side for 20 minutes.

“There’s a lot of disappointment over the last week,” she said. “There’s a lot of emotions.”

In what will be an enduring if wrenching moment from these Games, her anguish over failing to finish, much less medal, in the second consecutive event in a little over 48 hours highlighted the unrelenting pressure athletes face at a global competition that comes around once every four years.

For some, the Games have become a suffocating crucible that drains much of the joy from the sport they love.

Even before arriving in Beijing, the 26-year-old Shiffrin acknowledged the Olympics are often “very uncomfortable the entire time” because athletes “literally feel the expectations from the whole world around you.”

At the figure skating venue, an hour or so to the southeast, California-born Beverly Zhu — competing for China — endured similar heartbreak after falling twice during the women’s team competition. Jamie Anderson, the two-time slopestyle gold medalist, posted a raw message on Instagram after finishing an unexpected ninth.

“At the end of the day I just straight up couldn’t handle the pressure,” she wrote, “had an emotional breakdown the night before finals and my mental health and clarity just hasn’t been on par.”

Even Chloe Kim, who became the first woman to win consecutive halfpipe golds, acknowledged her mental health struggles, telling reporters: “It’s unfair to be expected to be perfect.”

Watching Olympians land a double cork 1620 jump, rocket down the side of a mountain at 90 mph or navigate 16 curves headfirst on a skeleton sled can obscure the reality that they can have ordinary struggles despite their extraordinary ability.

“Pressure can be an asset to people at times, bringing out their best,” said Edward Hirt, a professor of brain sciences and psychology at Indiana University. “Those moments are the ones that we think separate the greats from the rest of the pack. But we also know that those pressures can be debilitating and make you choke. I suspect the pressure mounts as people have been successful in the past.”

The Olympics are a unique stage in that athletes can feel the additional burden of representing their country while receiving more attention, if not scrutiny, than at any other time in their careers. They are hyped relentlessly in this made-for-television spectacle, and sometimes castigated when they do not perform as predicted.

These challenges are heightened in a time of pandemic, when athletes are kept in a bubble, separated from the support of family or friends. They must take daily coronavirus tests amid the lingering worry that a positive result — even a false positive — can knock them out of competition.

“Uncertainty creates a lot of pressure,” said Sian Beilock, a cognitive scientist who is president of Barnard College and author of the book “Choke,” which explores performing under pressure. “We, as normal people do the ‘what ifs,’ Olympians do that, too.”

Lindsey Jacobellis made a late mistake that cost her a gold medal during the snowboardcross race at the 2006 Torino Games that haunted her for years. She won the event Wednesday at age 36 to become the oldest U.S. woman to medal at the Winter Olympics. “Some days, I really don’t like it,” Jacobellis said of the pressure...

 

'Luxury Dream Model' Eileen Gu

I mentioned it the other day, "...she's a freakin' hotsie-totsie high-fashion cover model who's graced the front of Vogue Hong Kong." 

Apparently she's been on the cover of Vogue China's bimonthly edition.

At CNN, "Why Eileen Gu is luxury fashion's dream model":

For followers of freestyle skiing and fashion alike, the buzz surrounding Winter Olympian Eileen Gu at this year's Games has come as little surprise.

The 18-year-old's gold medal performance in the big air competition thrust her into the global spotlight Tuesday, sparking such a furor in China that social media platform Weibo crashed under the weight of interest. But Gu has spent years establishing herself as both a top athlete and a hugely bankable model who appeals to brands in both Asia and the West.

In 2021, as she won gold medals at the skiing World Championships and Winter X Games, Gu was also forging lucrative partnerships with fashion houses and luxury labels. Signing for IMG Models, the agency representing Bella Hadid, Kate Moss and Hailey Bieber, she has penned deals with Louis Vuitton, Victoria's Secret and Tiffany & Co., as well as the luxury Swiss watchmaker IWC and cosmetics brand Estée Lauder, among others.

In fact, the California-born athlete is among the most heavily sponsored athletes at these Olympics. She arrived in Beijing with more than 20 commercial partnerships, ranging from Beats by Dre headphones to Cadillac.

But it is Gu's mass appeal in China, where she is known by her Chinese name Gu Ailing and has been nicknamed the "Snow Princess," that makes her especially valuable to brands.

For the Year of the Tiger, can luxury fashion change its stripes?

Having switched her sporting allegiance to her mother's home country in 2019, Gu's fluency in Mandarin has helped secure her place on Chinese TV ads, billboards and even milk cartons (as the face of Inner Mongolia-based Mengniu Dairy). E-commerce giant JD.com, cafe chain Luckin Coffee and telecoms firm China Mobile are among the growing list of mainland brands that she's modeled for in recent months.

China is on track to become the world's largest luxury market by 2025, according to consulting firm Bain. The Asian edition of marketing and advertising industry magazine Campaign estimated that new endorsements there could be earning the athlete around 15 million yuan ($2.5 million) apiece -- and that was before her gold-medal success.

