Editor’s note for Tuesday, January 26, 2021

My thoughts today: 

President Joe Biden today signed a Memorandum Condemning and Combating Racism, Xenophobia, and Intolerance Against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. 

This is a welcome change in tone from the U.S. government, and comes just as one of the last acts of the previous administration’s xenophobia bears bitter fruit: the apparently groundless targeting of MIT professor Chen Gang for sciencing while Chinese. For more on this case, see an op-ed we published today by legal scholar Margaret K. Lewis: Gang Chen’s case should be the end of the DOJ’s ‘China Initiative.’

Food is getting really expensive in China: my WeChat feed is full of images like this: two spring onions for 12 yuan ($1.86), a cabbage for 45 yuan ($7.11). The Straits Times reports: “Meat, vegetable and cooking oil prices have risen in recent weeks,” citing three factors: 

• Increased demand as families stock up for the Lunar New Year celebrations;
• COVID-19 disruptions;
• Colder than usual winter weather.  

Our word of the day is China-New Zealand free trade agreement (中新自贸协定 zhōng xīn zìmào xiédìng).

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief