Day: October 8, 2021

Biden Signs Bill to Compensate ‘Havana Syndrome’ Victims

Chin@Strategy

President Biden signed into law on Friday a new government program to compensate C.I.A. officers, State Department diplomats and other federal officials who have suffered traumatic neurological injuries that the intelligence community has yet to figure out, launched by assailants it cannot yet identify. With no ceremony and little public comment, Mr. Biden signed the Havana Act, authorizing Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, to give financial support to employees who have suffered brain injuries. The act is named for what has become…

Anti-Nobel Sentiment Spawns Alternative Awards Over Time

Chin@Strategy

The choice of a Nobel Peace Prize recipient has often been viewed by autocratic governments as a provocative and hostile act, especially when the winner is a political opponent, an advocate of free expression or an agitator for greater liberties. Some authoritarian countries have even created their own anti-Nobel awards. The best-known recent example is the 2010 establishment of the Confucius Peace Prize in China, named after the venerated Chinese sage of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. The prize was part of the angry official reaction to the Nobel…

Luo Changping Detained in China After Criticizing ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’

Chin@Strategy

Luo Changping built a reputation as a muckraking journalist in China, a place where few dare pursue the calling, until he was forced out of the industry in 2014. Now a businessman, he has run afoul of the authorities again, this time over a critique spurred by a blockbuster movie about the Korean War. The police detained Mr. Luo, 40, on Thursday, two days after he posted commentary on social media questioning China’s role in the war, the subject of a new film, “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” The movie…

China’s Foreign Affairs Director Seat May Fall out of the Politburo

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement Many positions within the Chinese Communist Party’s Politburo are institutionally organized as permanent seats. But individual politicians may hold multiple seats, opening spaces for both new seats to enter Politburo and for skillful politicians to carry on in their existing seats. At the 20th CCP Congress, Yang Jiechi is set to retire as director of the General Office of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission. The natural successor would be State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, but Wang is also already over retirement age. Without a standout candidate to…

China Fines Meituan $530 Million in Second Tech Antitrust Case

Chin@Strategy

China fined the food-delivery giant Meituan $530 million for antitrust violations on Friday, the second major penalty this year in Beijing’s efforts to bring the country’s big internet companies to heel. The government’s campaign has been blessed by the highest levels of the Communist Party leadership. It has involved a wide cast of regulatory agencies and policymaking bodies. And it has wiped out hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth for shareholders of some of China’s — and the world’s — most successful tech businesses. Like regulators and politicians in…

Are China’s BRI Glory Days Over?

Chin@Strategy

Advertisement Six years ago many China watchers, including this one, were forecasting that China and its closed, centrally-planned economy were in peril. Borrowings were too high and the mega-projects it was announcing under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) were just too much. At that point Vietnamese officials were warning that “any changes in the global economy would have huge impacts on developing countries like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.” But the world’s second largest economy did not implode. Beijing’s answer – though hardly original – was to borrow more, lend more, and…