Here is my effort to combine several different strands of thinking about China. Thank you @evansryan202 for the opportunity: From Engagement to Rivalry: Tools to Compete with China via @TXNatSecReview tnsr.org/2018/08/from-engage…

Happy to be a @NikkeiAsia subscriber as the paper is second to none in its coverage of Taiwan's drone industry. Here by @tchau01 on how the opposition's budget cuts are threatening the great potential for both security and economy via exports. asia.nikkei.com/politics/int…

The PRC is pulling ahead in quantum communications security, and is closing the gap in other quantum technologies. A new Jamestown analysis by @SunnyCheungky scores the U.S.–PRC quantum race across 11 benchmarks, covering foundational technologies, applications, and broader technology and financial ecosystems. The race is tighter than Western policy has acknowledged 🧵 #QuantumComputing #Technology #PRC #ChinaBrief #JamestownFoundation

NEW: China arrested a US citizen after Trump met with Xi in Beijing and accused him of endangering national security — a rare charge against an American. The detainee, U Min Zin, is a grad student at @UCBerkeley who researches Myanmar. This adds a new strain to US-China ties.

The man in these photos is a father, an entrepreneur, and a defender of a free press. His name is #JimmyLai. For nearly six years, he has been held in solitary confinement for defending democracy. At 78 years old with deteriorating health, he doesn't have much time left. He deserves to come home. #FreeJimmyLai

NEW: Taiwan’s growing drone industry has been plunged into uncertainty after the opposition-led legislature axed domestic production programmes from the government’s flagship defence budget. In Taichung, drone companies find themselves in a fog. 1/3 asia.nikkei.com/politics/int…

Western sanctions on Georgia are forcing asset sales, and PRC-linked buyers are filling the gap. Institutions like Liberty Bank, the exclusive distributor of state pensions with data on over one million citizens, have passed into the control of PRC-based companies. Ownership of critical infrastructure is a strategic question, not a technical one. Read more through the link below 🇬🇪🇨🇳🔗 jamestown.org/sanctions-crea… Article by @tinakhidasheli #Georgia #PRC #Geopolitics #EurasiaDailyMonitor #JamestownFoundation

The Cost of Jimmy Lai open.substack.com/pub/marksi…

This is really quite striking. The CCP has long said that they would cooperate with Triads as long as they were "patriotic," i.e. willing to support the party's efforts when called upon. The CCP has never really had a problem with criminality. The Comintern reported that the CCP sold opium to Chinese people from Yan'an to fund itself. Plus ça change...

On June 3rd, Jamestown President @PLMattis joined Zubayra Shamseden (Co-Executive Director, Network for Uyghur Rights), Li Qiang (Executive Director, @chinalaborwatch), and Dr. Gyal Lo (Tibet Specialist, @tibetaction) at the @NEDemocracy to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Moderated by NED Senior Manager for East Asia @williamnee, the panel highlighted how the PRC systematically developed its security apparatus to prevent the Chinese people from ever again so openly expressing and organizing their democratic aspirations. #TiananmenSquare #PRC #Democracy #NED #JamestownFoundation

It's the old social affairs work for the modern age. The CCP has been at this kind of databasing project since at least the early 1930s.

When 🇨🇳 pursues supply chain diversification, it is never described as “anti-Europe”. Words matter. In Confucian thought, this is the principle of the “Rectification of Names” (正名). A useful principle for anyone covering 🇪🇺’s own efforts to reduce excessive dependencies…

