Editor’s note for Monday, August 29, 2022

My thoughts today:

Afghanistan’s acting minister of minerals and petroleum told Chinese state TV that the Taliban government plans to “resume mining and petroleum extraction projects with China” at Mes Aynak soon. Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post says that Chinese businesses are making “headway in Afghanistan despite Beijing’s cautious approach to [the] Taliban.”

If this topic interests you, see also my recent Q&A with Niva Yau on relations between the Communist Party and the Taliban, and this podcast interview with Raffaello Pantucci by Cindy Yu of the Spectator: The new great game: How China replaced Russia in Kazakhstan and beyond.

I’ll have another chat with Niva Yau in a live webinar on September 20.

There is no real challenge to the power of Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, argued veteran China business journalist Dexter Tiff Roberts in a piece we published last week. Also last week came this tweet from Chinese writer Mùróng Xuěcūn 慕容 雪村, who has been effectively silenced in China by the government, in rough translation:

I don’t quite believe in any fundamental changes at the 20th Congress, nor do I believe that Xi has faced a real challenge. Just recently, many cities have been locked down one after another, in apparent allegiance to Xi’s COVID-zero policy.

We need to hang on to our hopes, but fantasies cannot be regarded as reality. And for our generation of Chinese people, there is no greater sorrow than this: watching our lives be destroyed little by little, but not being able to do anything.

Our word of the day is audit oversight agreement (审计监督协议 shěnjì jiāndū xiéyì).