According to Bohan Qiu, whose Shanghai-based creative agency Boh Project works with major fashion brands, Gu's surging popularity in the country comes at a time when nationalist pride in China has seen "the relevance of Western celebrities" decrease.

"For this generation, a lot of the celebrities here are quite domestic-oriented -- so (Gu) being half-American half-Chinese, and speaking both languages fluently, has a very global appeal," he said over the phone, adding that the country's Gen Z demographic contains "third culture kids" who simultaneously understand Chinese and Western contexts. "She is definitely a once-in-a-decade type of talent."

Gu has coupled big-money deals with reputable magazine features and appearances at A-list fashion shows. Spotted at events like Paris Fashion Week as far back as 2019, she has since been seen on Louis Vuitton's front row and the notoriously exclusive Met Gala, where she arrived on the red carpet wearing a Carolina Herrera bubble dress.

"The fashion world has helped balance my training," she told Vogue Hong Kong, appearing on the cover of the magazine's July issue. "Just like skiing, modeling requires incredible expression and personality. It requires creativity, confidence, and the ability to learn and adapt... The transition between modeling and skiing became a break and a practice for each other that helped me eventually feel more motivated in each area."

Gu has also appeared on the cover of Chinese editions of GQ and Elle. And as guest editor of Vogue China's Gen-Z-focused bimonthly issue, Vogue+, the athlete recently explored the complexities of her identity under the theme "code switch."

"I wanted to explore and showcase the inherently malleable nature of adolescent identities, Gu wrote on Instagram, "a quality I've found myself tapping into time and time again as I display different facets of myself (athlete, model, student, Chinese, American, teenager, writer, public persona, etc) in different environments. Everyone code switches, and I think it's time we start celebrating that multifaceted nature."

Gu's social media is also littered with fashion. Whether posting to Instagram or writing to millions of followers on Xiaohongshu and Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of Instagram and Twitter, respectively), her feeds flit between sport and style, with pictures from the slopes posted alongside modeling shots and her latest fashion editorials...

More.

 

China and Russia's 'Alliance Against Democracies' (VIDEO)

This bothers me. 

The entire Beijing "genocide" Olympics bothers me, which is why I'm boycotting the entire fucking thing.

China's a power-hungry revisionist state making fools of the West and colluding with the International Olympics Committee in the aggression, torture, and death that's killing millions in China. The corruption is staggering. No other country even wanted the Winter Olympics this year. The games are international sport's biggest loss leader. The IOC and NBC Sports also colluded to keep $100s of billions rolling in from this cluster of an international competition.

And the athletes? I'm sickened by some of these "dual citizenship" idiots, especially the Chinese-American ice skater, Zhu Yi, born in Los Angeles, who gave up her U.S citizenship to compete for China and ignominiously botched her performance by falling three times on two runs in her free skate competition, then erupting in tears on the ice while being pilloried on Weibo. China can have her.

At least Eileen Gu made us proud she's an American (though I gotta get to the bottom of her citizenship mystery, which bothers me in particular).

In any case, the emerging Beijing-Moscow "axis" is an unwelcomed development on the international scene, to say the least.

At the New York Times, "A New Axis":

The last time Xi Jinping left China was more than two years ago, for a diplomatic trip to Myanmar. Days later, he ordered the lockdown of Wuhan, which began China’s aggressive “zero Covid” policy. By staying home, Xi has reduced his chances of contracting the virus and has sent a message that he is playing by at least some of the same pandemic rules as other Chinese citizens.

Until last week, Xi had also not met with a single other world leader since 2020. He had conducted his diplomacy by phone and videoconference. When he finally broke that streak and met in Beijing on Friday with another head of state, who was it?

Vladimir Putin.

Their meeting led to a joint statement, running more than 5,000 words, that announced a new closeness between China and Russia. It proclaimed a “redistribution of power in the world” and mentioned the U.S. six times, all critically.

The Washington Post called the meeting “a bid to make the world safe for dictatorship.” Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, told The Wall Street Journal, “The world should get ready for a further significant deepening of the China-Russia security and economic relationship.”

*****

Ukraine and Taiwan The current phase of the relationship has its roots in Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine. The European Union and the U.S. responded with economic sanctions on Russia that forced it to trade more with Asia, Anton Troianovski, The Times’s Moscow bureau chief, notes. China stepped in, buying Russian oil, investing in Russian companies and more.

“The conventional wisdom used to be that Putin didn’t want to get too close to China,” Anton said. That’s no longer the case.

Russia returned the favor in recent years, buying equipment from Huawei, a Chinese tech giant, after the Trump administration tried to isolate the company.

In the grandest sense, China and Russia are creating a kind of “alliance of autocracies,” as Steven Lee Myers, The Times’s Beijing bureau chief, puts it. They don’t use that phrase and even claim to be democracies. “Democracy is a universal human value, rather than a privilege of a limited number of states,” their joint statement read. “It is only up to the people of the country to decide whether their state is a democratic one.”

