According to Shanghai-based analyst Shaun Rein, most Chinese prefer Trump over Harris because they expect Trump to be more transactional, while they feared Harrid would lead a more ideological struggle, he tells CNBC.
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Former Shanghai-based foreign correspondent Howard French recently returned to Shanghai for the first time after corona and takes stock of its current state, by talking to Chinese and foreign residents in the city. In Foreign Policy he reports about these findings. French: “All I can say with certainty is that we are all in for a turbulent, costly, and possibly dangerous ride.”
Howard French:
In the final of these conversations, I asked a much older Chinese scholar about the mounting tech war between the two countries, in which the United States has been seeking to limit China’s access to the most sophisticated microprocessor manufacturing equipment, advanced graphics chips from companies such as Nvidia, and artificial intelligence technologies.
The scholar said the West badly misunderstands China, underestimating its preoccupation with its standing in the world. This will only push Beijing to strive harder to build these technologies on its own—and ultimately prevail. He clarified that he was not predicting that China would win across the board. The point he left me with was that any perceived antagonism from the West will feed Beijing’s preexistent desire to lead in every field that it thinks matters.
This, he said, will lead China to double down on industrial policies and state-driven investments. Many of these will prove misguided or inefficient in the long run. But in a country of China’s size, with enormous resources not only in national wealth but in human talent, many will also succeed, giving its Western competitors all they can handle over the next few decades. All I can say with certainty is that we are all in for a turbulent, costly, and possibly dangerous ride.
More in Foreign Policy.
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Whether the world is heading for a recession does not depend on the state of China’s economy, but on demand in de US, says China economist Arthur Kroeber at the CNBC. In the eyes of Xi Jinping, China is not doing as bad as some economists say it does, he adds.
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China veteran Kaiser Kuo of the Sinica Podcast moderates a discussion on how the US-China tension have an profound impact on the war in the Ukraine and the position of Taiwan at the Ukrainian platform for Contemporary China.
The speakers: Da Wei, Director of Center for International Security and Strategy; Professor at School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University; Dmytro Burtsev, Junior Fellow at A. Krymskyi Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Emilian Kavalski, Professor at Centre for International Studies and Development, Jagiellonian University in Krakow; Yuan I, Research Fellow, Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University, Taiwan.
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Business analyst Shaun Rein discusses the current state of China’s economy, how consumer confidence is slowly recovering, and why the fear of geopolitical tensions stops them from spending more in the economy. And why investors should be careful in investing right now in the second economy of the world.
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The USA is dealing with huge problems and cannot afford to challenge China directly, but decided to stabilize the relations between both countries, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein to CNBC-TV18. But the USA is for sure keeping economic pressure going, he adds.
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Political analyst Victor Shih breaks down the relations between China, the US, and the rest of the world in a discussion from the Chevron Auditorium in the I-House on “China-US Futures: Pathways to Peaceful Coexistence”. Key takeaways: many problems perceived by American politicians with China are not as bad as they try to let us believe.
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US lawmakers have started debate on a law that would ban the successful TikTok app. Political analyst Kaiser Kuo dismisses the effort as misguided at best, he writes in the ChinaFile. “In a sense, the threat of TikTok is real: In this crisis of confidence, and in a state of moral panic that we’ll look back on red-faced a decade out, TikTok is causing us to inflict grievous self-harm.”
Kaiser Kuo:
The bill that got through Congress on Wednesday to effectively ban TikTok—let’s not pretend either that this bill isn’t specifically about TikTok, or that a forced divestiture isn’t tantamount to a ban—is the latest example of a classic pattern of American behavior: In a panicked attempt to preserve the American way of life, we undermine that very way of life. This time, we seem to be falling over one another to sacrifice our openness, a cornerstone of American strength, out of exaggerated fear that a social media app owned by a Chinese company could be our undoing. As usual, this whole episode says much more about us than it does about China. We have a terrible track record of making bad decisions while in the throes of a moral panic, from Prohibition to the Patriot Act. A closer analogy can be found in the Trump administration’s moves to restrict Chinese STEM students and researchers from coming and working in the U.S., and the subsequent China Initiative. Out of a fear that Chinese industrial espionage would confer an advantage on Beijing, we somehow decided that we were better off if all that prodigious Chinese STEM talent went back to China or just stayed there.
