Editor’s note for Friday, February 11, 2022

Dear reader,

Will Russia invade Ukraine in the next few days? We predicted a Putin-led military incursion in our 2022 Red Paper, and now the U.S. government seems to think an invasion is imminent. If it happens, Beijing is going to be in an interesting and not entirely comfortable situation.

Other breaking stories today:

A review of a new exhibition from artist Ài Wèiwèi 艾未未, by Jonathan Jones: The Liberty of Doubt – so dull and sentimental it’s offensive: “The iconoclast’s opposition to the Chinese state has been admirably brave. But this edgeless, confused and mawkish show suggests his art is less so.”

“China’s government banned online tutoring firms from offering high-school curriculum classes during a current holiday, expanding a crackdown that has decimated a large portion of the country’s $100 billion private edutech industry,” reports Bloomberg.

“When will China be the world’s biggest economy?” ask Bloomberg’s Eric Zhu and Tom Orlik. Their answer: Maybe never.

“Business boomed last year for Chinese chip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) on the back of a global chip shortage, with revenues and profits soaring despite pressure from U.S. sanctions,” reports Reuters today. If you subscribed to our The China Project A.M. business brief, you would have had this news a good 12 hours before Reuters reported it.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief