Category: The Diplomat

This is Part III of a four-part series on “The First Airtight Empire” – analyzing the historically unprecedented closure that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is constructing in 2026, and how that closure has rendered American policy assumptions obsolete. Part I documented the two slogan substitutions through which Beijing rewrote its history and prewrote its future. Part II described the three lockdowns that conditioned the population to accept the airtight seal that followed. This installment turns to the mechanical architecture of the seal itself. The concluding installment (Part IV) will…

On May 14, China’s top leader Xi Jinping took U.S. President Donald Trump to the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, where the two posed for a photo standing before the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. English reports treated the visit to the Temple of Heaven as a mere formality between talks – the phrase “followed by a visit to the Temple of Heaven” was often sandwiched between Xi’s warning on Taiwan and soybean trade issues. However, if we compare the venues chosen for each U.S. president’s visit to China,…

This is Part II of a four-part series on “The First Airtight Empire” – analyzing the historically unprecedented closure that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is constructing in 2026, and how that closure has rendered American policy assumptions obsolete. Part I documented the two slogan substitutions through which Beijing rewrote its history and prewrote its future. This installment turns to the conditioning sequence that prepared the population to accept the closure those slogans were authorizing. Subsequent installments will examine the four-dimensional architecture by which the closure has been mechanically engineered…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 13-15 came to an end, surprisingly, without any new deals announced. At the same time, fears that Taiwan might be thrown under the bus to reach those deals did not come to pass – at least so far as is known.  Trump said before he left for China that arms sales to Taiwan would be a topic of discussion. This led to alarm that the weapons sales might be up for negotiations, in violation of longstanding U.S. policy…

Buried in the Chinese readout of the meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in Beijing is what may be the single most consequential line of the summit. Xi announced that the two leaders had agreed to make “a constructive China-U.S. relationship of strategic stability” the new positioning of the relationship, a framework meant to “provide strategic guidance for the next three years and beyond,” according to the official Xinhua readout. A colleague’s reaction when the readout dropped caught the implied meaning: “So it means – fighting with rhythm,…

On May 7, two British-Chinese dual nationals were convicted at the Old Bailey in London on espionage charges. Peter Wai and Bill Yuen were found guilty of running a “shadow policing” operation against Hong Kong dissidents from within Yuen’s workplace, the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO). Using Wai’s contacts and access to sensitive information from his role as an immigration official within the U.K. Home Office, the pair surveilled pro-democracy Hong Konger activists and attempted to launch an operation to illegally seize and return  to China a woman…

U.S. President Donald Trump made his long awaited trip to China this week, arriving in the country on May 13 and holding a bilateral meeting, as well as a state banquet, with China’s Xi Jinping on May 14. He will have tea and lunch with Xi on May 15 before departing for Washington. Trump’s visit marked the first by a U.S. president to China since 2017 – during Trump’s first term. From Beijing, Trump and Xi promised a new era for the bilateral relationship. Xi even presented an entirely new…

More than four decades ago, Chinese leaders strategized that radical openness on one island could lead to reunification with another.  Now, as cross-strait relations roil both politics in Taipei and the Sino-American relationship, Beijing has revived a decades-old dream: an island-sized free trade zone on Hainan Island. Top Communist Party officials and intellectuals have long hoped that such a zone might transform “China’s second largest island” into a mainland-controlled version of Hong Kong and lure Taiwan back into the fold. Hainan is today engaged in what may be China’s most…

This is Part I of a four-part series on “The First Airtight Empire” – analyzing the historically unprecedented closure that the Chinese Communist Party is constructing in 2026, and how that closure has rendered American policy assumptions obsolete. Subsequent installments will examine the three lockdowns through which the Chinese population was conditioned to accept the airtight closure that followed (Part II), the four-dimensional architecture by which the closure has been mechanically engineered (Part III), and the long historical frame and policy implications that follow (Part IV). By “airtight,” in this…

The war in Iran was not on Xi Jinping’s agenda. He had other plans for May – specifically, a carefully planned summit with U.S. President Donald Trump in Beijing designed to stabilize what has become the world’s most consequential and combustible bilateral relationship. Instead, Beijing finds itself navigating a conflict it didn’t start, doesn’t want, and cannot afford to ignore. How China handles this moment will reveal more about its actual power – and its vulnerabilities – than any trade deal announced in Beijing. I spent more than two decades…