Welcome back to What’s Happening in China, your weekly China brief.
It was a busy week of diplomacy for Xi Jinping, who attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and then traveled to Cairo on a three-day visit, his first to Egypt in ten years, marking the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
In Bishkek, Xi said that “the trend toward a multipolar world is irreversible,” and, in the presence of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, among other leaders, he said that “sovereign equality and mutual respect are fundamental principles.” In a speech that reads like a veiled criticism of Washington’s policies, Xi added that “protectionism, decoupling and supply-chain disruption will lead nowhere.”
Then, in Cairo, Xi Jinping celebrated diplomatic ties between the PRC and Egypt, the first Arab and African country to recognize and establish formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic, saying that “the older-generation leaders of the two countries led their peoples in striving side by side for national independence and against imperialism and colonialism.”
While the United States remains involved in a complex war against Iran, Xi said that the “people in the Middle East should remain masters of their own affairs, and external interference should be rejected,” and that “China supports regional countries in strengthening dialogue on peace and security, exploring the building of a new security architecture for the Middle East, and taking their future into their own hands.”
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At this week’s G20 meeting of finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina, China was the only member to dissent from a joint statement, objecting to four paragraphs on supply chains, including critical minerals, and global economic imbalances.
Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the U.S. in over a decade, where he will be welcomed with a state dinner, is less than three weeks away, and expectations for anything beyond relationship maintenance are low.
Let’s jump into it.
— PC
Through the Lens
In Focus
I. G19+1 summit
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that 19 of the members of the G20 had agreed to address streams of “cheap exports” that cause global economic imbalances, but said China had dissented.
Bessent made his comments at the end of a two-day meeting with finance ministers and central bankers where he tried to focus on growth, telling reporters he had urged some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration’s playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.
“We believe that non-market-based economies pushing out a never-ending stream of cheap exports is not sustainable,” Bessent told reporters, describing the sentiment that all but one G20 member had agreed to.
“It is clear that the country with the world’s largest and unsustainable current account surplus, the People’s Republic of China, was the dissenter,” Bessent said.
The Trump administration, echoing many economists, has blamed China for trade imbalances that have left it with a large trade surplus while the U.S. has a sizable deficit. At the closing press conference Tuesday, Bessent also previewed the coming meeting between President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping.
Read: Bessent says China dissented from G20 agreement on ‘cheap exports’ (AP)
Related:
China hits back at G20 pressure over exports and trade imbalances (CNBC)
PBOC Chief Blames Protectionism for Global Imbalances at G20 (Caixin)
China’s Great Power Vision Comes into Focus (China Leadership Monitor)
Trump-Xi Washington summit: Why some expectations are low (CNBC)
II. EU wants to convince China
The European Commission is exploring ways to persuade Beijing to rein in its exports to the bloc as Brussels seeks to reduce an eye-popping trade deficit with China, its trade chief said Monday.
“Mechanically, if you look at our deficit issue, what’s needed is the increase of European products to China … We also need to look at how to manage better the Chinese exports to the European Union,” Maroš Šefčovič said in an interview.
“It’s very clear that the most efficient and the best way for the future relationship would be if this problem is being tackled from both sides,” he added.
The Commission is under pressure from national leaders to show concrete results from its engagement with Beijing by mid-October. Two months ago, member countries urged Brussels to come up with new tools to reduce the EU’s €1 billion-a-day trade deficit with China. The matter is only growing more urgent, with EU chemical and car manufacturers closing plants and cutting jobs as they struggle to compete with cheaper Chinese imports.
The trade commissioner said he will speak with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Wentao, by videoconference “in the middle of September” before visiting Beijing “at the beginning of October.” A team of EU negotiators is also in China this week, Šefčovič said, where talks are “very open, very tough,” with “all topics … on the table.”
Read: EU wants to convince China to curb exports to the bloc (Politico)
Related: Watching China in Europe - September 2026 (Noah Barkin)
III. RIP He Yong 何勇
“Is there any hope?” That primal scream, repeated over pounding drums in the title track of his only album, became He Yong’s most enduring contribution to Chinese music. He died in Beijing on September 1, 2026, at age 57; no cause of death has been announced.
Born on February 15, 1969, in Beijing, He Yong began studying music at age 6 under his father, He Yusheng, a professional sanxian player, and appeared as a child actor in the 1980 film Four Little Friends. He picked up the guitar at 15 and joined the band Mayday in 1987, performing at a widely publicized concert for student protesters during the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989. In the underground rock scene that followed, He crossed paths with fellow pioneers Cui Jian and Dou Wei, forming connections that would shape Chinese rock for years to come.
He Yong’s defining moment arrived in May 1994 with the release of his only album, Garbage Dump, produced under the record label Moyan Culture. Written at the height of the Tiananmen protests, the fatalistic title track became the album’s signature song, building through repeated guitar riffs and explosive drumming to its climactic, screamed refrain. Other tracks, including “Pretty Girl” and “Drum and Bell Tower,” tackled materialism, environmentalism, gender, and the erosion of Chinese heritage, cementing He Yong’s place alongside Dou Wei and Zhang Chu as one of the “Three Prominents of Moyan.” His song “Bell and Drum Towers,” a nostalgic ode to old Beijing, appeared on the soundtrack of Zhang Yuan’s 1993 film Beijing Bastards.
Read: He Yong, Pioneer of Chinese Rock and Voice of “Garbage Dump,” Dies at 57 (That Eric Alper)
