Editor’s note for Tuesday, December 7, 2021

My thoughts today:

“I don’t mean to endorse everything China does any more than I would, say, endorse everything the United States does, or any country,” said Elon Musk. It’s really just a coincidence that he does endorse everything China does, a coincidence that is convenient as China has a big market and essential supply chains for Tesla!

This quote comes to us after several days of news — and snark in this newsletter — about some of America’s most successful business people acting as apologists for China’s ruling Communist Party, even as they tweet their strong criticisms of the U.S. government day after day.

They are not just tweeting: In our newsletter today, our top story is about a deal made by Apple’s Tim Cook with the Chinese government that helped support the Party’s goals in exchange for access and profits for Apple in China.

The thing is: Nobody can escape doing business with China in some way, whether you sell $1 plastic products at a roadside market in Tanzania, or the world’s most advanced phones and cars and financial products in New York. I regularly mock the hypocrisy of people like Jamie Dimon, Ray Dalio, and Elon Musk in this newsletter when they spew nonsense about China.

But they — like everyone else, including me — are just dealing with the fact that it is not possible to be a political or economic actor of consequence in the 21st century without finding some kind of modus vivendi with China.

What should the ground rules be?

Illuminating that question is a major reason I go to work in the morning, and one of the reasons I hope you continue to read, listen, and watch the content we make.

We are working on our 2022 Red Paper, reviewing the news of 2021 and making predictions for the year ahead, similar to our Red Paper from last year. If you have thoughts on what should be included, please let us know!

Our word of the day is whole process people’s democracy (全过程人民民主 quán guòchéng rénmín mínzhǔ), a phrase that has been used thousands of times by Chinese propaganda and diplomatic voices in the last few days in English as a way to protest the American “democracy summit”, but is almost completely absent from the Chinese internet.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief