Look if Jamie Diamond wats to puff out his chest against "big government" by moving to Shanghai, I strongly encourage him to not look up what happened to Jack Ma recently and to get just as mad at the government there

Absolutely not surprising but a limited leak of a Chinese local surveillance platform drawing off an apparently large national one has a special drop down for tracking for tracking foreign journalists in China… including me. @netaskari.bsky.social found the data open.substack.com/pub/netaskar...

I wrote an article how China managed to slip a key phrase into a White House readout — and why that was a big win for China but may well decrease stability in US-China relations www.gmfus.org/news/beijing...

This is good, but it keeps saying “nativism” when it’s clearly talking about white nationalism/white supremacy. Why? Is nativism the euphemism du jour for white supremacy? (Genuine and innocent question)

Not a lot of positives for me to take away from the Trump-Xi Summit (beyond the fact that there weren't any big disasters as far as I can tell; only small and mid-sized ones), but now I have hopes that the China discussion on Bluesky will improve the more Trump cozies up to China.

Well, here's part 1 of what I'm watching during the Trump-Xi Summit.

"There is a path... to responsibility sharing in the interests of both sides... There is also a path to chaos and hostility, and a relationship that is damaged beyond repair. Europeans may hope for the former, but it is prudent to be prepared for the latter." www.nytimes.com/2026/05/07/o...

Great piece about a fascinating man www.ft.com/content/2574... Chinese dissident Li Ying: ‘Our work is about being ready for the tipping point’

As many are aware by now, @accessnow.org 's annual @rightscon.org was cancelled because of pressure on the host govt Zambia 🇿🇲 by China 🇨🇳 www.rightscon.org/rc26-stateme... In their statement, @accessnow.org rightly flags this is as an example of transnational repression

China would like to have a word with the ITU.

“A transactional relationship in which American security commitments are no longer a standing guarantee but a service conditional on compliance,” write GMF’s Jackson Janes and Markus Ziener in their op-ed for @justsecurity.org. 🔗 https://bit.ly/3QxLGlmhttps://bit.ly/3QxLGlm

China reported its largest ever trade surplus with the EU in Q1 2026 Since 2021, China’s exports to the bloc have grown at a compound annual rate of 6%; imports from EU contracted by 2.5% a year. As a result, EU alone now accounts for 31% of China’s total goods trade surplus

i realized a long time ago that setting this video to the nfl primetime music would be the best thing i ever do on the internet i'm okay with that

Over on X, the bot network owners are having trouble crafting distinct personas

Ein sehr gutes Interview mit einer weiteren von den USA sanktionierten Richterin des Internationalen Strafgerichtshofs, das deutlich macht, wie dringend und unabdingbar digitale Souveränität ist. ⬇️

yeah, so this is the thing about the iran war. regardless of whether there is shooting or not, the strait is closed, and that is the central problem for the global economy. iran realizes this and no amount of bluster will change it www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

BREAKING: Viktor Orbán quits Hungary's parliament after 36 years – confirming my earlier scoop that he's planning a longer US trip this summer, where heads of the Orbán business empire – his daughter and son-in-law – already live, and where he could possibly seek refuge from prosecution.

Lots of attention again on Chinese investment in the EU. I think most miss the most important observation. Chinese FDI in the EU is tiny, a fraction of what it was 10 years ago. But EU's trade deficit with China is ballooning, up another 30% this year. The implications should be obvious. 1/

🚨“‘Scaling the wall’ to browse these sites, one can easily be led astray by reactionary discourse, decadent thinking, and erroneous ideology, and become a conduit for false views, a porter for disinformation, or even a mouthpiece for hostile forces, acting in ways that jeopardize national security”🚨

This warning from the state-affiliated National Defense Times is very funny, though translating it felt like eating a bowl of flour in places. Was the image too much? The image might have been too much.

Texas tech now bans students from writing about LGBTQ issues in any form. Mentions of gender identity, orientation etc in textbooks must be skipped. Deafening silence so far from all the brave heterodox free speech absolutists www.erininthemorning.com/p/texas-tech...

Scoop: Rednote (aka 小红书/Xiaohongshu) is taking steps to separate its Chinese and international users. Users report being redirected to new intl web domain, whose separate privacy policy, updated in late March, says intl user data will be stored in Singapore. www.wired.com/story/rednot...

well, here's a modern story arstechnica.com/security/202...

This is as good as everyone's saying it is and is worth a read even if you're not a China person as an example of how authoritarian systems are obsessed with public opinion and attempt to track and shape it in the AI age

Anything Mareike writes with reading. This, on an area my team is also watching, is very good.

New from me: a Chinese student at University of Sydney went missing and allegedly has been sentenced to six years in China, for participating in protests in Australia, including solidarity protests for China’s ethnic minority groups: www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Glad to see the BBC is covering this

Yes! Went yesterday and Twitter (as curated for me) is 90% “I visited China and it’s amazing” posts.

I wrote about China’s expanding social media monitoring and manipulation industry: the firms building and deploying bot networks for party-state actors and expanding into Western platforms. You can read the piece here: www.gmfus.org/news/outsour... A few points about the industry🧵

New: Beijing has issued a direct threat to retaliate against EU companies, should the EU move forward with its proposed cybersecurity act, which would hit Chinese firms

Hey if anyone was looking for a way to communicate to the median voter why they should care about keeping Taiwan free and the SCS open for navigation, the Hormuz Strait is providing an excellent example for what happens when you lose the open seas

Worth these cases from overseas are almost certainly not outliers, it's just info from within China is better controlled

Germany's far-right AfD leader calls for withdrawal of all US troops (h/t @abenewman.bsky.social ). Several factors at work: 🧵

I'm fairly left leaning, but I need somebody with more solid leftist credentials to explain to @progintl.bsky.social that the "whole-process people's democracy" propaganda line in this piece is, politely speaking, complete bs. Publishing this is not progressive, it just shows you have no clue.

Man a lot of people are unable to conceive what the end of Pax Americana actually entails.

GMF’s Zsuzsanna Végh joined FT's Gideon Rachman on The Rachman Review to discuss Hungary’s pivotal parliamentary elections this April. Listen to the full podcast: https://bit.ly/47mlpfp

Jeez - these numbers for Europe are absolutely bonkers China's trade data for the first 2 months of the year. Exports to the EU up 27.8% Exports to Germany up 31.3% Exports to Netherlands up 17.9% Exports to France up 31.9% Exports to Italy up 36.4%

I read this book a few years ago and highly recommend it!

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

I wrote a thing on Merz's China visit www.gmfus.org/news/still-m...

Please understand that China is an actual place with its own structures and problems and not some pendulum that swings only in reaction to US actions.

Begging folks to recognize when they are being called the adversary

Die drittgrößte Volkswirtschaft der Welt macht sich klein: In Peking schrumpft der Kanzler den Krieg mitten in Europa zur »Ukraine-Frage«. Auch sonst wählte Friedrich Merz bei Xi Jinping zu weiche Worte. Kommentar @spiegel.de (10-mal frei) www.spiegel.de/ausland/mein...

While Merz talks about a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with China, the Greens in Berlin & Brussels are talking about the second China shock

Please read this article to the end. Even before ICE got involved, this started because this *blind man who speaks no English and uses a curtain rod as a walking stick* got lost on a walk and some Karen called the police on him and they tasered and beat him bc he didn’t drop the rod. WTF

I was honestly prepared to write a cautiously positive/optimistic piece on Friedrich Merz’s China visit, but now I have a draft with a tongue-in-cheek working title “2015 called, it wants its China policy back.” Which is probably a tad unfair, but the Groundhog Day feeling is real.

“2026 is the year of the horse” The horse:

MAGA is launching a transnational far-right project “Alliance of Sovereign Nations”. Hosted by US Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, the launch will feature US Speaker Mike Johnson, Markus Frohnmaier (AfD 🇩🇪 ), & António Tânger Corrêa (Chega 🇵🇹 ). Read more on Frohnmaier here: