China Newsbase
Fast, easy search of the China news that matters
The China News Database was last updated at 01:50PM on November 9, 2023.
Database searches currently perform best when a tag filter is used. We suggest trying out these tags: Xi Jinping, Russia, Taiwan, COVID-19, climate change, electric vehicles, gaming, IPOs, Belt and Road Initiative.
You may also filter by articles featured in our daily members-only Access newsletter, to get a curated overview of the top news and analysis about Chinese politics, business, and society. Select one option:
- All top news and analysis
- The China Project top news and analysis
- Top news and analysis from elsewhere — Stories in the “News briefing,” previously known as “Recommended links”
This product is in beta testing and development. If you would like to share feedback on the content or user experience, please email editors@thechinaproject.com.
4,558 articles matching the search query.
China’s Search for Allies
Is the U.S. alliance advantage temporary? Patricia M. Kim of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution writes in Foreign Affairs, “Biden should be aware that when U.S. leaders vow to reimagine Washington’s alliances and work toward ‘a new 21st century vision’ of ‘integrated deterrence,’ Beijing could very well pursue the same with its own strategic partners.”
Japan and US stage first South China Sea anti-submarine exercise
The countries’ militaries have been deepening their cooperation in recent years and seeking to put pressure on China over its claims to the disputed waters.
Opinion | Biden administration soon to announce diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics
A U.S. diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics? Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin writes that, according to “several sources familiar with the plans, the White House is expected to announce that neither President Biden nor any other U.S. government officials will attend the Beijing Games.” The decision is reportedly not finalized, but a “formal recommendation has been made to the president and he is expected to approve it before the end of the month.”
As U.S. spies look to the future, one target stands out: China
The U.S. wants to spy on China: NPR reports from a intelligence community conference at Sea Island, Georgia:
“One former CIA director, Michael Hayden, joined the Cipher Brief Threat Conference virtually and helped set the tone as he shared the advice he gave to the current CIA director, William Burns.
‘First of all, you’ve got to go to China. And then second of all, you’ve got to go go to China. And the third one is, you’ve got to go to China. And he said, “OK, I got it,”‘ Hayden recounted.”
Don’t believe the deglobalisation narrative
Is decoupling over-hyped? “Data show trade balances are not shrinking and foreign investment continues to pour into China,” says Megan Greene in the Financial Times. “Decoupling is everywhere except in reality,” says think tank MacroPolo.
Positive Perceptions of China Hold Steady in Africa, Says New Polling Data - The China Africa Project
China continues to be viewed favorably in African countries, according to the latest survey results of the Afrobarometer research agency, the China-Africa Project reports. Among the 34 countries surveyed, “Two-thirds of respondents told Afrobarometer they feel China’s economic and political influence is either ‘somewhat positive’ or ‘very positive,’ with only 14% viewing Beijing’s engagement as negative.” Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has begun a three-nation tour in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal, where he will attempt to raise “Washington’s profile as a player in regional and international initiatives to restore peace and promote democracy as it competes with China.”
China’s debt crisis unlikely to infect global markets, JP Morgan boss says
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is unbothered by real estate contagion risk in China, “geopolitical winds” in the U.S.-China relationship, and, apparently, COVID-19 protocols. In a visit to Hong Kong, Dimon “expressed confidence in mainland China’s economy” and “was exempted from the city’s stringent quarantine measures,” the SCMP reports. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥 Lín Zhèng Yuè’é) brushed off criticism of the quarantine exemption: “After all, it is a very large bank, which has important business in the city.”
China’s nuclear build-up: ‘one of the largest shifts in geostrategic power ever’
Why is China beefing up its nuclear weapons? Top U.S. general Mark Milley told the Financial Times that China’s expansion of nuclear weapons is “one of the largest shifts in geostrategic power that the world has ever experienced.” Several experts quoted by the FT put forward the same explanation for Beijing’s buildup as nuclear policy expert Tong Zhao in the New York Times: “Beijing’s nuclear buildup is ultimately an attempt to force Washington to drop the perceived strategic assault and accept a ‘mutual vulnerability’ relationship — in which neither country would have the capability or will to threaten nuclear war without risking its own destruction.”
The rise and rise of the global balance sheet: How productively are we using our wealth?
China’s net worth now leads the world: A new McKinsey report finds that “China accounted for 50% of the growth in net worth, or wealth, from 2000 to 2020, followed by the United States, at 22%.” Property prices drove the trend, as the Chinese real estate market helped buoy the country’s net worth to $120 trillion, while “muted increases in property prices” in the U.S. led to a current national net worth of $90 trillion, per Bloomberg. Financial assets are “not counted in the global wealth calculations because they are effectively offset by liabilities,” Blooomberg notes.
Biden to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday
The Biden-Xi virtual meeting has been confirmed: On Monday, November 15, the two leaders will discuss “how to ‘responsibly manage the competition’ between the two nations, as well as avenues ‘to work together where our interests align,’” the White House said, per the Washington Post. “The meeting will be held in the evening, and a joint statement is not expected after it concludes.” See also, from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: At Biden and Xi’s virtual summit, what can be accomplished?
