Editor’s note for Thursday, December 23, 2021

My thoughts today:

China has many holidays (not all of which are days off work), and so does the U.S.

One of the upcoming American holidays is Kwanzaa, from December 26 to January 1. It was created in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, an American academic. PBS defines it as “a celebration of community, family, and culture, established as a means to help African Americans reconnect with their African roots and heritage.”

There’s very little information about Kwanzaa in Chinese. The most recent item on the holiday is from a tech website, a story about a tweet from Google about a new product:

Time to give your Nest Doorbell ringtone some holiday cheer.

Choose from:

Hanukkah

Christmas

Kwanzaa

…and more!

This is, I believe, what the kids call late capitalism.

The mouse that roared? Or the mouse that the elephant intends to crush underfoot? As the Wall Street Journal puts it:

With fewer than three million people, tiny Lithuania hardly poses a threat to China. But you wouldn’t know it from how Beijing is acting. The Chinese Communist government is throwing a fit because Lithuania allowed the opening of a Taiwanese Representative Office in Vilnius.

And today, Noah Barkin of the Rhodium Group consultancy tweeted (with a link to the source if you read Lithuanian):

The German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce has written to the Lithuanian government warning that German investors may close their plants in the country unless a “constructive solution to restore Lithuanian-Chinese economic relations” is found.

The year 2021 in summary, with predictions for 2022: That’s what you can find in our Red Paper if you didn’t click through to it yesterday.

We’re taking tomorrow off, see you on Monday, and our word of the day is:

Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanzaa, and belated greetings for Hanukkah and Diwali!

圣诞快乐，宽扎节快乐，和迟到的光明节及排灯节的问候!

shèngdàn kuàilè, kuānzhā jié kuàilè, hé chídào de guāngmíngjié jí páidēngjié de wènhòu!

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief