Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to visit Beijing

Here’s what else you need to know about China today:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to meet Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 in Beijing next month for the first time in six years, the Times of Israel reported. The visit would signal to the U.S., which has kept its distance from Netanyahu, that Israel has other diplomatic options. Neither Beijing nor Tel Aviv have yet confirmed the meeting.

China banned a well-known finance writer and two of his peers from Weibo for posting about the country’s stock market and unemployment rate, according to an official statement posted to the platform yesterday.

Wú Xiǎobō 吴晓波, one of China’s most influential writers on finance and a best-selling author, and two unnamed individuals were accused of posting comments that “attacked and undermined” Chinese policy, as well as spreading “negative and harmful information” on the Twitter-like social media platform. Recent posts on Wu’s Weibo account, which has nearly 5 million followers, were removed from the site.

China is still on track to reach its economic growth target of around 5%, Chinese Premier Lǐ Qiáng 李强 said today at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions, more commonly known as “Summer Davos,” in Tianjin. “From what we see this year, China’s economy shows a clear momentum of rebound and improvement,” Li said.

He also warned of the risks of decoupling, in a veiled swipe at recent efforts by the U.S. and the EU to “de-risk” with the Chinese economy. “The invisible barriers put up by some people in recent years are becoming widespread and pushing the world into fragmentation and even confrontation,” China’s No. 2 official said.

China and Vietnam should manage their South China Sea dispute through “dialogue and consultation,” Li Qiang told Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh during their meeting in Beijing yesterday. Li also agreed to “accelerate consultations” on the Code of Conduct in contested waters to avoid any actions that will “complicate or escalate” the situation.

Meanwhile, both sides agreed to strengthen military cooperation in a meeting today (in Chinese) between Chinese Defense Minister Lǐ Shàngfú 李尚福 and his Vietnamese counterpart Phan Van Giang. The talks come two days after U.S. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan made a port stop to Da Nang, a coastal city in central Vietnam, just weeks after Hanoi protested against Chinese vessels sailing in disputed waters.

Chinese state media: A lengthy piece infused with ideology and Xi Jinping Thought headlines Xinhua’s News Agency’s website today: Its theme is the importance of correct Party “organization” and of having cadres who are both “red and professional” executing the right political line.

Xinhua’s English site focuses on diplomacy, with the three top stories being: Xi meets Mongolian PM, Xi meets New Zealand PM, and Xi meets Barbados PM.

Party paper the People’s Daily continues its recent focus on Xi’s meetings with the Communist Youth League (CYL), with its top story today noting that “since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party’s youth work has made great achievements and undergone profound changes.” There seems to be an effort to rebuild the CYL, powerbase of former leader Hú Jǐntāo 胡锦涛, which Xi had neutered in the first few years of his rule.