Editor’s note for January 31, 2023

A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.

My thoughts today:

It’s a bit embarrassing for Vladimir Putin: His foreign ministry today announced that Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 will visit to Russia in the spring, and that it “will be the key event in relations between Moscow and Beijing in 2023.

But there has not yet been any comment yet from the Chinese side. Xi is probably still smarting from agreeing to a “no limits partnership” with Putin mere weeks before the Russian leader ordered his army to invade Ukraine.

The relationship between Beijing and Moscow will never be easy or truly friendly, but each side knows it can count on the other for rhetorical and practical support. That often means the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries will emit slightly different messages.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and Czech President-Elect Petr Pavel had a cordial phone call, as Beijing continues to lose friends in Central and Eastern Europe. Could Ukraine be the next country to give China the cold shoulder?

On the other side of the Pacific ocean, Washington wants to completely cut Huawei off from U.S. suppliers, as we report in our top story today (click through here, or scroll down for a summary).

Our word of the day is sheer sci-tech hegemonism (裸裸的科技霸权 luǒluǒ de kējì bàquán) , which is how the Chinese Foreign Ministry today described new U.S. sanctions on Huawei.