But the message that China and Russia have sent to other countries is clear — and undemocratic. They will not pressure other governments to respect human rights or hold elections. In Xi’s and Putin’s model, an autocratic government can provide enough economic security and nationalistic pride to minimize public opposition — and crush any that arises.

“There are probably more countries than Washington would like to think that are happy to have China and Russia as an alternative model,” Steven told us. “Look how many countries showed up at the opening ceremony of Beijing 2022, despite Biden’s ‘diplomatic boycott.’ They included some — Egypt, Saudi Arabia — that had long been in the American camp.”

Russia’s threat to invade Ukraine has added a layer to the relationship between Moscow and Beijing. The threat reflects Putin’s view — which Xi shares — that a powerful country should be able to impose its will within its declared sphere of influence. The country should even be able to topple a weaker nearby government without the world interfering. Beside Ukraine, of course, another potential example is Taiwan.

For all these common interests, China and Russia do still have major points of tension. For decades, they have competed for influence in Asia. That competition continues today, with China now in the more powerful role, and many Russians, across political ideologies, fear a future of Chinese hegemony.

Even their joint statement — which stopped short of being a formal alliance — had to elide some tensions. It did not mention Ukraine by name, partly because China has economic interests that an invasion would threaten. The two countries are also competing for influence in the melting waters of the Arctic. And China is nervous about Russia’s moves to control Kazakhstan, where many people are descended from modern-day China.

“China and Russia are competing for influence around much of the world — Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America,” Lara Jakes, who covers the State Department from Washington, said. “The two powers have less than more in common, and a deep or enduring relationship that goes beyond transactional strategies seems unlikely.”

As part of its larger effort to check China’s rise — and keep Russia from undermining global stability — the Biden administration is likely to look for ways to exacerbate any tensions between China and Russia, in Kazakhstan and elsewhere...

Still more.

 

Lots of Questions About Gold Medal-Winning American Skier Eileen Gu -- Skiing for Team China WTAF?!!

I'm hella impressed with this young woman, only 18-years-old (here). 

But she pisses me right the fuck off. She's skis for the genocidal totalitarians in Beijing! She was born in San Francisco, fer cryin' out loud, and she's headed to Stanford in the fall. And she's actually fucking skiing for China?!!

She's allegedly renounced her citizenship, as China *supposedly* doesn't allow dual citizenship and other Americans now competing for China have surrendered their American passports. But she's a freakin' hotsie-totsie high-fashion cover model who's graced the front of Vogue Hong Kong. 

Spoiled brat. Talk about privilege. Smart though. She easily slips questioning about her citizenship status --- and boasts a 1580 on the SAT, so what can you do, I guess?

She's a bonafide champion now, taking the gold medal in the women's big air freestyle last night, in an apparent surprise win, as the big air is not her signature event.

But about that citizenship (arches eyebrow), see the Wall Street Journal, "Eileen Gu’s Beijing Olympics Begin With Gold in Big Air -- And Citizenship Questions":

See what I’m talking ‘bout. Fucking brilliant. 🎿 ⛷ https://t.co/yFjLo0nVeB

— Donald Douglas 📘 (@AmPowerBlog) February 8, 2022

Eileen Gu’s Beijing Olympics Begin With Gold in Big Air—And Citizenship Questions

BEIJING—A surprise gold medal by Eileen Gu, the U.S.-born freestyle skier competing for her mother’s homeland of China, set off jubilation in the Chinese public but spurred renewed questions about her citizenship status.

Gu’s win for China in Tuesday’s big air event secured the country’s third gold medal in these Olympics—briefly putting the country atop the gold-medal count—and came before the U.S. has won any golds.

Gu was a slight underdog to French phenom Tess Ledeux in her Beijing Olympics debut, but won on the third and final run by nailing a trick she had never done before in competition. It featured four-and-a-half horizontal rotations and two flips.

On her final run, Ledeux couldn’t surpass Gu’s feat, and Gu finished with an overall score of 188.25 to Ledeux’s 187.50. Gu grinned and covered her mouth in shock as she watched her score post.

Hundreds of Chinese spectators erupted in cheers at Gu’s victory, some brandishing red and gold placards that read, “Gu Ailing, add oil”—a Chinese phrase of encouragement. Gu Ailing is her Chinese name.

The 18-year-old Gu’s unexpected win swept Chinese social media. On Weibo, a Twitter-like platform, six out of the top 10 trending topics were about her. Hashtags included “Gu Ailing takes on the world’s most difficult jump,” and “Gu Ailing Gold Medal.” Memes and moments of her victory flooded Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

Gu was still coming back to earth when she faced questions in a post-event news conference about her citizenship status. Western reporters asked several versions of the question but Gu deflected each one.