If we accept that we ought to take preemptive action against threats to national security, even if they are only latent and potential, any actions should address those potential threats in good faith. In this case, the threats are data harvested by social media falling into the hands of the Chinese, and social media being used by China to advance a hostile agenda. The bill now making its way to the Senate does not address either of these threats. Instead, it takes aim only at one relatively minor potential vector. Not only is the preponderance of valuable data on TikTok out in the open—the content itself, not the metadata—and would be there just the same irrespective of who owned the company, but Beijing can easily either buy valuable data from brokers, vacuum it up from other social media properties, or just acquire it the old fashioned way, through hacking.
That the motive behind this bill is not, in fact, data security is driven home by the refusal of legislators to accept ByteDance’s own proposal, Project Texas, which was devised in consultation with the Austin-based tech company Oracle and The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and would see data localized and housed entirely on servers controlled by Oracle with oversight entirely by U.S. citizens vetted and approved by Oracle. Project Texas would make TikTok the most locked-down, secure social media property in the U.S., if not in the world. The notion that even under that plan, Beijing would still decide to squeeze ByteDance just to acquire data it could obtain far more easily, and in ways that wouldn’t seriously imperil the only Chinese social media company to have enjoyed any global success, is just risible.
And influence? If TikTok is a potent vector for Chinese propagandists, one has to ask: How’s that working out for you, Beijing? Across its years of popularity, American attitudes toward China have plummeted, not improved. If we’re looking for causation, it is clear enough that, if anything, it’s our low national opinion of China driving D.C.’s animus toward TikTok. In a sense, the threat of TikTok is real: In this crisis of confidence, and in a state of moral panic that we’ll look back on red-faced a decade out, TikTok is causing us to inflict grievous self-harm.
More viewpoints at the ChinaFile.
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A large number of the illegal immigrants entering the US from Mexico are Chinese, and not only poor Chinese, says China scholar Ian Johnson in DW. They mostly rely on dubious information on TikTok and have no clue what kind of adventure they get into, he adds.
DW:
The phenomenon of Chinese people entering the United States via the southern border has come to be described by the term “Zouxian,” which can roughly be translated as “take the risk” — and the term’s broad dissemination on social media platforms has led many young Chinese to do just that.
“They rely on social media more in China for getting their information,” said Ian Johnson, a China expert at the US Council on Foreign Relations. “In the Western countries, you would say: ‘What does the mainstream media say about it?’ But, in China, there is no way to fact- check.” Johnson said it concerned him that so many of those young people have no idea what they are getting themselves into.
Johnson said the situation would not just hit the very poor.
“The economic slowdown is affecting broader ranges of the population, including the lower middle class,” Johnson said. He added that increased political persecution under President Xi Jinping has also fueled a desire to leave China behind.
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Winston Ma, an investor, attorney, author, and adjunct professor in the global digital economy, discusses at a Miami conference who can follow as leaders in AI for Arab News. He believes also countries like Saudi Arabia can follow those two leaders, although it does mean a lot of targeted investments.
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Behind all the geopolitical shuffles between China and the US, the war on AI and the metaverse is raging, says AI expert Alvin Wang Graylin in an interview with Cyrus Janssen. And that is a wrong signal for the rest of the world, as both forces should not try to contain the other, for national security reasons or whatever, but work together, he argues.
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You can order Alvin’s upcoming book here: Our Next Reality: Preparing for the AI-powered Metaverse,
You can read the full interview here: 12:28 – Introduction to Alvin Wang-Graylin
China expert Victor Shih, Director of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy, discusses the current state of US-China relations with Bill Gertz of the Washington Post, covering questions like, “Is China an existential threat or a competitor?” and “Is China trying to replace the US as hegemon?” at PNYX.