37 years ago marks my first political memory. I remember that summer quite vividly as the family prepared to move house. As a kid, the images of the PLA in Beijing and word of the massacre seemed like something out of nightmare. Barely understandable at that age. Later that year, the Berlin Wall would fall and people's movements swept the Warsaw Pact. But this was the start. When I was in Beijing years later, I spent quite a bit of time in Tiananmen Square. I walked it on June 4th, seeing the heavy security around Tiananmen Square and lines of plain clothes "tourists" walking up and down the square. I also wandered Muxidi, Gongzhufen, Liubukou, and other landmarks of that day. I talked about that day with some of my friends, because they too felt the childhood imprint of that day and of the events leading to it. Excitement. Then fear. One had been a child on her father's shoulders when Beijingers took the street to stop the PLA trucks after martial law was declared. Then played in the candlelight, elated by having the entire apartment as a "fort" but upset at missing the "fireworks" she could hear outside. Only much later did she understand how anxious and fearful her parents were. They were the last generation to have a direct memory of those events, of the Party's ultimate betrayal of the Chinese people. The Party's version of "never again" was to sharpen surveillance tools, apply violence more surgically and preemptively, and ensure the crisis cascade would never emerge again. It is a day the world changed. Thank you to those who gave their lives in the hopes a freer Chinese nation: a noble cause before an unworthy government.

It am very grateful to the House Foreign Affairs East Asia Subcommittee for inviting me to testify on China’s role in the fentanyl crisis. Part policy. Part personal. Kisses to you in Heaven Christina Marie.

Terribly sad news. Rest in peace, Sir Alex Younger. One of the very first people to see the value of @ipacglobal - even if he had reservations about the strategy. A great man, gone too soon.

Cheng’s key test “is whether she can persuade the American government that the KMT as a whole should be treated as a good faith actor and a normal part in Taiwanese politics, instead of Beijing’s proxies like Hong Kong’s elites,” commented @PLMattis. 2/4 asia.nikkei.com/politics/int…

Actually, that's not what you mean, which was that 'We must engage because British firms wants us to, but our security and prosperity depend on our being able to steer them away from China's main industrial policy targets, and collaborate even more closely instead with those nations that share our values and standards'

When European Politicians Confuse Wordplay With Insights I chose to live in Europe because I like the continent. I wish nothing but the best for its people and its economies. That is why, when I see a senior European politician @carlbildt repeat this dangerously misleading line — essentially defending predatory Chinese exports — I feel not just disappointed, but disillusioned. Comparing China’s industrial overcapacity to Germany’s cars, France’s wine, Sweden’s trucks, or Italy’s fashion is not analysis. It is wordplay. According to a 2025 IMF working paper, the estimated fiscal cost of China’s industrial policy support reached about 4.4% of GDP in 2023: roughly 2.0% of GDP in cash subsidies, 1.5% in tax incentives, 0.5% in land subsidies, and 0.4% in preferential credit. Apply that to China’s 2025 GDP of RMB 140.19 trillion, and you get roughly RMB 6.17 trillion, or USD 900B, in annual industrial-policy support. Over the past decade, even using a rough 4% of GDP estimate, this runs into trillions of dollars — roughly the size of Germany’s annual GDP. And that still leaves out suppressed wages and benefits, policy-directed capital, regulatory favoritism, local-government support, and the broader political system that forces capital, labour, land, and energy to serve state industrial priorities. So no, this is not Germany making good cars or Italy making beautiful clothes, or France subsidizing its farmers. Cantonese has a saying: 蚊髀同牛髀 — comparing the thigh of a mosquito with the thigh of a cow. If you call both simply “thighs” and pretend they are the same thing, you are either stupid, or deliberately misleading.

Great to join @YinKhvat on set last week for an episode of Taiwan Talks on @taiwanplusnews! youtu.be/fkBLIBEsHE0

Fresh from the KMT HQ presser via @NikkeiAsia: Cheng Li-wun, who’s due to embark on a US tour, said she wants the US to understand that “the Chinese Kuomintang is the most loyal & responsible.” She talked about defence, cross strait & DPP’s problems. 1/4 asia.nikkei.com/politics/int…

“Recent incidents in PRC consulates in New York and Los Angeles show the PRC is hiring local security contractors to act as violent enforcers, silencing opposition against the PRC and advance its political objectives in the host country.” jamestown.org/beijings-emerg…