Editor’s note for May 26, 2023
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
The world is much bigger than it appears in the global media, which continues to be dominated by Anglophone and especially American voices, reporting on the U.S. and Europe.
That’s one reason we have launched a new column called China Ties. Each week, we’ll examine China’s relationship with another country. The first two installments are about Turkey and Sudan.
But of course, China’s rocky relationship with America has ramifications for everyone on the planet.
This week, as we briefly noted yesterday, there are signs of a thaw: Yesterday in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo met with Wáng Wéntāo 王文涛, China’s Minister of Commerce. The official readouts from the U.S. and China are remarkably similar and both mention a commitment to maintain communication channels.
But Beijing is reportedly still not responding to Washington’s request for a meeting on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore next week between Chinese Defense Minister Lǐ Shàngfú 李尚福 and his U.S. counterpart, Lloyd Austin.
We won’t send a newsletter next Monday, as it’s Memorial Day in the U.S. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday.
Our Phrase of the Week is: Treating trivial things as matters of principle (上纲上线 shànggāng shàngxiàn).
