Editor’s note for Thursday, February 11, 2021

My thoughts today: 

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. had his first phone call as president with Xí Jìnpíng 习近平. According to Biden, the call went on for two hours. 

From the Biden readout: He “underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan.” They also “exchanged views on countering the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shared challenges of global health security, climate change, and preventing weapons proliferation.”  

From the Xi readout (or here in Chinese): “Xi stressed that China and the United States both gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation; cooperation is the only right choice for both sides.” Xinhua also said the “telephone call sends positive signals to the world.” 

From a presentation by Pony Ma (马化腾 Mǎ Huàténg), Tencent founder and CEO, translated by Jen Zhu: 

Everyday there are 1 billion pictures uploaded (on WeChat). We have the data of how almost every Chinese’s face changed in the past 10+ yrs. We can predict how they will look like when they get old.  

Asylum for the Uyghurs? That’s what Joe Biden should offer potential victims of China’s massive surveillance and detainment system for Muslim minorities, argue Richard Altieri and Benjamin Della Rocca, student directors of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale University.  

Our word of the day is British Broadcasting Corporation (英国广播公司 yīngguó guǎngbō gōngsī).

We’ll be taking tomorrow off for Lunar New Year: See you on Monday! 

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief