Month: January 2022

Advertisement Despite efforts from the Trump administration to respond to Beijing’s subnational influence operations, and despite tensions that remain at the federal level, China-U.S. subnational exchanges have largely continued under Biden, with some American subnational officials calling on the then-new administration to advance such relationships. For example, on December 1, 2020, Jerry Brown, former governor of California and currently chair of the California-China Climate Institute at UC Berkeley, published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled “Jerry Brown: Biden’s first task should be working with China on climate change.”…

Advertisement A group of lawmakers loyal to China’s Communist Party were sworn in to Hong Kong’s Legislature on Monday following an election without opposition candidates, as yet another pro-democracy news outlet announced it could no longer operate amid a growing crackdown on freedoms in the territory. The former British colony that was returned to China in 1997 was once known as a haven for dissent and freedoms of the press and expression not seen on the mainland. But the central government in Beijing has clamped down in the last year,…

“There is nothing here, just basic necessities… Nobody has come to check up on us, what kind of quarantine is this? They did a big transfer of us, more than a thousand people, in the night and many of us are elderly people and children. They didn’t make any proper arrangements and so they just carelessly placed us [here],” read one comment posted by an affected resident. BBC

Live-streamers promote products online at the 2nd China-Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) Expo in Ningbo, Zhejiang province, on June 9, 2021. Live-streaming e-commerce has become an increasingly popular way to shop during the pandemic, but the sale of financial services has caught the attention of regulators. Photo: Xinhua South China Morning Post

Authorities have also signalled that they have no intention of bailing out Evergrande, and its billionaire founder, because it would go against President Xi Jinping’s “Common Prosperity” policies, which aim to distribute wealth more fairly throughout society. BBC

Advertisement 2021 was a largely successful year for Chinese foreign policy, due to China’s effective control of the COVID-19 crisis domestically, stable economic growth, and active participation in global governance, particularly in the area of climate change. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently commented in his overview of the year, “We celebrated the centenary of the Communist Party of China and embarked on a new journey for the second centenary. Drawing strength from its achievements in the past century, China’s diplomacy has forged ahead bravely in the game of…