03a China
EXCERPT:
What happens when the Arctic starts to look like the South China Sea?
Historically, a neutral region where cooperation prevailed, the Arctic is quickly becoming a contested space. This is no more evident than in the increasing scope and volume of Russian and Chinese lawfare affecting the region. Through excessive maritime regulations, coordinated challenges to Western continental shelf claims, and the use of shadow fleets to avoid accountability, Russia and China are increasingly coordinating their efforts to exert influence and challenge Western claims to Arctic resources and freedom of navigation. As these tactics continue to converge, the United States and its partners — Arctic and non-Arctic — should establish clear strategies to respond and counter or risk ceding control of this critical region to those who seek to reshape the law in their favor.
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Chinese researchers have made a significant advancement in circular resource recovery by creating a new way to turn nitrate-laden wastewater into valuable ammonia for fertilisers. They used artificial intelligence to find a super-effective dual-atom catalyst, which led them to a process that tackles two major global issues: water pollution and the heavy energy use of traditional industrial ammonia production. Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, show that this method achieves almost three times the conversion efficiency of earlier technologies. By converting runoff from farms and factories, this approach provides an eco-friendly solution to lessen environmental ‘dead zones’ and cuts down on the agricultural sector’s dependence on energy-heavy chemical methods.
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Despite years of harsh rhetoric on China, Trump has continued to publicly praise Chinese President Xi Jinping. Just last week, he described Xi as a “good man” and a “smart man” with whom he has “a very good relationship”.
But behind the warm language lies mounting pressure. The summit comes at a moment when Washington is struggling to convert its military and economic power into diplomatic outcomes, particularly in the Middle East.
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When Donald Trump visits Beijing this week, the focus of think tankers and pundits will largely be on what the policy outcomes will be, and there is a tendency to lean towards the negative. Will China deepen the trade war? Will Trump bristle at Xi’s stance on the war against Iran?
But for the trajectory of the relationship between China and the United States, the summit could play a constructive role, facilitating a peaceful recognition of the shift in power dynamics between the two countries and globally. Perceptions in both countries of one another, and of the role each seeks to play in the world, will be shaped by the art of the summitry and what the meeting between the two leaders conveys.
Historically, high-profile summits have proven to be important turning points in U.S. foreign policy by mediating enduring tensions in bilateral relations. The 1959 US-Soviet summit humanized the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev in the eyes of some Americans. The 1972 Nixon visit to China allowed pro-rapprochement sentiment to emerge and circulate in American public discourse, contributing to ongoing discussions and debates on diplomatic normalization for years following the summit. The 1985-87 US-Soviet summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were crucial for transforming bilateral distrust into trust.
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- Confident in China’s power, Xi is ready to host an unpredictable Trump The Washington Post
- As Trump Heads to Beijing, China Is ‘Locked and Loaded’ for a Fight The New York Times
- US standoff with Iran deepens and strait remains closed after Trump rejects latest proposal AP News
- Trump and China’s Xi set for talks spanning Iran, nuclear, trade and AI Reuters
- Iran, China and AI collide in Trump’s legacy-defining week Axios
The former Mayor of Arcadia, California has pled guilty to being a Chinese Communist Spy, Eileen Wang pled guilty to charges she cooperated with the Chinese Communist Party through a website called “US News Center.”
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CHONGQING, China — Three years ago, in the idyllic town of Woodside south of San Francisco, the United States and China held their first high-level talks on the dangers posed by artificial intelligence. President Xi Jinping and his longtime foreign minister appeared serious in their conviction that a channel should be a established between Beijing and Washington — a red phone for AI in case of emergencies.
They authorized a diplomatic effort that would begin in 2024 in Switzerland, only months before the U.S. presidential election. A large U.S. delegation arrived with high hopes that were abruptly dashed, according to four sources who attended the talks. The Chinese contingent dismissed American concerns over runaway AI as academic, almost theoretical, quickly turning the conversation to export controls seen in Beijing as yet another U.S. effort to hold China back.
“They naturally view any American diplomatic initiative involving limitations or restrictions of one flavor or another on a capability as being a trap,” Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security advisor under President Biden, said in an interview.
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A military court on Thursday sentenced Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu to death with a two-year reprieve. This means their death sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment after two years, without the possibility of sentence reduction or parole, Xinhua reports.
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The U.S. is allegedly paying a CCP-connected firm to help identify potential stealth risks from embedding Chinese technology into the U.S. military. This claim is coming from the Washington Times; they cite anonymous military tech analysts within the industry.
A former CCP agent told CBN News he was part of an operation to identify and silence former Chinese citizens in America who spoke out against the party. He told CBN they use threats, entrapment, and even kidnapping.
He claimed, “The United Front is something that’s being defined by the Chinese Communist Party as one of its ‘secret’ or ‘magic’ weapons. And essentially its task is two things: On the one hand, expand the circle of friends of the Chinese Communist Party. So, co-opting or influencing, politicians, media, academia, and entrepreneurs. But on the other hand, its task is also to crack down on critics, to silence them, to divide them.”
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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have both expressed a need for China to leverage its tight relations with Tehran to reopen the strategic Strait of Hormuz for “their own interests”.
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EXCERPT:
The war with Iran has once again raised questions about Washington’s ability to prioritize its interests in East Asia and particularly to manage intensifying competition with Beijing. Furthermore, the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have presented American and Chinese leaders with new challenges and potential opportunities, as they respond to the war’s global impacts. We asked five experts to address how the war is shaping competition between Washington and Beijing.