Category: The Diplomat

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz concluded his inaugural visit to China on February 26. The two-day trip saw Merz leading a senior business delegation, and committing to advance a “comprehensive strategic partnership” in meetings with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. Merz’s visit followed trips to China by France’s Emmanuel Macron and the United Kingdom’s Keir Starmer, reflecting a broader European effort to stabilize relations with Beijing despite ongoing tensions over trade, market access, and strategic competition. Despite talk of a “reset” in Sino-German relations, Merz’s trip was less about romance and more about realism.…

Even as China deepened its review into Meta’s acquisition of Manus, another long-running technology standoff was brought to a close. After six years of sustained political and regulatory pressure, ByteDance finalized a deal over TikTok to establish a majority American-owned joint venture designed to secure U.S. data and avert a U.S. ban on the platform. Taken together, these two high-profile episodes signal a shrinking strategic space for Chinese technology companies pursuing global expansion and expose a growing paradox at the core of Beijing’s technology regulation. How China’s tightening regulatory framework…

In recent years, a quiet yet profound competition has been unfolding among the countries of the Persian Gulf – this time over data, not oil. China has been quietly yet systematically sowing the seeds of its technological influence in the Gulf.  The key countries that Beijing has targeted for technological influence are Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. These countries, aiming for economic diversification and developmental goals, have turned to new technologies, including AI, from China.  How have Chinese AI companies in the Persian Gulf changed the nature…

In August, Beijing announced it was cutting contact with Czech President Petr Pavel after his private meeting with the Dalai Lama in India. In reality, there was little contact to sever. The era of his predecessor – former President Miloš Zeman, who once called Xi Jinping his “young friend” and told Chinese television that Czechs should “learn from China how to stabilize society” – is long gone.  Over the past four years, China-Czechia relations have reached a historic low under the government of Prime Minister Petr Fiala. Yet this collapse cannot…

While there has been plenty of analysis devoted to China’s development of the Chancay port in Peru, an angle that has been too often overlooked is China’s tactical use of cultural engagement to facilitate this achievement. Leading up to and in parallel with Chancay’s opening, Beijing conducted multiple targeted campaigns to spotlight historical and civilizational parallels between China and Peru.  Beijing’s influence in the South American country is not only about investment, but also crucially about shaping public perceptions and narratives over time, especially in an arena often overlooked by…

In recent weeks, Western audiences encountered two starkly different portraits of China’s economic model. In his book “Breakneck,” tech analyst Dan Wang argues that China is an “engineering state” that builds fast and learns by doing, a stark contrast to what he terms America’s stagnant “lawyerly society.” Separately, on the Lex Fridman Podcast, economist Keyu Jin described a highly decentralized, market-driven system – a “mayor economy” where local competition fuels innovation.  Both stories resonate because they offer compelling explanations for China’s eye-popping infrastructure, its dominance in solar and electric vehicles…

China launched a three-member crew to its orbiting space station on Thursday as part of its ambitious program that aims to put astronauts on the moon by 2030. The Shenzhou-18 spacecraft lifted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northwestern China atop a Long March 2-F rocket at 8:59 p.m. (1259 GMT). The spacecraft’s three-member crew will relieve the Shenzhou-17 team, which has been staffing China’s Tiangong space station since last October. The China Manned Space Agency, or CMSA, held a send-off…

Following his initial visit in June of last year, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is making his second visit to China from April 24 to 26. On the 23, Chinese state media CCTV’s new media platform “Yu Yuan Tan Tian” (玉渊谭天) published five key objectives outlined by the head of the North American and Oceanian Affairs Department of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding Blinken’s visit. Among these objectives, the third point emphasizes that the United States should respect China’s “red line” on Taiwan. However, comparing this with the…

During the late 1970s, China implemented the “one-child policy.” The primary goal was controlling population growth, which could have hindered the country’s economic development. The policy was enforced through severe fines, forced abortions for women, and denying government benefits to children born outside the state plan, who couldn’t receive hukou registration. The human cost of the policy was significant, but it worked – for a time. China’s one-child policy effectively created a demographic dividend, which occurs when a country’s birth and death rates both decline. The consequence was an astonishing…

One of China’s top military leaders took a harsh line on regional territorial disputes, telling an international naval gathering in northeastern China on Monday that the country would strike back with force if its interests came under threat. The 19th biennial meeting of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium opened in Qingdao, where China’s northern naval force is based, providing a vivid backdrop to China’s massive military expansion over the past two decades that has seen it build or refurbish three aircraft carriers. The two-day talks have drawn representatives from partners…