Olympians must be citizens of the nations in which they compete, and China’s policy is not to allow dual citizenship. Yet Gu hasn’t made clear whether she has relinquished her U.S. passport.

On Tuesday, she again emphasized that she considers herself Chinese when she’s in China, where she has spent nearly every summer of her life, and American when she’s in the U.S.

“I don’t feel as though I’m, you know, taking advantage of [China or the U.S.] because both have actually been incredibly supportive of me and continue to be supportive of me,” she said.

“Because they understand that my mission is to use sport as a force for unity, to use it as a form to foster interconnection between countries, and not use it as a divisive force. So that benefits everyone, and if you disagree with that then I feel like that’s someone else’s problem.”

Gu’s decision to compete for China, little-noticed when she made it a few years ago, has spurred controversy in recent days, particularly in the U.S., where she was born and still lives with her mother and grandmother in San Francisco. Some Americans say she is a product of U.S. ski-area infrastructure and instruction, and that her switch to China was motivated in part by gaining access to its vast commercial market.

The ambiguity around Gu’s nationality raises questions about whether Beijing has bent the rules for a top athlete, and whether her star power among some Chinese brands and more nationalistic supporters might suffer if it emerges that she hadn’t given up her U.S. citizenship.

In earlier interviews, Gu had explained her decision to switch national affiliations by saying she felt she could make a greater impact in China than in the U.S., which she felt had no shortage of role models for young people.

Yet these Games—and Gu’s sudden starting role in them—arrived at a time of escalating tensions between China and the U.S., which is carrying out a diplomatic boycott over what it describes as China’s human-rights abuses particularly in its Xinjiang region. Beijing has defended its treatment of Uyghur Muslims there as an effort to combat extremism.

On Tuesday, Gu positioned herself as a unifier of cultures, evading questions about her citizenship status or responding as though they were critiques of her or her mission.

“If other people don’t really believe that that’s where I’m coming from, then that just reflects that they do not have the empathy to empathize with a good heart—perhaps because they don’t share the same kind of morals that I do,” she said.

“And in that sense, I’m not going to waste my time trying to placate people who are, one, uneducated, and two, probably are never going to experience the kind of joy and gratitude and, just, love that I have the great fortune to experience on a daily basis,” she continued.

“If people don’t like me, then that’s their loss. They’re never going to win the Olympics.”

Gu has said she wanted to inspire girls to take up skiing because it has brought her joy and taught her physical and mental toughness.

On Tuesday, Gu also sidestepped questions about the well-being of Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis player at the center of a global firestorm after an allegation of sexual assault against a retired high-level Chinese official appeared on her social-media account in November.

Peng, who along with Olympic officials has since tried to deflect attention from her accusations, was in the audience watching Tuesday’s big air final. Earlier this week, Gu was the only athlete Peng mentioned by name in an interview with French sports publication L’Equipe, referring to her as “our Chinese champion, Eileen Gu, who I like a lot.”

At Tuesday’s post-event news conference, Gu’s interactions with some foreign journalists contrasted with those with their Chinese counterparts. Gu flitted between English and Chinese, which she spoke with a Beijinger’s accent, and said she was “fluent culturally in both.”

One Chinese journalist called Gu a “Beijing girl” and asked about her favorite local cuisine.

“I have eaten a lot of pork and chive dumplings the last few days and I really look forward to trying some Peking duck,” she said in Mandarin...

 

Maria Bartiromo, The Cost

Maria Bartiromo, The Cost: Trump, China, and American Revival.

Tuesday Cartoon

Via Legal Insurrection:

More at Theo's, "Cartoon Roundup..."

BONUS: At CNBC, "U.S. reports over 1 million new daily Covid cases as omicron surges."

Ben Shapiro’s Hilarious Takedown of COVID Lies the Left Walked Back in 2021

Yes, it's an excellent takedown.

From Ed Driscoll, at Instapundit, "FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN WUHAN CHINA."

And here's Ben, "So once it became clear that covid was not in fact a pagan god visiting vengeance on the unwashed Trump voters alone, the media and Democrats are now willing to admit the following."

Still more, "KEVIN ROCHE: Get the Hell Out of Here 2021 and Oh, Shit, Here Comes 2022."

Electric Vehicle Batteries Exploding at General Motors' Orion Assembly Plant, Lake Orion, Michigan

You have to read the whole thing.

The Orion plant shifted to manufacturing 100 percent electricity vehicles, the Chevrolet Bolt, and with an epidemic of battery explosions, G.M. laid off the entire workforce.

Because the shift to green energy is going so swimmingly

At Pirate's Cove, "Oops: GM Electric Vehicle Batteries Keep Exploding":

The crisis involving the Chevrolet Bolt was a painful reminder for the auto industry that despite treating the electric vehicle era as essentially inevitable - a technical fait accompli - significant obstacles to manufacturing the cars, and especially their batteries, continue to threaten that future...

Yes, threatening the future, as I've been blogging recently.

Be smart. Don't buy an electric vehicle.  

