Serious limits — Editor’s Note for Friday, September 16, 2022
A note for Weekly newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
Dear reader,
Today’s news: The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) who met today in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, agreed “to take steps to increase the use of national currencies in trade between their countries.”
The promise was not made at dinner last night: The main man of the event, Xí Jìnpíng 习近平, skipped the evening festivities attended by 11 other heads of state because of “his delegation’s COVID-19 policy.” Most of the photos of Xi and his group show them wearing masks, unlike delegates from other countries.
One of Xi’s first engagements in Uzbekistan was a meeting with Vladimir Putin, with whom he had announced a “no limits” partnership earlier this year, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But there are, in fact, serious limits to how much Beijing is willing to go along with Moscow, says veteran China business journalist Dexter Tiff Roberts in the latest installment of his column for The China Project.
This week’s other big news stories from China as we covered them were:
- Putin needs Xi — a meeting in Samarkand
- Parliamentarians ramp up pressure on China over Taiwan as U.S. moots potential sanctions
- Typhoon Muifa is the latest blow to China’s battered economy and the world’s supply chains
- More of the same under Xi’s COVID-zero China
Our phrase of the week is: follow the vine to find the melon (顺藤摸瓜 shùnténg mōguā), a metaphor for finding clues that lead to a culprit, used by a police social media account to describe the arrest of a movie star for soliciting prostitutes.
