Xi Jinping congratulates Trump as China braces for his return

Meanwhile, China unveils a 10 trillion yuan ($1.4 trillion) debt-relief package, but no direct stimulus.

Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly update on the latest news and developments from the country.

Trump has won the U.S. presidential election. Xi Jinping congratulated the president-elect, hoping the two countries “find the right way for China and the United States to get along with each other in the new era.” For China, this presents both opportunities and challenges.

Should the president-elect withdraw the U.S. from international agreements and organizations, Beijing could step in to project itself as a stabilizing global player. In his first presidency, the U.S. withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA), and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) while imposing tariffs on allies such as the European Union and Canada. These actions strained relations with traditional allies in Europe, the Middle East, and Asian partners, creating uncertainty in international trade and diplomatic efforts. Trump’s ‘America First’ approach, emphasizing unilateralism, undermined multilateral cooperation and reshaped global dynamics, leaving room for China to assert itself on climate change, trade through regional agreements (BRI, RCEP), and public health initiatives, particularly during the pandemic.

On the other hand, protectionist trade measures, such as a proposed 60% tariff hike on Chinese imports, may strain China’s struggling economy as Beijing grapples with slowing economic growth, weak domestic demand, crippling local government debt, a property crisis, and trade tensions, even as exports soar.

U.S.-Taiwan relations under Trump bring additional uncertainty. An assertive stance on Taiwan could shake U.S.-China relations further, as Beijing sees increased American support for Taiwan as challenging its sovereignty claims. Any moves toward closer U.S.-Taiwan ties, such as arms sales or official visits, risk provoking China and potentially escalating tensions across the Taiwan Strait. At the same time, during his campaign, Trump suggested that Taiwan should increase payments for U.S. defense support, which could unsettle the long-standing security arrangement, forcing Taiwan to reassess its reliance on U.S. protection and emboldening China's reunification aspirations.

Amid two major wars—one in Europe and one in the Middle East—trade, tech, Taiwan, and the South China Sea are among the thorniest issues in arguably the world’s most consequential bilateral relationship. While responsibly navigating these tensions is crucial to shaping the future of global stability, a Trump presidency will only make it more unpredictable. The world now braces for a turbulent four years.

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— PC

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Through the Lens

Beijing hutong at night, with a thin layer of snow covering the pavement.

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In Focus

Seek, and ye shall find

Rising geopolitical tensions heighten the stakes of misunderstanding China and the rewards for those willing to profess certainties about its circumstances and their implications. Today, a murkily defined China makes for a convenient bogeyman, a justification for protectionist policies and military buildups.

The dangers and costs of trying to understand China on the ground have grown. International researchers are mindful of the chilling case of the “two Michaels”—Canadian citizens Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor—who were arbitrarily detained (although eventually charged with alleged espionage) for nearly three years. Following crackdowns on speech both on and offline, speaking freely—especially to foreigners—has become far more risky for Chinese people. Travel restrictions, COVID-19 quarantines, and reduced international flights have made physical access to the country dear, and some regions, such as Tibet and Xinjiang, are particularly inaccessible.

Even if you make it to China, the quality of what data you can find is declining as the information environment tightens and interlocutors stay tight-lipped. Anecdotally, members of the press report that foreign journalists are a far rarer sight in China today than a decade ago. The China office of the New York Times is based in Seoul rather than Beijing or even Hong Kong, where political freedom has been crushed under draconian new laws passed in 2020.

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Earlier in September, I attended the American Political Science Association’s annual meeting, which for the past seven years has also served as the location of a miniconference on Chinese politics. Research papers presented there used the resources that I’ve noted above—and more—to make inferences about political, economic, and social trends in China.

Procurement documents and contracts, corporate registrations and annual reports, social media posts, and street view data were all scraped, screened, cleaned, and merged with other information to help tease out shifting patterns of attitudes, behavior, and structures in China.

Petitions from citizens posted on local leaders’ message boards numbering in the millions can serve as a cornucopia of citizen’s complaints with their interactions with the cities and towns in which they reside. Celebrity profiles and job ads both—in very different ways—give insights into what Chinese citizens are looking for online, which sectors of the economy are thriving, what conversations are most energetically being discussed, and what questions of mundane or national politics are being asked.

I suppose that some may find these kinds of analyses frustrating. If one views Chinese politics solely as the wants and desires of one man, then what benefit can come from finding out what average Chinese citizens in Zouping or Ordos or Shenzhen are complaining about online? Clearly, Xi’s preferences matter deeply for the trajectory of Chinese politics on a host of dimensions, but one man does not govern China. Xi cannot stop scammers from ripping off the elderly in Shanghai, keep delivery companies from underpaying their drivers in Chongqing, or even make sure that military recruits hit their targets in practice during basic training.

There are all manner of complicated institutions and complex practices that make up Chinese politics. There are people who spend every minute of their working life tracking Xi’s every movement for evidence of changes in his health or how those closest to him view the dear leader, but there is a wealth of information to help demystify China—and it’s available to all. We should and do study what we can.

Read: Finding China's Data Under Xi Is Harder, Not Impossible (Foreign Policy)

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Politics & Society

Xi Jinping visits PLA paratroopers whose mission is to ‘liberate Taiwan’ (SCMP)

President Xi Jinping has called for paratroopers to boost combat readiness during a visit to an airborne force unit that would play a key role in a war over Taiwan.

Xi was shown weapons and equipment at the PLA Air Force Airborne Corps headquarters in Xiaogan, Hubei province during Monday’s visit, official media reported on Tuesday.

State broadcaster CCTV showed Xi inspecting reconnaissance drones that are indistinguishable from birds at a distance. Xi was also shown viewing next-generation airborne armoured infantry fighting vehicles equipped with a powerful system developed in China to deflect or defeat incoming threats.

He acknowledged the unit’s progress and achievements in recent years and called for “all-out efforts” to intensify troop training and improve combat preparedness and operations to build a strong, modernised airborne force.

Xi, who also heads China’s top military command body, the Central Military Commission, said the airborne force had “special and important roles in the PLA’s structure and battle system”.

China Bans Internet Celebrity Known for Criticizing US: SCMP (Bloomberg)

Chinese authorities banned a popular blogger known for his strong anti-Western comments, according to the South China Morning Post.

Sima Nan, who has more than 3 million followers on China’s social media site Weibo, has been banned across different platforms for a year, according to the paper, which cited two unidentified sources. Sima last posted on Nov. 5 to voice support for Donald Trump during the US election, saying his victory will be more beneficial for China.

According to the paper, Sima Nan is seen by many as “a symbolic voice on the nationalistic left.” He frequently accused groups or individuals of betraying China’s interests and colluding with the US. In 2021, he accused Lenovo Group Ltd. of selling state assets for less than they were worth and paying top executives unreasonably high salaries.

Chinese rights lawyer Wang Yu hospitalized after hunger strike (RFA)

Chinese rights lawyer Wang Yu has been hospitalized after her health deteriorated following a nine-day hunger strike, which she began in protest during her detention following an Oct. 23 altercation with police outside a court building in the northern province of Hebei.

Wang was released from Weicheng County Detention Center on Nov. 1 after a brief administrative detention for “disrupting public order” following the fracas, and was taken straight to hospital by her husband and fellow rights attorney Bao Longjun, Bao told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.

China on track to record its lowest number of new marriages, official data shows (CNN)

The number of new marriages recorded in China is on course to fall this year to the lowest level since records began, official data shows, as the country’s demographic crisis deepens despite a sweeping government campaign to boost matrimony and encourage births.

Plummeting marriages – and births – pose a major challenge to Beijing, which is increasingly worried about the impact of a shrinking workforce and aging population on the country’s slowing economy.

Some 4.74 million Chinese couples registered their marriages in the first three quarters of 2024, a decrease of 16.6% from the 5.69 million recorded in the same period last year, according to data released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs on Friday [Nov 1].

China’s Once-Unwanted Daughters Have Grown Up—and Now They Shun Motherhood (WSJ)

Having scrapped the one-child policy, the Communist Party is now championing the term “family values” and pressuring women to have more children as it grows increasingly anxious over China’s shrinking population. Those pressures are colliding with the lingering—and never addressed—emotional toll of decades of draconian enforcement of birth restrictions.

