Tag: China and the US

What’s Next for the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act

January 18, 2022

This story raises important questions around the enforcement of such laws. I really like that the specific logistical hurdles are dealt with rather than the broader idealized goals of such legislation.

Independent audits are impossible to conduct in Xinjiang, and due diligence remains difficult in other parts of China. The U.S. government has noted reports of auditors being detained or intimidated. In 2020, five audit organizations announced they would withdraw from Xinjiang, as the Chinese government’s oppressive conditions in the region made it too difficult to conduct the work.

https://uphill.thedispatch.com/p/whats-next-for-the-uyghur-forced

American power ($)

October 24, 2021

The global order that America helped to establish in the second half of the 20th century is changing fast. In this collection of commentaries, global thinkers examine the sources of America’s power and the forces changing it. They offer predictions and prescriptions for the future. The series looks broadly at America’s power, from its chaotic abandonment of Afghanistan to the rise of China. It also considers the internal forces at work in the United States.

https://www.economist.com/future-of-american-power

The Future of America’s Contest with China

August 12, 2021

Washington is in an intensifying standoff with Beijing. Which one will fundamentally shape the twenty-first century?

To a degree still difficult for outsiders to absorb, China is preparing to shape the twenty-first century, much as the U.S. shaped the twentieth. Its government is deciding which features of the global status quo to preserve and which to reject, not only in business, culture, and politics but also in such basic values as human rights, free speech, and privacy. In the lead-up to the anniversary, the government demonstrated its capacity for social surveillance. At the Beijing University of Technology, where students trained to march in the parade, the administration extracted data from I.D. cards to see who ate what in the dining hall, and then delivered targeted guidance for a healthy diet. In the final weeks, authorities narrowed the Internet connection to the outside world, secreted dissidents out of town, and banned the flying of drones, kites, and pet pigeons.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/13/the-future-of-americas-contest-with-china

China: The Land That Failed to Fail

August 11, 2021

During this time, eight American presidents assumed, or hoped, that China would eventually bend to what were considered the established rules of modernization: Prosperity would fuel popular demands for political freedom and bring China into the fold of democratic nations. Or the Chinese economy would falter under the weight of authoritarian rule and bureaucratic rot.

The world’s money transfer system is China’s Achilles heel in its sanctions battle against the US

August 10, 2021

But China is actually far more vulnerable to US sanctions than it will let on, even if the sanctions are aimed at individuals and not banks. That’s because the primary system powering the world’s cross-border financial transactions between banks, Swift, is dominated by the US dollar.

https://qz.com/1893235/swift-transfer-system-leaves-china-vulnerable-to-us-sanctions/

What the West Gets Wrong About China

August 10, 2021

Why do leaders in the West persist in getting China so wrong? In our work we have come to see that people in both business and politics often cling to three widely shared but essentially false assumptions about modern China. As we’ll argue in the following pages, these assumptions reflect gaps in their knowledge about China’s history, culture, and language that encourage them to draw persuasive but deeply flawed analogies between China and other countries.

https://bg.hbr.org/2021/05/what-the-west-gets-wrong-about-china#

How Space Became the Next ‘Great Power’ Contest Between the U.S. and China

February 10, 2021

The Biden administration faces not only waves of Chinese antisatellite weapons but a history of jumbled responses to the intensifying threat.

“There’s been a dawning realization that our space systems are quite vulnerable,” said Greg Grant, a Pentagon official in the Obama administration who helped devise its response to China. “The Biden administration will see more funding — not less — going into space defense and dealing with these threats.”

The protective goal is to create an American presence in orbit so resilient that, no matter how deadly the attacks, it will function well enough for the military to project power halfway around the globe in terrestrial reprisals and counterattacks. That could deter Beijing’s strikes in the first place. The hard question is how to achieve that kind of strong deterrence.