
In a Fortnight

Beijing Sends a Menacing Message in Its Lunar New Year Greeting to Taiwan
Introduction The Lunar New Year, which commenced on February 5th, inaugurated the “Year of the Pig” in the Chinese horoscope. The Lunar New Year is China’s largest annual holiday, and a traditional time for family gatherings, meals of dumplings, and gifts of hong bao (“red... MORE

Arrests in Poland Contribute to the International Controversies Surrounding Huawei
Introduction The December 1, 2018, arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou (孟晚舟) in Vancouver—an arrest made by Canadian officials pursuant to a warrant issued in the United States—touched off a three-way diplomatic firestorm between China, Canada, and the United States. However, in the... MORE

Successful Lunar Landing Demonstrates Continuing PRC Advancements in Space
China’s Lunar Probe Explores New Territory on the Moon’s Surface On January 3rd, PRC officials announced a successful landing by the Chang’E-4 probe (嫦娥四号探测器) in the Van Karman Crater near the lunar south pole. [1] The mission was noteworthy for being the first time that... MORE

“Chinese Assistance Centers” Grow United Front Work Department Global Presence
A network of thirteen “Chinese Community and Police Cooperation Centres” (hereafter: “police cooperation centers”) established by PRC expatriates in South Africa recently became the subject of a minor controversy in that nation. Photos of the opening ceremony for the thirteenth center in Port Elizabeth, the... MORE

World Bank Offers Timely, Dubious Praise for Belt and Road
Beijing appears to be rethinking CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious bid to reshape global trade by lending money for infrastructure projects in countries across Eurasia. The initiative has come under fire at home and abroad, with domestic critics wondering... MORE

Pocketbook Purges: Why Investors Everywhere Need to Understand CCP Politics
In the last issue of China Brief, this column examined the case of Huarong Asset Management, a major PRC financial firm, whose fortunes nose-dived after its chairman Lai Xiaomin (赖小民) was detained in a corruption probe. Most media coverage of Lai’s downfall speculated that he... MORE

Financial Boss’s Fall Hints at Deleveraging’s Political Side
Almost immediately after assuming office in 2012, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping kicked off a brutal anti-corruption campaign whose stated goal was to curb rampant official self-dealing. However, most observers agree that, like many high-level PRC campaigns, Xi’s anti-corruption push was also a political purge,... MORE

Domestic Criticism May Signal Shrunken Belt and Road Ambitions
In the past two weeks, obvious signs of discontent with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s ambitious policy agenda have emerged into public view. (Willy Lam explores these signs and their policy implications in “Xi’s Grip on Authority Loosens Amid Trade War Policy Paralysis”, also in... MORE

Censorship, Geopolitical Time Bombs, and China’s Islamophobia Problem
China has a serious and worsening Islamophobia problem. While relations between China’s Muslim minorities and its Han majority have been fraught since 2009’s deadly inter-ethnic riots in the far western city of Urumqi, recent years have seen the normalization of online hate speech directed at... MORE

Xi’s Economic Deleveraging Campaign and the Limits of Credit Committees
For well over a decade, the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have understood that excess lending by China’s state-directed banks to unproductive, state-linked companies could spark a future financial crisis. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has made the fight against excess leverage a... MORE