Dai and countless other women not only witnessed their parents’ pain over children abandoned or never born but were themselves made to feel that they were mere obstacles in the family’s quest for a son. Some of these women now say the sense of feeling unloved and uncared for shattered their very concept of family, part of a backlash by women who resist getting married or having any children at all.

“The one-child policy created generational trauma,” said Mei Fong, author of “One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment,” a book on the policy. “And that has left such a deep scar that women today are reluctant to build happy families. Why would they? They had very unhappy families.”

Most Chinese women still marry and have children. But the percentage of unmarried women ages 30 to 44 in China increased from less than 1% in 2000 to 5.6% in 2020. And a 2023 study of childlessness by five Chinese demographers estimated that around 5% of 49-year-old Chinese women had no children, a number that for decades stayed below 2%.

AstraZeneca’s top China executive detained by authorities (Financial Times)

AstraZeneca’s top executive in China, Leon Wang, has been detained by Chinese authorities over the past week, the drugmaker told the Financial Times.

The FTSE 100 company confirmed that the head of its China business was in detention, while two other current executives in the region and two former executives were under investigation.

The investigation relates to the alleged illegal importation and sale of cancer drug Imjudo, and Wang is among the individuals detained in connection with the probe, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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Imjudo has been approved in other parts of the world, but not in China. One person familiar with the matter said authorities were investigating the alleged illegal importation of the drug, including through neighbouring Hong Kong to mainland China.

The drug is regularly prescribed alongside AstraZeneca’s other cancer therapy Imfinzi as a combination therapy for patients with advanced liver cancer.

How many foreigners work in the Chinese capital? Fewer and fewer (SCMP)

With just a year to go until Beijing’s self-imposed deadline to become an international hub of innovation, just 22,000 foreigners are living and working long term in the Chinese capital.

The estimate, from a report compiled by the Beijing International Talent Exchange Association and released at a forum late last month, is well down on the 37,000 foreigners reportedly working in the city a decade ago.

The report did not give comparisons for previous years, but it said fewer foreigners had taken up long-term jobs in the city in recent years, to the point where they account for just 0.2 per cent of the capital’s workforce and 0.1 per cent of its population.

There has also been a shift in the origins of Beijing’s foreign community since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report said the percentage of Americans and Europeans had dropped from 16 per cent in 2019 to 12, while Africans now made up 31 per cent of the foreign work force, up from 26 per cent.

The proportion of Russians and residents from eastern Europe is also up, from 11 per cent in 2019 to 16 per cent.

China blocking UK plans in Beijing amid east London mega-embassy dispute (The Guardian)

China is blocking requests to rebuild the British embassy in Beijing while the fate of its controversial mega-embassy in east London is being decided, the Guardian can disclose.

Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, faces a politically fraught decision over whether to approve plans for a new Chinese embassy at Royal Mint Court.

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Half a dozen people who have visited or worked in the British embassy in Beijing in the past two years told the Guardian it was in a dire state and in need of major reconstruction. An official who visited the embassy for meetings in the past year said the issue would “come up at every single meeting”.

In a sign that the UK government is hopeful of finding a resolution to the matter, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) submitted a procurement notice in August setting out plans to demolish the embassy in Beijing and rebuild it. The work is estimated to cost about £100m and is subject to local planning permission.

Chinese state television lionises Xi Jinping’s father in 39-part serialised drama (The Guardian)

Xi Jinping’s father is the subject of a rousing new historical drama that premiered on Chinese state television on Tuesday.

Funded by the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist party (CCP), Time in the Northwest chronicles the life of Xi Zhongxun, the father of the Chinese president, who was himself a CCP elder and key figure in the party under Chairman Mao Zedong.

The show, which has received overwhelmingly positive reviews on China’s closely censored social media platforms, is the latest in a string of mass market productions which focus on glorifying the CCP’s military history. But unlike other popular television shows and films, Time in the Northwest also glorifies Xi Jinping’s personal family history.