The campaign began quietly. Students studying abroad were told to return home. Many did, and their classmates didn’t hear from them afterwards. For those who needed extra incentive to get moving, police detained their families back home. Finally, the ones who refused to comply were rounded up by force.
Facebook and many of its apps have been blocked in China for years. To change that, Mark Zuckerberg has made a big point of meeting with Chinese politicians, reading stodgy Communist Party propaganda, studying Mandarin and—perhaps more daunting—speaking it in public.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to his top trade adviser to investigate supposedly unfair Chinese trade practices will “poison” relations between the two countries, a Chinese state-run newspaper said on Monday.
China announced a ban on imports of iron ore, iron, lead and coal from North Korea on Monday, increasing economic pressure on the Pyongyang regime while moving to implement a package of sanctions put together by the U.N. Security Council.
Over the weekend the New York Times reported (paywall) that Facebook had stealthily released a photo-sharing app in the Chinese iOS App Store translated as “Colorful Balloons.” The news spread rapidly around English-language media, as it marked the first sign that the company is indeed attempting to make a product specifically for Chinese consumers after years of being shut out of the country.
In a tense standoff between nuclear-armed nations that threatens to destabilize Asia, both sides are digging in, with one warning of unspecified “countermeasures” and the other saying it won’t be bullied.
President Trump is scheduled to sign an executive action Monday directing the United States Trade Representative to determine whether to investigate any of China’s acts, policies or practices that may be harming American intellectual property, innovation and technology by encouraging or requiring the transfer of American technology to China.
A human rights activist best known as “Super Vulgar Butcher” who rose to prominence by harnessing social media to mobilize public support admitted in a closed-door trial that his actions “violated the law”, a Chinese court said on Monday.
Mira Rapp-Hooper is Schwarzman Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and Senior Fellow at Yale Law School’s China Center. She is also the author of Shields of the Republic: The Triumph and Peril of America's Alliances (June 2020).
Roland Hinterkoerner is founder and editor of online publishing enterprise Expertise Asia, which has been focusing on communicating analysis as well as thought-provoking and controversial opinions on the global financial system and current affairs. He also joined Orfi Capital in Hong Kong in 2017 as a partner to expand the firm’s fund management activities and formulate macro strategies. Previously, Roland spent his entire institutional career in banking, where he worked in predominantly fixed income, derivative and advisory functions. Across 26 years he was based in London and Tokyo, and Hong Kong since 2008, where he most recently covered the C-suite of Asia’s largest corporate conglomerates.
