July 24, 2023 – Chin@Strategy

Top Chinese Leaders Say Economy ‘Facing New Difficulties’

July 24, 2023 Media Library

Beijing — China’s top leaders said the economy was facing “new difficulties and challenges” in a meeting of the 24-person Politburo on Monday. The country’s highest-ranking officials gather annually at the end of July to review the economic situation before their traditional summer break in August. This year, they met as the post-COVID recovery in the world’s second-largest economy was running out of steam, due in large part to sluggish consumer spending. “The meeting pointed out that the current economic operation is facing new difficulties and challenges, mainly due to…

France’s Macron Tours South Pacific Where US-China Rivalry is Intensifying

July 24, 2023 Media Library

paris — The French president is pressing his country’s interests in the South Pacific this week and trying to make France’s voice heard in a region shaping up as a prime geopolitical battleground for China and the U.S. President Emmanuel Macron’s trip to Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia starting Monday comes as French forces take part in massive U.S.-Australian-led military exercises in the region. With troops, citizens and resources spread across its Pacific territories, France wants to protect its interests and project its power alongside like-minded democracies worried…

Hong Kong Questions More Families of Wanted Activists

July 24, 2023 Media Library

Hong Kong, China — Hong Kong national security police on Monday took in family members of businessman-turned-activist Elmer Yuen for questioning, one of the eight fugitives with bounties on their heads for allegedly breaching national security. The city announced this month that eight pro-democracy activists, all of whom now live overseas, are wanted for national security crimes, and offered rewards of $128,000 for each of them. Since then, police have targeted at least seven family members of three of those wanted — lawmakers Nathan Law and Dennis Kwok, as well…

US Dismisses China’s Rejection of UN Accusations of Arms Transfers to Myanmar

July 24, 2023 Media Library

WASHINGTON — The U.S. is supporting a report by the special rapporteur of human rights in Myanmar, despite China’s objection to findings that Beijing has been exporting arms to Myanmar’s military which has used them to forcibly suppress resistance groups since its 2021 coup. “The United States strongly supports the mandate of the Special Rapporteur and his work illuminating the human rights situation in Myanmar,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA’s Korean Service on Friday. The remarks came in response to China’s opposition to a United Nations report by Tom…

Disappearance of Xi favourite Qin Gang adds to confusion on Chinese diplomacy

July 24, 2023 Media Library

Receive free Chinese politics & policy updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Chinese politics & policy news every morning. Qin Gang charted a meteoric rise through the brutal world of elite Chinese politics, overtaking more experienced candidates to become Xi Jinping’s foreign minister in March before suddenly disappearing with little explanation. With Qin out of public view for a month, analysts, diplomats and officials are trying to make sense of his absence, which threatens to complicate US efforts to revive top-level engagement and…

Western sanctions and distrust draw China, Russia closer in the Arctic

July 24, 2023 Media Library

China – which has its own ambitions of becoming a “polar great power” by 2030 – has also been gaining a foothold in the region through scientific research and economic ties with the Arctic states, particularly Russia, in recent years. “We see cooperation with Chinese partners in developing the transit potential of the northern sea route as promising,” said Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with China’s leader Xi Jinping in March. Advertisement “We are ready to create a joint working body for the development of the northern sea…

‘Small-scale dip’? China downplays FDI inflow decline that may be having a big impact on confidence

July 24, 2023 Media Library

“We believe short-term fluctuations in the numbers will not affect foreign investors’ optimism towards China’s development. The atmosphere for the further expansion of FDI to China has not changed,” said Zhu Bing, director of Mofcom’s Department of Foreign Investment Administration, when the figures were released last week. While Zhu described the drop in FDI to China as “a small-scale dip”, this would raise further questions on how confident foreign investors remain in investing in the world’s second-largest economy in the near future, when Beijing’s post-Covid economy has yet to show…

Bank of Japan must respond to increasingly sticky inflation

July 24, 2023 Media Library

Receive free Japanese war on deflation updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest Japanese war on deflation news every morning. The writer is chief Japan economist at JPMorgan in Tokyo When will the Bank of Japan shift its monetary stance to reflect the reality of increasingly sticky inflation? Predicting policy remains difficult but the central bank’s interpretation of economic change remains as significant as the data itself. Recent wage and inflation data already justify some scaling back of the current super-accommodative monetary stance. The…

Chinese base in Cambodia nears completion in challenge to US naval power

July 24, 2023 Media Library

Receive free US-China relations updates We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email rounding up the latest US-China relations news every morning. China has made significant progress building a naval base in Cambodia and is close to completing a pier that could berth an aircraft carrier, according to satellite imagery. Images taken by BlackSky, a US commercial imagery company that has been monitoring the construction at Ream Naval Base, show a nearly complete pier that is strikingly similar in size and design to a pier that the Chinese military uses…