Lucas Niewenhuis is the Newsletter Editor at The China Project. Previously, he has researched China-Africa relations at the Social Science Research Council, interned at the Council on Foreign Relations, and studied Chinese language and culture in Shanghai and Beijing.
After two decades, U.S. troops are finally fully leaving a country bordering China. Beijing appears to have mixed feelings about the development, taking advantage of opportunities to increase regional influence while warning about the possibility of instability.
A U.S. State Department official described Chinaโs Xinjiang region as โan open-air prisonโ and reiterated the Departmentโs view that Beijing is committing genocide against Uyghurs. Meanwhile, several more reports have detailed how the Chinese government is chipping away at Muslim culture and life in Xinjiang.
The 2020 Chinese census showed a population continuing to grow, but at its slowest rate since the Peopleโs Republic of Chinaโs first census in 1953, with the lowest number of new births since 1961. How will China deal with its rapidly worsening demographic crisis?
For the past year, international alarm over Chinaโs abuse of Uyghurs has been heightened by reports of targeted birth control. A New York Times report confirms that even as birth restrictions have loosened in much of China, they have tightened and become more coercive for Muslims in Xinjiang.
Sinopharmโs COVID-19 vaccine is the first Chinese-made shot to ever be approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization. The step affirms Chinaโs growing scientific power, but is expected to have limited impact on vaccine supply in the short term.
Beijing, casting itself as the victim of โinsane suppressionโ from Canberra, suspended its participation in one of the few remaining high-level diplomatic forums between Australia and China. Relations between the two countries still might not have hit bottom.
The EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment is on extremely thin ice, and may be suspended entirely because of Beijingโs counter-sanctions over Xinjiang. But that is far from the only area of increased EU-China friction.
After a month of lodging repeated diplomatic protests against the presence of Chinese fishing boats in disputed waters, the Philippines foreign minister took a less diplomatic approach on Twitter. He was gently rebuked by President Rodrigo Duterte for being โrude and disrespectfulโ to the Philippinesโ โbenefactor.โ
Chinese leader Xi Jinping told his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, that he is โvery concernedโ about the surge in COVID-19 cases in India. China is supplying India with oxygen and other critical supplies to deal with the crisis, but bilateral tensions remain high with a still-unresolved border standoff.