Taiwan flashpoint. Targeted Chinese scientists in the U.S. will flee.
The People's Liberation Army "closes in" on Taiwan; Xi Jinping boosts science and welcomes CEOs; China snuggles up to Europe, Japan, South Korea; etc.
This is The China Week, a succinct roundup of what happened in the world’s other superpower in the last seven days.
The top story in this week’s newsletter is about China’s military drills around Taiwan. the second story below may be more significant in the long run: the Trump administration’s driving away of scientific talent, especially Chinese talent, contrasted with the warm welcome such people are receiving in China.
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Beijing sends a message to Taipei
War games around Taiwan
On April 1, a spokesperson of the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) announced military exercises around Taiwan, to test the PLA’s readiness for “gaining comprehensive control, striking at sea and land targets, and blocking key regions and passages,” and to give “a serious warning…to the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”
Propaganda disseminated by the Eastern Theater Command’s social media accounts are using language like “closing in” 進逼 (sic) on Taiwan and “burning up the Taiwan independence devils,” and “The more willful provocation, inviting greater strangulation” 闹得越凶, 勒得越紧 (sic).
There are also some crude, colorful caricatures, reminiscent of Chinese anti-American cartoons in the 1950s and ‘60s that shows Taiwanese president Lai Ching-te 賴清德 as a “parasite poisoning Taiwan,” “hollowing” it out, and “courting ultimate destruction.”
China’s military drills came after Lai Ching-te announced measures to counter influence operations and espionage from Beijing, and a variety of events that have stirred up tensions across the Taiwan Strait in the last week:
On the 20th anniversary of the Anti-secession law, China’s Taiwan Affairs Office announced a new hotline for “reporting heinous acts of ‘Taiwan independence.’”
China-born radio host and publisher Li Yanhe 李延贺 a.k.a. Fu Cha 富察 was sentenced to three years behind bars in Shanghai on charges of inciting separatism, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
“Taiwan has held the first realistic and comprehensive civil defense drill in its democratic era as the country seeks to convince a skeptical U.S. of its commitment to strengthening itself against what both see as a growing threat from China,” reports the Financial Times.
A Chinese-born online influencer left Taiwan on March 25 after a deportation order after she “came under scrutiny…over videos expressing support for the unification of Taiwan and China by armed force.”
Who values research?
China pushes science as U.S. pushes scientists away
The April 1 issue of Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s theoretical journal, featured a 2024 speech (translation). by Xi Jinping that exhorts scientists, entrepreneurs, government officials, and educational institutions to make China into a science and technology superpower.
Also on April 1: The Trump administration began mass layoffs of staff at federal health agencies, in just the latest attack on scientific expertise within the U.S. government and at educational institutions.
At the same time, persecution of Chinese scientists and scholars seems to have stepped up once again, despite the end of the first Trump administration’s China Initiative in 2022:
A “prominent computer scientist” from China who worked at Indiana University and his wife have disappeared and the FBI has raided their home.
Although a federal court has tried to stop a Florida state law that restricts Florida’s public universities from hiring individuals from China and other “countries of concern,” the New College of Florida has already fired a Chinese language professor citing the law.
China will be the beneficiary of current U.S. government policy, judging by news from the past seven days:
Fu Tianfan 符天凡, an artificial intelligence researcher focused on AI-driven drug discovery, has left a tenure track position in New York, to join the School of Computer Science at Nanjing University. “China’s growing investment in higher education had created unprecedented opportunities for young scientists like him,” reported the South China Morning Post.
“A network of companies operated by a secretive Chinese tech firm has been trying to recruit recently laid-off U.S. government workers,” Reuters reported.
As Edward Luce of the Financial Times put it: “It's not just foreigners who are remaking plans. U.S. scientists are looking abroad. Trump has given the world a giant poaching opportunity.”
CEO meet-and-greets, and more
Xi smiles at private enterprise
Over the last week, the Chinese government has intensified a campaign to encourage private companies, including multinationals, to invest and spend.
“Four of China’s largest banks are planning to raise up to $71.6 billion via share sales under a finance ministry-led plan aimed at bolstering capital and beefing up lending to help boost the economy,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
Last Friday in Beijing, Xi Jinping met with more than 40 foreign business leaders, including executives from Saudi Aramco, BMW, Toyota, and FedEx. His speech praised the contributions of their companies to China’s development, and promised government support and a level playing field.
Several global financial institutions have forecast more positive economic growth for China this year after the release of robust economic data and several stimulus moves.
Shanghai city officials have pledged to cut red tape and better protect corporate rights.
The Party Secretary of Zhejiang Province has vowed to “make private entrepreneurs more determined, and more confident…and promote high-quality development of the private economy.”
Regulators have begun encouraging some companies to launch IPOs, according to the Financial Times.
However, “Xi Jinping just can’t help himself” from messing with the private sector says Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal. Just hours after Xi’s Friday meeting with foreign CEOs, “his antitrust regulator announced that it would review a deal that would shift control of two ports in Panama from CK Hutchison, controlled by the family of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing 李嘉誠, to an investor group led by BlackRock.”
Europe, Japan, South Korea get closer to China
EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic, French and Portuguese foreign ministers Jean-Noel Barro and Paulo Rangel, Italian Senate President Ignazio La Russa, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez are all in and out of Beijing, last week and this.
Chinese state media say that Beijing wants to coordinate a response to Trump tariffs with Japan and South Korea. Various worthies at China’s Boao Forum in Hainan said that the “Global South” must lead the world economy as the U.S. retreats.
Nothing definitive or decisive has happened, but what is clear is that countries around the world are attempting to de-risk their relationship with the U.S., to use a word coined to describe attempts to reduce dependency on China.
Notables
Military gossip, cameras and drones, coffee and other drugs
Some other stories that caught my eye the last week:
Military purges
“In the past week, the news cycle surrounding political flux and more purges in the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has really picked up steam,” reports Eye on China, in a post that lists the “five big names that have emerged as rumored to be arrested/under investigation/ disappeared.”
Curbs on facial recognition technology
China’s Cyberspace Administration issued new regulations “for the private use of facial recognition technology, allowing people to opt out and requiring service providers to offer ‘reasonable and convenient’ alternative identification methods,”
Flying cars: The low altitude economy takes off
“Chinese regulators have for the first time granted companies approval to operate autonomous passenger drones.”
“Six leading Chinese universities have applied to introduce new undergraduate programs focused on the emerging low-altitude economy.”
The Hong Kong government also wants the city to have a low-altitude economy.
AI, brain chips, satellite internet
Chinese brain chip project speeds up human trials after first success
China Floods the World With AI Models After DeepSeek’s Success
Forget about the “reverse Kissinger”
Drugs and coffee in the countryside
Chinese arms trade