That’s why, long after the shock has worn off, the enduring lesson for China will be a sense of vindication. Operation Absolute Resolve is a confirmation of what the CCP has always believed — that there is no such thing as a rules-based international order; that it’s a jungle out there.

Now Beijing will feel vindicated that America has shed the pretence. Whether Trump’s actions are the death knell of the rules-based world order, or merely reveal that it never existed, doesn’t truly matter. What matters is that the US and China, as the two most powerful nations on Earth, the two countries with the most capability to uphold the rules for everyone else, share a disdain for them. Like the fairies of Neverland, these laws only ever existed if they were believed in.

The policy adopted by the Biden administration to thwart AI developments in China hasn't worked out at all and, instead, has fueled growth given that domestic alternatives are popping up in the markets and that, through loopholes, Chinese organizations are already keeping up with their computational needs.

Under those conditions, of course Dengist state-led developmentalism is the easiest path to pursue. Living standards go up, the revolution endures, and no one gets plunged back into the pseudo civil war of the Cultural Revolution. It's a real triumph of this weird, rinky-dink little game full of strange UI and slightly garbled English that it manages to capture that so well.

In search of a successor to the Li Keqiang Index.

What really broke the Li Keqiang index was the covid-19 pandemic. The decline in retail sales, air travel and the property market was far more dramatic than the slowdown in industry, electricity use or rail freight. Meanwhile, m2 grew quickly at the end of last year as people hoarded cash.

This is an occasion that should be treasured for its rarity value if US intelligence is correct, a fixture that will no longer be possible at the next Games in Los Angeles, given 2027 is the due date for China’s full‑scale military invasion.

Whatever happens from here, whatever the merits of that hawkish talk, the video simulations, the armada rumours, we’ll always have Paris.

Investors are pulling money out of China at a record pace, adding to pressure on the renminbi. Foreigners cut investment in Chinese factories and other projects by $12bn in the third quarter — the first such drop since records began. Locals, who often flee a troubled market before foreigners do, are leaving too. Chinese investors are making outward investments at an unusually rapid pace and prowling the world for real estate deals.
China’s President Xi Jinping has in the past expressed supreme confidence that history is shifting in his country’s favour, and nothing can stop its rise. His meetings with Joe Biden and US chief executives at last week’s summit in San Francisco did hint at moderation, or at least a recognition that China still needs foreign business partners. But almost no matter what Xi does, his nation’s share in the global economy is likely to decline for the foreseeable future. It’s a post-China world now.

BYD selling more EVs than Tesla and for the first time ever at a higher profit margin. seems EV sale growth is continuing strong in China. I wonder if that's due to a cultural difference, or maybe just because they're at an earlier phase of the adoption process there? although since BYD sells like 80% of its car domestically, I would say it's not the latter.

Xi has devoted billions of dollars to his aim of transforming the military into a modern force by 2027. Central to that was his elevation of the Rocket Force, which would play a pivotal role in any invasion of self-ruled Taiwan.

“What’s a more powerful way to centralize power than to control people’s thought?”

censorship as he experienced it was more Kafka-esque than Stalinist

Snow asked if she could drop me off at the nearest subway stop. I said it was no problem, and as we turned I asked how many siblings her husband had. She had been complaining towards the end of lunch that she and her husband had to support them.
"Twelve, but half of them died. So there are six of them, total."
"I’m sorry to hear that," I said.
"Oh don’t be. It was like that for everyone back then. Because you know, Mao had probably gone crazy, and encouraged everyone to be a ‘hero mother’ by having five kids. They say that’s what caused the famine. But Mao was crazy and…"
She broke off and laughed.
"You see," she said, "we can say this here, just you and me; we just can’t say it in print." Then, suddenly, switching to English, she exclaimed, "That’s China!"

Snow asked if she could drop me off at the nearest subway stop. I said it was no problem, and as we turned I asked how many siblings her husband had. She had been complaining towards the end of lunch that she and her husband had to support them.

"Twelve, but half of them died. So there are six of them, total."

"I’m sorry to hear that," I said.

"Oh don’t be. It was like that for everyone back then. Because you know, Mao had probably gone crazy, and encouraged everyone to be a ‘hero mother’ by having five kids. They say that’s what caused the famine. But Mao was crazy and…"

She broke off and laughed.

"You see," she said, "we can say this here, just you and me; we just can’t say it in print." Then, suddenly, switching to English, she exclaimed, "That’s China!"

The ongoing baby bust in China has already lowered its share of the world working age population from a peak of 24 per cent to 19 per cent, and it is expected to fall to 10 per cent over the next 35 years. With a shrinking share of the world’s workers, a smaller share of growth is almost certain.

Around 2013, China watchers began to joke about the “golden age of liberalism under Hu Jintao.” At the time, it seemed absurd that an era so politically conservative, even as civil society slowly and falteringly advanced, could be considered in that way. Over the next decade, it became far less of a joke. In relative terms, Hu’s era now seems ridiculously free and open—and now given a brutal finale.

capital markets bending to the will of the Chinese Communist Party
"From an investment perspective, fund managers that are sticking with China say that their strategy is to try to look past the political noise to identify sectors that are aligned with the Communist party’s stated aims"

The China proposal reflects the priority Burns laid out during his Senate confirmation hearing in February. The veteran diplomat called China’s “adversarial, predatory leadership” the biggest threat to the U.S., saying Beijing’s goal is to “replace the United States as the world’s most powerful and influential nation.”

"Since the Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, there have been only two peaceful transitions of power, both under Communist rule. The first was that from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao in 2002, and from Hu to Xi in 2012."