Category: The Diplomat

On March 19, Hong Kong’s Legislative Council passed the Safeguarding National Security Bill, which took effect four days later. The speed of the legislation’s passage was astonishing: The draft bill was only submitted by the government to the Legislative Council on March 8. The members of the Legislative Council, who had been visiting Beijing at the time of the National People’s Congress, were recalled to Hong Kong to consider the draft. On March 16 and 17, a weekend notwithstanding, the Legislative Council convened and passed the bill with unprecedented alacrity.…

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, commonly known as Jokowi, yesterday hosted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Presidential Palace in Jakarta. The meeting followed a recent trip by Defense Minister and President-elect Prabowo Subianto to Beijing, during which Chinese President Xi Jinping praised the strong ties between Indonesia and China and outlined a vision for regional peace at a time of escalating tensions in Southeast Asia. If Prabowo’s recent visit to China underscored the significance of China to Indonesia, Wang’s visit highlights Indonesia’s reciprocal importance as a key partner for…

Recent foreign policy reporting has spent what might seem to be an absurd amount of time talking about pandas. In November, the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. returned its pandas to China after more than 50 years of hosting the bears in the U.S. capital. The four remaining pandas in the United States – all at the Atlanta Zoo – are also slated to return to China sometime this year. This would have left the U.S. without any of the furry giants for the first time since 1972.  Fortunately, a…

Most of the Cabinet appointments of the incoming Lai Ching-te administration in Taiwan have been announced in the last week. Despite Taiwanese media initially expecting that most positions would be announced at once, the announcements largely took place in stages. This seemed to be because some appointments were not confirmed at the time that the initial slate was announced.  Lai’s choice of premier and vice premier were the subject of much interest in Taiwanese reporting. Lai’s initial premier will be former Executive Yuan secretary-general and former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)…

Recently, Apple has been meeting with Chinese technology firms about using homegrown generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools in all new iPhones and operating systems for the Chinese market. The most likely partnership appears to be with Baidu’s Ernie Bot. It seems, if Apple is going to integrate generative AI into its devices in China, it will have to be Chinese AI. The certainty of Apple adopting a Chinese AI model is the result, in part, of guidelines on generative AI released by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) last July,…

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Tuesday that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens global security, in an apparent call for China to apply greater pressure on its neighbor and close strategic partner to resolve the conflict. Scholz also said the use of nuclear weapons in the two-year-old war should not even be threatened, according to a German government transcript of his brief remarks at the start of a meeting with Xi in the Chinese capital. Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last month that his government is…

Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the most interesting regions to follow in terms of the Chinese global presence. When China stepped up its engagement with the region via its 16+1 initiative in 2012, the debate in Europe soon after started to revolve around the notion of the region serving as a “Trojan horse” for China to enter the continent. Recently, the discourse has changed significantly, with many pointing to Lithuania and Czechia as the most hawkish European countries on China and representing a souring of the region’s…

For two years Chinese authorities secretly detained the newborn baby, her siblings, and their parents.  Their whereabouts and wellbeing remained unknown to family members or lawyers until word began to trickle out in July 2022: the baby and her sister, then 6 years old, had been kept in a psychiatric hospital since October 2020. Their brother, who turned 8 that year, had been sent, without the parents’ consent, to be fostered by a local police informant.  The children’s mother, human rights defender He Fangmei, had been detained at the psychiatric…

The need to alleviate the strain of great-power competition and navigate uncertainties in international politics has prompted many countries to broaden their partnerships and establish new avenues of cooperation. Taiwan is no exception.  Since the official launch of the New Southbound Policy (NSP) in 2016, the Tsai Ing-wen administration has made great strides to strengthen the cultural, diplomatic, and economic ties between Taiwan and 18 of its southern neighbors, encompassing ASEAN countries, South Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Economic collaboration, talent exchange, people-to-people ties, and resource sharing are the backbone…

If there is one area where Argentina’s President Javier Milei cannot be faulted, it is the coherence and consistency of his libertarian ideas since he started his political career. As expected, Milei also brought that ideology to foreign policy. Milei understands the world in a binary way, with an ideological perspective typical of the Cold War. It’s a world that ceased to exist in 1989, but which is still very much alive for Milei. It’s an almost existential need for him, given his deep ideological convictions. In that sense, aggressively…