Install
China blog
China Refines the Minerals Behind Every Battery, and America Let It Happen America has rare earths, lithium and copper in the ground but lets permits drag for years while China dominates processing, a strategic weakness we chose. The China shock was real, and what free traders and tariff hawks each get right Free traders cite cheap goods and tariff hawks cite lost factory towns and security. Both are right about something, and the evidence shows where. How China's Communist Party licenses churches and jails pastors China guarantees belief on paper, runs worship through state-controlled bodies and punishes believers outside them, from Christians to Falun Gong. The OPM Breach Gave a Rival Government the Files on Millions of Americans In 2015 a foreign government took the background files of about 21.5 million people. It was a counterintelligence disaster the coverage filed under tech. The NBA and China in 2019 and the Week a Tweet Cost a League Its Voice One tweet in October 2019 showed that a league loud about American politics goes quiet when a foreign market is paying. A closer look at what money buys. Made for Beijing, How the Chinese Market Changed Hollywood Scripts Studios chasing the Chinese box office edited villains, characters and flags to please censors, and American audiences pay for it. Here is what studios owe us. Xiaogang village signed a secret contract in 1978 and China began to grow Eighteen farmers risked prison to keep what they grew, and the Chinese boom that followed is the best evidence for markets that central planners ever supplied. CoCom Kept Western Technology from Moscow for Forty Years, a Model for China A forgotten committee in Paris denied the Soviet bloc Western technology for four decades, and its record answers anyone who says export controls never work. The Thucydides Trap Is a Bad Excuse for Giving Ground to Beijing The idea that a rising and a ruling power are fated for war is used to excuse appeasement, and the history behind it says the opposite. TikTok v. Garland and the Hard Clash of Free Speech and National Security The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the TikTok divestment law in January 2025, and the case shows where conservatives divide on speech and a foreign adversary. An International Tribunal Ruled Against China in 2016 and Beijing Shrugged A five-judge tribunal demolished the nine-dash line in 2016, and China ignored it, which tells us what law is worth without power behind it. When Clinton Sent Two Carrier Groups to the Taiwan Strait in 1996 The 1995-96 Taiwan Strait crisis showed the value of a show of force and taught Beijing a lesson that shaped its military buildup for decades. The Shipbuilding Gap with China Is an Industrial Story Before a Navy Story A navy is only as large as the yards that build and repair it, and a nation that stopped building commercial ships cannot surge warships.