Five-Star Emporium of Ambition in Kinshasha

Following-up, "A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution."

At NYT. "On the Banks of the Furious Congo River, a 5-Star Emporium of Ambition":

KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The lobby of the Fleuve Congo Hotel was a swirl of double-breasted suits and tailored dresses one April morning. Shiny gold watches dangled from wrists. Stilettos clacked across marble floors. Smooth jazz played as men in designer loafers sipped espressos.

Situated on the banks of the muddy, furious Congo River, the Fleuve is an emporium of ambition in a nation that, despite extreme poverty and chronic corruption, serves up raw materials crucial to the planet’s battle against climate change.

The soil in the Democratic Republic of Congo is bursting with cobalt and other metals used in the production of electric car batteries, wind turbines and other mainstays of the green energy revolution. Practically everyone who passes through the hotel, where the air conditioning battles the sweltering heat, seems determined to grab a piece of the wealth.

Just off the lobby that day, near a sumptuous brunch buffet, sat Dikembe Mutombo, the 7-foot-2 former NBA all-star player. He had teamed up in his quest for mineral riches with Gentry Beach, a Texas hedge-fund manager who is a family friend and major fund-raiser to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Mutombo shared his table with a top Congolese mining lawyer turned politician whose office is conveniently located in a complex near the hotel.

As the clean energy revolution upends the centuries-long lock of fossil fuels on the global economy, dealmakers and hustlers converge on the Fleuve Congo Hotel.

Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president, top in the gray suit, arrived this spring at the Fleuve Congo Hotel in Kinshasa.Credit...

Situated on the banks of the muddy, furious Congo River, the Fleuve is an emporium of ambition in a nation that, despite extreme poverty and chronic corruption, serves up raw materials crucial to the planet’s battle against climate change.

The soil in the Democratic Republic of Congo is bursting with cobalt and other metals used in the production of electric car batteries, wind turbines and other mainstays of the green energy revolution. Practically everyone who passes through the hotel, where the air conditioning battles the sweltering heat, seems determined to grab a piece of the wealth.

Just off the lobby that day, near a sumptuous brunch buffet, sat Dikembe Mutombo, the 7-foot-2 former NBA all-star player. He had teamed up in his quest for mineral riches with Gentry Beach, a Texas hedge-fund manager who is a family friend and major fund-raiser to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Mutombo shared his table with a top Congolese mining lawyer turned politician whose office is conveniently located in a complex near the hotel.

Mr. Mutombo is among a wave of adventurers and opportunists who have filled a vacuum created by the departure of major American mining companies, and by the reluctance of other traditional Western firms to do business in a country with a reputation for labor abuses and bribery.

The list of fortune hunters includes Erik Prince, the security contractor and ex-Navy SEAL; Jide Zeitlin, the Nigerian-born former chief executive of the parent company of Coach and Kate Spade; and Aliaune Thiam, the Senegalese-American musician known as Akon.

All have been drawn to Congo’s high-risk, high-reward mining sector as the demand for cobalt has skyrocketed because automakers around the world are speeding up plans to convert from gasoline- to electric-powered fleets.

Most recently, Ford Motor, General Motors and Toyota announced they would spend billions of dollars to build battery factories in the United States. The price of cobalt has doubled since January, and more than two-thirds of the global supply is here in Congo.

The Fleuve became the go-to luxury destination after a politically connected Chinese businessman — himself a mining dealmaker — was awarded a contract to run what had once been an abandoned 1970s-era office building. The now five-star hotel has usurped the elite status of its competitor next door, built in the 1960s with U.S. government financing, and it is the kind of place where swashbucklers arrive by private plane trailed by paparazzi, and where some guests keep suitcases of cash and nuggets of gold locked in their rooms.

The frenzied atmosphere at the hotel reflects a pivotal moment for the country — and the world — as the clean energy revolution upends the centuries-long lock of fossil fuels on the global economy.

“Congo is the one who is going to deliver the EV of the future,” Mr. Mutombo, the retired basketball player, said of electric vehicles. “There is no other answer.”

But such bravado signals trouble to some seasoned business people, who see a lot of show and little substance in the new class of deal seekers.

“The country has become the prey of international adventurers,” said Jozsef M. Kovacs, who built the neighboring hotel, originally an InterContinental, which once hosted waves of executives from major Western mining companies that had billions of dollars in capital available to them and decades of mining experience. A handful of those traditional investors remain in Congo, including Robert Friedland, founder of Vancouver, B.C.-based Ivanhoe Mines. But Ivanhoe’s operations are now in large part financed by Chinese investors, who dominate the industrial mining sector in Congo.

“You don’t have a lot of these Fortune 500 mining companies,” said Luc Gerard Nyafé, a regular at the Fleuve who advises the Congolese president and is pursuing mining interests here. “That is something that needs to change.”