U.S., China issue joint pledge to slow climate change in the next decade
A last-minute U.S.-China climate pledge at COP26: With just two days left at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, John Kerry and Xiè Zhènhuá 解振华, the special climate envoys of the world’s two largest emitters, unexpectedly announced the U.S.-China Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s. The 16-point declaration adds detail to an earlier U.S.-China joint statement from April, though the effects of the new statement are still unclear, and the two countries made no major commitments beyond what was already public. Kerry and Xie both said that the new declaration “was a product of nearly three dozen negotiating sessions,” according to the Washington Post, which adds, “One European negotiator said that the significance of the U.S.-China accord was no guarantee that the broader talks in Glasgow would succeed.”
Opinion | We Spent a Year Investigating What the Chinese Army Is Buying. Here’s What We Learned.
How does China acquire and plan to use AI military technology? The Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University analyzed 350 Chinese military equipment contracts that involved artificial intelligence, and found that U.S. companies play a “critical role” in providing China with data, software, and funding that makes the technology possible. One of the report’s authors, Ryan Fedasiuk, wrote in Politico today to say that while China is using AI for “all manner of applications, including autonomous vehicles, intelligence analysis, decision support, electronic warfare and cyber operations,” he is skeptical of the “most ominous predictions about China’s efforts to fully automate warfare through ‘doomsday’-like weapons.”
Joe Biden extends investment ban on firms linked to China’s military
U.S. President Joe Biden extended a U.S. investment ban on Chinese companies linked to the Chinese military. It was first signed last November by former President Donald Trump.
Biden Plans Global Infrastructure Financing to Challenge China's Belt and Road
The U.S. competitor to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the “Build Back Better World” (B3W) program, might launch in January 2022 with up to 10 flagship projects, an unnamed senior U.S. official told Bloomberg. B3W was first announced during a G7 meeting in June. For more on the possible implications and perceptions of the program in the Global South, see coverage on the China-Africa Project.
The U.S. Is Getting Taiwan Ready to Fight on the Beaches
U.S. troops have been in Taiwan for 13 years, since “at least September 2008,” according to a “Foreign Policy review of Pentagon data produced by the Defense Manpower Data Center, an in-house Pentagon organization.” The amounts of troops are not disclosed, but are described by Foreign Policy as “small contingents.” Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen (Cài Yīngwén 蔡英文) recently commented on the public disclosure of the presence of U.S. troops in Taiwan, saying only that the amount of troops was “not as many as people thought.”
China Builds Missile Targets Shaped Like U.S. Aircraft Carrier, Destroyers in Remote Desert - USNI News
Target practice on U.S. warship mockups: According to new satellite imagery and analysis, the U.S. Naval Institute says that the “Chinese military has built targets in the shape of an American aircraft carrier and other U.S. warships in the Taklamakan desert as part of a new target range complex.”
China Expands Nuclear Weapons Arsenal to Better Compete Globally, Pentagon Says
Is China changing its nuclear weapons posture? The latest Pentagon report on Chinese military power, released yesterday, said that China is on track to have 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 — double the rate of expansion previously estimated, the Wall Street Journal notes. That number would still be a fraction of the U.S. and Russia, the Economist writes, as each nation maintains about 4,000 warheads, but the magazine says Beijing’s buildup indicates a shift in strategy: “All told, China is shifting to a ‘launch on warning’ doctrine. Rather than rely on a minimal nuclear deterrent to retaliate after an initial nuclear attack, China would henceforth fire at the first sign of an incoming nuclear strike, even before the enemy warheads have landed.” The Chinese Foreign Ministry dismissed the Pentagon’s report as “full of prejudice with a disregard of the facts.”
Taiwanese general: Beijing not solely trying to ‘provoke’ Taipei
Taiwanese and U.S. generals play down imminent risk of war: Taiwan’s top military representative in the U.S., Yu Chien-feng (余劍鋒 Yú Jiànfēng), said that Beijing is “not trying to provoke” Taipei, and cautioned against overreaction to recent ADIZ incursions, which Yu said were mainly training flights, Politico reports. Meanwhile, the top U.S. general, Mark Milley, commented yesterday on the possibility of China trying to militarily seize Taiwan: “I don’t think that it is likely in the near future — being defined as, you know, six, 12, maybe 24 months, that kind of window.”
Winning the Tech Talent Competition
“China’s supply of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent now rivals that of the United States, both in terms of quantity and quality,” writes Remco Zwetsloot in a report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The most powerful — and perhaps only — lasting and asymmetric American advantage is its ability to attract and retain international talent, a feat China has not been able to replicate despite extensive efforts. But the U.S. government risks squandering that advantage through poor immigration policy.” See also in the Wall Street Journal: Visa restrictions on Chinese students endanger U.S. innovation edge, universities say.
China's Hypersonic Weapons Tests Don't Have to Be a Sputnik Moment - War on the Rocks
Was the hypersonic weapons news overhyped? “China’s recent tests with hypersonic weapons systems — and the added layer of fractional orbital bombardment systems — are not a Sputnik moment. The technology is far less dangerous than it is often portrayed,” argues Sanne Verschuren, a fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, in War on the Rocks.