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Sharon Gai, a China-born Canadian who is an expert in e-commerce, digital transformation, and AI, and worked as head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba. She explains what lessons she learned about cultural fluidity in business and society to IKNS Conversations That Matter, in places where different cultures meet, and how cultural intelligence can help.
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The death of US diplomat Henry Kissinger has triggered different qualifications, varying from an old China friend to a war criminal. Kissenger does have a mixed legacy when it comes to China-US relations, says China veteran Ian Johnson at NBC.
NBC:
In more than 100 visits to China over more than 50 years, Kissinger met all of its modern leaders: Mao, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi. He recounted his experiences in his 2011 book “On China.”
“I would say he had a somewhat mixed legacy,” said Ian Johnson, a senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“On the one hand, he represented a nowadays useful realpolitik way of looking at China, which is to not get caught up in ideology but to look at China as a potentially useful partner in solving global challenges facing the United States,” he told NBC News.
“On the other hand, at times he let himself be used as a prop for Chinese leaders to show their public that they had good relations with the United States, while at the same time earning handsomely for trips to China.”
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President Xi Jinping has touched down in the US for talks with US President Joe Biden in an effort to get the relations on track between both countries. China’s economy needs US investments, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at CNBC, but US firms fear Biden might announce more restrictions on trade with China. While the economy is doing bad, China is still the world’s largest retail market and the US cannot afford to stay away, he adds.
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While the expectations for next week’s meeting between the presidents Biden and Xi are not high, there are four points to watch, writes China analyst Ian Johnson at the website of the Council on Foreign Relations. Those are Taiwan, fentanyl, the Israel-Hamas war, and Climate actions.
Ian Johnson:
In short, don’t expect huge breakthroughs. Gone are the days when presidents and premiers met Chinese leaders and came back with a briefcase full of business deals or other “deliverables.” And that’s not a bad thing. Those meetings were often empty, and many of the deals didn’t pan out—letters of intent to invest often languished, and China sometimes promised market access without delivering. Even though it’s easy to reject “empty talk,” it’s important that top leaders keep the channels of communication open.
Isn’t that true for all countries?
No, it matters more in dealing with China. The reason is that Beijing makes it hard for U.S. officials to understand who is advising Xi or what the decision-making channels are. Last year, Xi was appointed to an unprecedented third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, a position that essentially allows him to run China indefinitely. (Earlier this year, he got a third term as president, but this is an honorific title in the Chinese political system.) Now that he’s ended term limits and has this new third term, Xi is surrounded by people who owe their allegiance to him almost exclusively. Meanwhile, people of Xi’s age—he turned seventy earlier this year— have all retired. Also worrying is that China’s foreign and defense ministers both appear to have been sacked, and the heads of the military’s prestigious Rocket Force were also purged earlier this year, two rare examples of trouble at the top. The changes make it even harder to fathom who is running the show beyond Xi and his immediate circle of loyalists.
So there’s a real possibility that Xi is surrounded by yes-men, who might not want to tell him bad news. In this context, it matters that the president of the United States can talk to him directly to explain why American perceptions of China are so negative and what the direct risks this could bring.
It’s not clear, for example, if Xi is directly aware of risky maneuvers by the Chinese military in recent weeks—notably, the buzzing of a U.S. bomber flying in international airspace. Decisions about such exercises are probably made by commanders on the ground, but they are based on guidelines issued by Beijing. Letting Xi know directly that these events are dangerous and potentially catastrophic could be useful.
More at the website of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Geopolitical tensions and the crisis in real estate have hurt consumer confidence over the past 18 months, says Shanghai-based business analyst Shaun Rein at ABC. He does not expect a big-scale stimulus, since the government is short of money to spend, but a slow recovery of retail is emerging, he adds.
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