But for now, at least, the adventurers have taken center stage, and sometimes their ambitions converge at the Fleuve. Ambassadors, mercenaries, celebrities, musicians, athletes, entrepreneurs — they all pass through...

A Power Struggle Over Cobalt Rattles the Clean Energy Revolution

I thought I'd posted on this topic earlier. The Times has been running a series on global demand for cobalt, to supply manufacturers of electric vehicles with, apparently, the most basic mineral needed in the industry.

Behold green neoimperialism.

I'll post more, but for now, see, "The quest for Congo’s cobalt, which is vital for electric vehicles and the worldwide push against climate change, is caught in an international cycle of exploitation, greed and gamesmanship":

KISANFU, Democratic Republic of Congo — Just up a red dirt road, across an expanse of tall, dew-soaked weeds, bulldozers are hollowing out a yawning new canyon that is central to the world’s urgent race against global warming.

For more than a decade, the vast expanse of untouched land was controlled by an American company. Now a Chinese mining conglomerate has bought it, and is racing to retrieve its buried treasure: millions of tons of cobalt.

At 73, Kyahile Mangi has lived here long enough to predict the path ahead. Once the blasting starts, the walls of mud-brick homes will crack. Chemicals will seep into the river where women do laundry and dishes while worrying about hippo attacks. Soon a manager from the mine will announce that everyone needs to be relocated.

“We know our ground is rich,” said Mr. Mangi, a village chief who also knows residents will share little of the mine’s wealth.

This wooded stretch of southeast Democratic Republic of Congo, called Kisanfu, holds one of the largest and purest untapped reserves of cobalt in the world.

The gray metal, typically extracted from copper deposits, has historically been of secondary interest to miners. But demand is set to explode worldwide because it is used in electric-car batteries, helping them run longer without a charge.

Outsiders discovering — and exploiting — the natural resources of this impoverished Central African country are following a tired colonial-era pattern. The United States turned to Congo for uranium to help build the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and then spent decades, and billions of dollars, seeking to protect its mining interests here.

Now, with more than two-thirds of the world’s cobalt production coming from Congo, the country is once again taking center stage as major automakers commit to battling climate change by transitioning from gasoline-burning vehicles to battery-powered ones. The new automobiles rely on a host of minerals and metals often not abundant in the United States or the oil-rich Middle East, which sustained the last energy era.

But the quest for Congo’s cobalt has demonstrated how the clean energy revolution, meant to save the planet from perilously warming temperatures in an age of enlightened self-interest, is caught in a familiar cycle of exploitation, greed and gamesmanship that often puts narrow national aspirations above all else, an investigation by The New York Times found.

The Times dispatched reporters across three continents drawn into the competition for cobalt, a relatively obscure raw material that along with lithium, nickel and graphite has gained exceptional value in a world trying to set fossil fuels aside.

More than 100 interviews and thousands of pages of documents show that the race for cobalt has set off a power struggle in Congo, a storehouse of these increasingly prized resources, and lured foreigners intent on dominating the next epoch in global energy.

In particular, a rivalry between China and the United States could have far-reaching implications for the shared goal of safeguarding the earth. At least here in Congo, China is so far winning that contest, with both the Obama and Trump administrations having stood idly by as a company backed by the Chinese government bought two of the country’s largest cobalt deposits over the past five years.

As the significance of those purchases becomes clearer, China and the United States have entered a new “Great Game” of sorts. This past week, during a visit promoting electric vehicles at a General Motors factory in Detroit, President Biden acknowledged the United States had lost some ground. “We risked losing our edge as a nation, and China and the rest of the world are catching up,” he said. “Well, we’re about to turn that around in a big, big way.”

China Molybdenum, the new owner of the Kisanfu site since late last year, bought it from Freeport-McMoRan, an American mining giant with a checkered history that five years ago was one of the largest producers of cobalt in Congo — and now has left the country entirely.

In June, just six months after the sale, the Biden administration warned that China might use its growing dominance of cobalt to disrupt the American push toward electric vehicles by squeezing out U.S. manufacturers. In response, the United States is pressing for access to cobalt supplies from allies, including Australia and Canada, according to a national security official with knowledge of the matter.

American automakers like Ford, General Motors and Tesla buy cobalt battery components from suppliers that depend in part on Chinese-owned mines in Congo. A Tesla longer-range vehicle requires about 10 pounds of cobalt, more than 400 times the amount in a cellphone.

Already, tensions over minerals and metals are rattling the electric vehicle market.

Deadly rioting in July near a port in South Africa, where much of Congo’s cobalt is exported to China and elsewhere, caused a global jump in the metal’s prices, a surge that only worsened through the rest of the year.

Last month, the mining industry’s leading forecaster said the rising cost of raw materials was likely to drive up battery costs for the first time in years, threatening to disrupt automakers’ plans to attract customers with competitively priced electric cars.

Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, said the mineral supply crunch needed to be confronted.

“We have to solve these things,” he said at an event in September, “and we don’t have much time.”

