Editor’s note for Friday, October 30, 2020

My thoughts today:

Here’s a wild tale of our times involving the following:

• Dodgy documents produced by an American professor in Vietnam
• A fake Swiss expert
• An American working for a tabloid news group in Hong Kong and Taiwan who resigned today
• Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who also resigned today
• Steve Bannon, QAnon, and the Trump campaign

The best account of the affair as it stood this morning was How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge from NBC News, but it’s missing the latest updates. You can find a more recent Chinese-language report from the pro-Beijing HK01 website here, but it’s short on details.

Twitter threads by the following will help fill in the picture as of 5 p.m. New York time, 5 a.m. Beijing time, the day before Halloween:

• Sheena Greitens
• Edward Wong
• Jimmy Lai
• Dr. Trey thinks time might be a flat circle

Here’s another wild tale of our times! Foreign Policy reports that U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross listed as serving on the board of a joint venture with a state-owned Chinese partner “until January 2019 — nearly two years into his term as commerce secretary” and six months after the beginning of the U.S.-China trade war. Foreign Policy notes that “Ross’s position as commerce secretary allowed him to influence the direction of the U.S.-China trade war and America’s global trade policies.”  

Our word of the day is courier(s) (快递员 kuàidìyuán): the overworked, underpaid, much abused people who ensure the smooth running of China’s vast ecommerce economy.  

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief