Peace but no harmony — Editor’s note for Friday, August 12, 2022
A note for Weekly newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
The big news today is that five enormous state-controlled Chinese companies — China Life Insurance, PetroChina, China Petroleum & Chemical, Aluminum Corp., and Sinopec — said they intend to delist from the New York Stock Exchange because they cannot meet the auditing requirements that the U.S. intends to enforce.
In Europe, Latvia and Estonia withdrew from what was once known as 17+1 — at its zenith in 2019, it was a cooperation group between China and 17 Central and Eastern European countries. Last year, Lithuania withdrew. The most recent departures bring it down to 14+1.
Meanwhile, according to sources cited by Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal, in Joe Biden’s call with Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 four days before Nancy Pelosi touched down in Taiwan, Xi “warned Mr. Biden of unspecified consequences if Mrs. Pelosi went to Taipei…[b]ut he also indicated that he had no intention of going to war with the U.S. and said both sides needed to ‘maintain peace and security.’”
Peace has, so far, been maintained, but not harmony. Instead, there is the ongoing noise of political, cultural, social, and financial decoupling between China and not just the U.S., but also much of the Western world.
On an entirely different subject: When trash collector turned billionaire Huáng Guāngyù 黄光裕 got out of prison in 2020, he vowed to restore the glory of Gome, the appliance-retailing chain that had once made him China’s richest man.
But it turned out he had bitten off more than he could chew (貪多嚼不爛 tān duō jiáo bú làn), which is our phrase of the week.
Happy Ghost Festival (鬼節 guǐ jié, also known as 中元節 zhōngyuán jié), which falls on the 15th day of the seventh month in the Chinese traditional calendar, which is today.
Upcoming events:
- I’ll be speaking at a three-day conference in London at SOAS from September 19 to 21: China and the Media — Who Decides the Stories?
- Our NEXTChina 2022 conference is on November 9 and 10, virtually and in meatspace in New York.