Automakers like Ford are spending billions of dollars to build their own battery plants in the United States, and are rushing to curb the need for newly mined cobalt by developing lithium iron phosphate substitutes or turning to recycling. As a result, a Ford spokeswoman said, “we do not see cobalt as a constraining issue.” ...

Still more. 

China’s Xi Emphasizes ‘Peaceful Reunification’ With Taiwan, Days After Record Show of Force

Well, just in case, we have Marines deployed to Taipei, in case something comes up.

At WSJ, "Taiwanese people would not bow to Chinese pressure, President Tsai Ing-wen said in a speech Sunday":

Chinese President Xi Jinping called for a “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan days after China’s People’s Liberation Army sent a record 56 bombers and other aircraft on sorties near the self-ruled island in a single day.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen answered in a speech the following day, saying Taiwanese people would not bow to Chinese pressure. “The historical task of the complete reunification of the motherland must be fulfilled, and can definitely be fulfilled,” Mr. Xi said in Beijing on Saturday, adding that achieving that goal by peaceful means is in the interests of people in Taiwan.

Mr. Xi’s remarks were part of a speech that marked the 110th anniversary of the revolution that overturned Qing imperial rule in China. In the decades that followed, the Communists and Nationalists jostled for control of China, which later led to a split between China and Taiwan amid a civil war. Nationalist forces withdrew to the island, and communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.

The Communist Party considers Taiwan part of China, despite never having ruled the island, and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.

Mr. Xi has long spoken of realizing what Beijing has called a peaceful reunification with Taiwan, but his remarks came as concerns within the U.S. mounted over China’s yearslong military buildup and recent threatening moves against the island.

The PLA has flown 150 sorties near Taiwan so far this month, a blitz that has sparked expressions of concern from the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that a small number of American troops have been secretly training local military forces on the island.

Taiwan’s independence is the biggest obstacle to Beijing’s goal of unification and poses a “serious hidden danger to national rejuvenation,” Mr. Xi said. “Those who forget their ancestors, betray the motherland or split the country have always been doomed. They will definitely be spurned by the people and judged by history,” he added...

 

Graham Allison, Destined for War

At Amazon, Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?

To Get Back Arrested Executive, China Uses a Hardball Tactic: Seizing Foreigners (VIDEO)

I'm still shaking my head at this story. 

The woman was living in two million-dollar homes for three years and the U.S. was never able to extradite her. 

Pfft. 

China plays hardball and we don't? Appalling. 

At NYT, "The speed at which Beijing returned two Canadians held seemingly tit-for-tat in exchange may signal comfort with the tactic":

In a rapid-fire climax to a 1,030-day standoff, China welcomed home a company executive whose arrest in Canada and possible extradition to the United States made her a focus of superpower friction. In getting her back, Beijing brandished a formidable political tool: using detained foreign citizens as bargaining chips in disputes with other countries.

The executive, Meng Wanzhou, landed in China on Saturday night local time to a public that widely sees her as a victim of arrogant American overreach. By the same turn, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, two Canadians detained by Chinese officials just days after Ms. Meng had been arrested, were released and arrived in Canada.

The exchange resolves one of the festering disputes that have brought tensions between Washington and Beijing to their worst point in decades. But it will likely do little to resolve deeper issues including human rights, a sweeping clampdown in Hong Kong, cyberespionage, China’s threats to use force against Taiwan, and fears in Beijing that the United States will never accept China’s rise.

The swiftness of the apparent deal also stands as a warning to leaders in other countries that the Chinese government can be boldly transactional with foreign nationals, said Donald C. Clarke, a law professor specializing in China at George Washington University’s Law School.

“They’re not even making a pretense of a pretense that this was anything but a straight hostage situation,” he said of the two Canadians, who stood trial on spying charges. Mr. Spavor was sentenced last month to 11 years in prison, and Mr. Kovrig was waiting for a verdict in his case after trial in March.

“In a sense, China has strengthened its bargaining position in future negotiations like this,” Professor Clarke said. “They’re saying, if you give them what they want, they will deliver as agreed.”

Chinese media reports chronicled her release and flight home, skipping over her admission of some wrongdoing or saying that it did not amount to a formal guilty plea. On China’s internet, Ms. Meng was praised as a patriotic symbol of China standing up to Western bullying. Her plane was met on the tarmac at the airport in Shenzhen, China, by a rapturous crowd waving Chinese flags.

“Without a powerful motherland, I would not have my freedom today,” Ms. Meng said in a statement issued from her flight.

Chinese news media scarcely mentioned the release of Mr. Spavor and Mr. Kovrig, leaving the impression that Beijing gave nothing away for her return.

To say that the apparent swap signals a thaw in relations would be premature at best, experts said.

