@onglynette Ong: “ICE agents, in a way, are like chengguan in China where they somewhat belong to the state but also do not belong to the state. It has reached a point where the U.S. government right now is more or less like the Chinese government 20 years ago.”
https://t.co/b07LbbTCt5
This is genuinely incredible and says SO SO MUCH about the perception of China in the West.
This is the #1 news show in France, and the host - David Pujadas - asks the pundits around the table (a sample of the top media figures in France) if they can name 3 living Chinese people.
That's it: they just need to say the names of 3 living Chinese people, anyone. This should be extremely easy.
Yet not of a single one of them can name a single Chinese beyond Xi Jinping. They do not know a single living Chinese person beyond the president.
That's the level of ignorance of China we're dealing with in the West today, in 2026.
This is the source for the video: https://t.co/9UnWyu63g8 Aired live yesterday 28th of May 2026.
Anyone who has travelled on a weak passport will celebrate investigative reporting into VFS global, the near monopoly intermediary that handles visa applications for 71 countries. https://t.co/ALB7KQM9e3
PICARD: Data, shields up
DATA: Brilliant! Shields can reduce damage we sustain. Not immunity. Not hubris. Just prudence. It's not precaution—it's strategy.
[camera shakes]
WORF: HULL BREACHES ON NINE DECKS
DATA: Here's what happened: you told me to raise shields, and I didn't
China’s U.S. farm promise is a rebound, not a breakthrough The White House calls the Trump-Xi agreements historic. The numbers suggest something more modest, a recovery. Soybean commitments follow a different track
It is pretty unprecedented for WHO to declare a PHEIC so rapidly after detecting an outbreak, but it is absolutely merited in this case.
This is a scary one.
Why?
- Very late detection
- Difficult context
- Limited countermeasures
- and global response tools got DOGE-d
🧵...
We're obsessed with the differences between U.S. and Chinese AI. America commands capital; China manufacturing. America pushes the frontier; China on scales and diffuses.
Headlines read like the play-by-play of a manic sports commentator: China is years behind, months behind, pulling ahead, winning, losing, racing towards AGI, racing on a different track.
But moving between the two countries, I’ve been struck by how they have come to mirror and resemble each other.
A shared sense of precarity lies beneath the envy and distrust - the technological future is taking shape at vertiginous speed yet its promise is not shared by all.
For @nytimes, I wrote about how the U.S. and China are hurtling towards a shared A.I future.
China’s rural data-labeling centers relied on mothers who could work, care for children and hold households in place all at once. Now many of those same women are being judged unfit for the future of AI.
https://t.co/kNpWOadfIl
Why is Xi Jinping purging so many people?
The standard explanation is simple: power. He is crushing rivals to stay in office.
That's not wrong but it's incomplete. Xi is trying to help the CCP rule forever.
Delighted to debut in @ForeignAffairs (w/@shuizaiping2)
1/ Short 🧵
China’s FM Wang Yi reportedly met with Myanmar’s detained leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi during his visit to Naypyitaw late last month. The meeting included regime officials, but no official notes were allowed.
SCOOP: A pro-AI dark money group backed by a powerful super PAC funded by execs tied to Palantir and OpenAI, has been secretly paying influencers to push pro-AI, anti-China propaganda on TikTok and IG.
"If only" - Indonesian Finance Minister publicly toys with the idea of imposing toll on ships in the Strait of Malacca. Plenty of people saying it'll never happen, which is almost certainly true. But... it's quite the kite to fly, at a time like this https://t.co/j0AlIikLcG
It turns out Chinese “overcapacity” is the world’s largest buffer stock against a crisis like the one we face.
This is no coincidence. Chinese statecraft is built on state market participation and managed redundancy in essentials — a system designed to buffer market shocks. The ancient Ever Normal Granary is the archetype but the logic extends way beyond grain.
I derive the logic of stabilization through reserves tracing statecraft thinking from ancient times via the civil war to the Mao era and finally the logic of market reforms in my book How China Escaped Shock Therapy. Link below.