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.
Only five days after signing RCEP, one major Asian trade deal, China says that it is considering joining another: the CPTPP, a renegotiated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Trump pulled the U.S. out of in 2017.
Five Chinese coronavirus vaccines are in Phase 3 clinical trials, but China has not waited for trials to be complete to inject about one million people since July. Preliminary data suggests that China’s vaccines may be less inoculating than those by Pfizer and Moderna.
The Chinese embassy in Australia shared a detailed list of 14 grievances that Beijing has against the country, extending far beyond China’s core interests and directly criticizing internal Australian affairs.
After months of vague accusations that Australia had broken “mutual trust” with China, Beijing has made explicit a list of grievances with the country.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Agreement was signed yesterday, promising to set trading standards for 10 Southeast Asian countries plus China, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan. The deal is a strategic, but mostly symbolic win for China.
The Biden transition team said that the president-elect had spoken with the leaders of Australia, Japan, and South Korea, as the next administration is expected to use allies to pressure China. How else might Biden change U.S.-China relations?
A decision by Beijing led to the immediate disqualification of four pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong, and the remaining 15 opposition members soon resigned in protest.
A week after the surprise suspension of the Ant Group’s gargantuan IPO, Chinese regulators are taking the country’s entire tech sector to task. Newly drafted antitrust regulations would bring scrutiny to Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan, JD.com, and others.
Beijing is being careful to avoid angering the Trump administration. Here is the state of play in U.S.-China relations, how Biden might plan to change it, and how Trump could still break a lot of China before his time in the White House ends.