President Biden has designated China as a key challenge to American pre-eminence. The releases came as he hosted the first face-to-face leaders’ meeting of the Quad, a grouping of the United States, India, Japan and Australia, united by their apprehension about China’s power and intentions in Asia. This month, Mr. Biden unveiled a new security agreement with Australia and Britain, and plans to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

While Canadian officials and American prosecutors have insisted that they treated Ms. Meng’s case as purely a legal matter, politics has lurked in the background since she was arrested at an airport in Vancouver on Dec. 1, 2018.

Nine days later, security officers took Mr. Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat, from a street in Beijing. Mr. Spavor was seized on the same day in Dandong, a Chinese city opposite North Korea, a country where he long did business. While Ms. Meng was allowed to live in her Vancouver mansion, the two Canadians were confined to prison under much harsher conditions.

Chinese officials rejected the idea that Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor were in effect hostages. But Canadians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, scoffed at their denials, and Chinese officials and media commentators occasionally implied that there could be a trade-off in return for Ms. Meng’s release.

The United States alleged that in 2013 Ms. Meng lied to a bank over whether Huawei — the telecommunications company founded by her father, Ren Zhengfei, and where she was chief financial officer — had kept control of a company that did business in Iran in violation of American sanctions. Ms. Meng’s lawyers argued that she had been truthful.

Despite posturing on both sides, the United States and Ms. Meng had some incentive to find common ground in part because neither felt entirely sure they would win the fight over extraditing her, according to two additional people with knowledge of the talks...

Keep going. 

 

Global Markets Swoon as Worries Mount Over Superpowers' Plans

Well, my investment portfolios are going to take a hit, but they'll swing back, despite what bonehead Biden does.

At NYT, "The S&P 500 closed down 1.7 percent over a number of jitters, like China’s sputtering real estate market and the phasing out of stimulus measures in the United States":

Investors on three continents dumped stocks on Monday, fretting that the governments of the world’s two largest economies — China and the United States — would act in ways that could undercut the nascent global economic recovery.

The Chinese government’s reluctance to step in and save a highly indebted property developer just days before a big interest payment is due signaled to investors that Beijing might break with its longstanding policy of bailing out its homegrown stars.

And in the United States, the globe’s No. 1 economy, investors worried that the Federal Reserve would soon begin cutting back its huge purchases of government bonds, which had helped drive stocks to a series of record highs since the coronavirus pandemic hit.

The sell-off started in Asia and spread to Europe — where exporters to China were slammed — before landing in the United States, where stocks appeared to be heading for their worst performance of the year before a rally at the end of the trading day. The S&P 500 closed down 1.7 percent, its worst daily performance since mid-May, after being down as much as 2.9 percent in the afternoon.

The catalyst for the swoon was the continued turmoil at China Evergrande Group, one of that country’s top three developers of residential properties. The company has an estimated $300 billion in debt, and an interest payment of more than $80 million is due this week.

Analysts said Evergrande’s plight was severe enough that it would be unlikely to survive without Chinese government support. “The question is to what degree are there spillover risks within Chinese equities and then cascading into the global markets,” said John Canavan, lead analyst at Oxford Economics.

Few entities move markets the way the American and Chinese governments can, by their actions and inaction, and the worldwide tumble on Monday made this clear. Until recently, investors seemed content to ignore a variety of issues complicating the recovery — including the emergence of the Delta variant and the supply chain snarls that have bedeviled consumers and manufacturers alike.

But beginning this month, as Evergrande began to teeter and the likelihood of the Fed’s scaling back — or tapering — its bond-buying programs grew, the market’s protective bubble began to deflate. Some U.S. investors are also concerned that tax increases are in the offing — including on share buybacks and corporate profits — to help pay for a spending push by the federal government, the signature piece of which is President Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion budget bill. Separately, Congress also must act to raise the government’s borrowing limit, a politically charged process that has at times thrown markets for a loop.

On Monday, those currents combined, reflecting the interconnectedness of the global markets as investors everywhere sold their holdings.

The decline was ugliest in Asia, where Evergrande’s woes — its shares fell 10.2 percent — dragged down other Chinese real estate companies’ stocks by 10 percent or more. Markets on the Chinese mainland were closed for the day, but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 3.3 percent.

For decades, Chinese growth was driven by investment in infrastructure, including the market for residential property, which was financed with huge sums of borrowed money. Banks often lent to developers at the direction of the government, which looked at property building as a source of jobs and economic growth.

“Beijing says lend, so you lend; when or even whether you get your money back is secondary,” wrote analysts with China Beige Book, an economic research firm.

Many lenders therefore viewed companies such as Evergrande as having an implicit guarantee from the government, meaning that if the company couldn’t pay its debts, the government would ensure creditors get repaid...

Pfft.

We should be hammering the Chinese economy: Dump all Chinese listings off U.S. capital markets and retaliate against Chinese currency manipulation, protectionist trade practices, and theft of U.S. technological know-how. And if Xi attacks Taiwan, we should bomb Chinese cities and military-industrial centers and destroy the Chinese navy.

Still more.