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Source: Getty
In any crisis, even in the midst of a pandemic, there is a moment where everybody might benefit from taking a deep breath and thinking clearly about the way forward.
Source: Hill
China’s foreign ministry — not unlike the U.S. State Department’s own checkered reputation in the United States — has a reputation among some in China for too often apologizing to foreign government positions and, in these fraught times, for committing the crime of excessive reasonableness. The foreign ministry’s strategy for mitigating such accusations, not surprisingly, is to employ a spokesperson who can protect the ministry from such critics, and demonstrate that the foreign ministry is not full of apologists as it is often accused, but rather is one that can fight back, and fight back hard. Enter foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian.
On March 11, a lightyear ago in coronavirus time, Zhao Lijian tweeted that “it might be the US army” that brought the disease to China, an accusation that had been making its way across China’s very active blogosphere where just about anything goes, provided it doesn’t include criticism of the Beijing government.
Former Nonresident Senior Fellow, Asia Program
Ambassador Christopher Robert Hill is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia SIPA. He is a former career diplomat, a four-time ambassador, nominated by three presidents, whose last post was as ambassador to Iraq.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
The Plaza Accord was not an externally imposed punishment of Japan but part of a broader restructuring that Japanese economists and policymakers themselves recognized was necessary. Its effects were undermined, however, when Tokyo responded to the resulting slowdown with policies that exacerbated investment, credit expansion, and the very imbalances the adjustment was intended to resolve.
Michael Pettis
The nuclear relationship between China and the United States is increasingly shaped by widening perception gaps rather than deliberate strategic design.
Tong Zhao
China’s banking crisis in the 2000s was resolved by transferring the costs to households through financial repression—a decision that recapitalized the banks while exacerbating the structural imbalances that continue to shape the Chinese economy today.
Michael Pettis
Chinese biotech companies have been on the receiving end of U.S. economic coercion. Yet their responses have differed significantly because firm and state interests are not uniformly aligned. For Washington, treating all Chinese tech firms the same, irrespective of their actual interests, risks pushing them farther into Beijing’s corner.
Xue Gong
China’s latest energy plan explicitly calls for integrating data centers into the electricity system, particularly connecting them to green energy. It appears Beijing wants to use compute as a source of domestic demand to absorb renewables excess capacity.
Damien Ma