In Manila, the Quad must work for ASEAN, not around it | Premesha Saha ift.tt/QBIeMGO

The state of Australian studies in the PRC is assessed by @j_laurenceson and East China Normal University Research Fellow Xi Chen in @aus_journal. 🔗: uts.edu.au/news/2026/11/a…

The paper is dedicated to the memory of Professor Colin Mackerras.

⚡️JUST IN: Oil exports from the Mideast Gulf and Gulf of Oman have remained volatile but relatively resilient despite the ongoing daily attacks on shipping and U.S. blockade of Iran, according to the latest Kpler shipping data.

The seven-day average has generally fluctuated on barrels per day since mid-September.

The latest figures suggest a sharp decline, but Kpler cautions that the most recent 14 days are preliminary and typically revised upward as shipments are confirmed.

🔸Figures exclude Iranian exports as well as exports through bypass routes, including Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port.

⭕️ Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC): “What [the @BoardOfPeace] omit is that Israel even has blocked NRC, as the humanitarian shelter coordinator, access to Gaza and removed our longstanding registration in Israel. History will judge this severely.”

Hard to dispute claims that Luxon lied about electoral changes. It’s possible it’s had the reverse outcome and counting would take longer. You’d think changes like that should be the sole domain of the Commission?
thepost.co.nz/politics/36111…

Very thought-provoking argument by Louis-Vincent Gave @gave_vincent, co-founder and CEO of Gavekal (one of the most respected macro research firms on China).

His argument - which is correct - is that one of the The biggest problem for Western governments today (be it France, the dly rising cost of funding their debt.

He says that governments have 3 broad ways to get it under control:

1) Austerity, cutting spending massively, which basically no politician wants to do because it makes you massively unpopular

2) Specific to the US, they could dramatically reduce AI data center spending, which soaks up a huge share of the world’s capital and pushes up borrowing costs for everyone, governments included. Not good either since it kills the AI boom.

3) Or, they can go back to embracing China, which he calls "the one deflationary force in the world today." He says it's by far the easiest path, and policymakers always take the easiest path.

Louis-Vincent argues that's exactly what Mark Carney (“the least dumb of the western leaders today,” in Gave’s words) did when he opened Canada to Chinese cars: it's a cheap and easy way to fight inflation, and to reduce the cost of funding Canada’s debt in the process.

It's fairly ironic when you think about it: you can actually find plenty of quotes by Western officials castigating China for "exporting deflation" (like Klaas Knot from the European Central Bank here: en.protothema.gr/2024/12/30/ecb…). Louis-Vincent’s argument is basically that, sooner or later, folks in Western finance ministries are going to look at bond yields, then at the inflation numbers, then at all those speeches about China exporting deflation, and go like: "wait a minute..." 😏

Full video of Louis-Vincent’s interview here: youtube.com/watch?v=kT_cV_…

Thoughtful piece. Chen: The recent New York Times report appears to have originated from sources with a clear interest in bringing the story into the public domain, what journalists often describe as an “intentional leak.”
georgechen.substack.com/p/before-we-ru…

Any news organisation that asks ASPI for comment on such a matter is dodgy.

Yes. Getting China badly wrong has a long history among western politicians. Prejudice and political opportunism run deep.

Nero was guilt wracked compared to this guy.

The US defence secretary was battling to save his job as the House of Representatives prepared to vote on his potential impeachment as early as this week regarding his handling of the Iran war. ft.trib.al/E21mVZB

Do you have any reservations about accepting anonymous, evidence-free US intel leaks at face value and repeating them as if they were established fact?

Notes On: Whitehall’s China Expert Problem

1. @LOS_Fisher and @pmdfoster report that the “British state is facing a chronic shortage of China expertise following an exodus of senior diplomats with first-hand experience of working in Beijing.” The article cites Dan Chugg and Kate eing key civil services players who have since departed. It’s a good piece and speaks to a real issue.

2. I wanted to add some extra views. I worked on China stuff in/around Parliament for a few years, ran a company analysing the UK-China bilat, and know a good number of the folk involved/people who would find this article interesting. Plus the article also cites the US ‘China House’ model, and my friends and me were the first people to suggest to Parliament that they should pressure the Government to do a British version of ‘China House’ in November 2022 [committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidenc…], which others have echoed a few years later.

3. The issue of building China Capabilities has been a problem for decades, but becomes a critical problem from the beginning of the Golden Era onwards really. That’s because ‘China’ is a super complex entity that we trade with and have security concerns over, with a governance structure totally alien to most British people, and a language very few speak, among many other complexities.

4. So let’s say you’re a mandarin-speaking uni grad. The civil service may offer you a gig (if you’re lucky) but you’re not going to get in to a China role on your strength alone. You have various Whitehall-brained hoops to jump through. Your starting salary will be very bad, and your chance to go visit China in a non-govt role at a junior to mid level v slim indeed, esp if you work on interesting stuff. HSBC, StanChan - other companies exist, and can offer more interesting work too.

5. Anyway, despite efforts to ‘upskill’ civil servants - that’s the alluded to £5m figure at the end of the piece - the Government hasn’t managed to find a way to hire people who have actually been to China in a coherent way. That is a blocker. Journos should ask for granular detail of how those Mandarin lessons look.

6. Then let’s imagine you’re senior in Whitehall, working on a brief that involves China. Depending what department you work in, your driving ambition is often at total odds with your peer in a different department. Trade or security? Climate or AI? These worlds do not overlap in Whitehall coherently. This comes at a time where China expertise needs to run alongside increased situational awareness of many other pressing issues.

7. Finally, in general, you can expect whatever you do as a senior mandarin working on China to be criticised by the press and by various groups in Westminster. Politicians will leak stuff about you, blame you for their inability to articulate a trade off, blame you for a lack of strategy. It is, often, a thankless job. It pays well at the top, but paths to the top aren’t good. Many of your peers just leave.

8. In my closing Beijing to Britain (2024) note I set out some ideas for a more coherent approach to China for the incoming Labour Government. I argued “something is going wrong. The relationship between Government, Parliament and Whitehall is not working, and the reality that foreign, domestic and industrial policy are interlinked has not sunk in. This is not just in relation to our bilateral relationship with China, but speaks to a wider inability to see the world for what it is, rather than what we want it to be. Things can, and must, change. This is not a time to smuggle indecision dressed up as caution, or to hope things just work out. It is time to reform the systems which underpin how we understand the world.”It covered languages, the need for AI Dialogue, security, and called for a China Audit. It’s here: beijingtobritain.substack.com/p/towards-a-co…

Extraordinary chat with Vanessa Weenink, who lost in BP, on the way in. Says many of her constituents "hate" the National Party and that it risks being dragged to ther right with the loss of so many "woke liberal squishy centrists" like her.

Who pays for the long-term economic and industrial consequences of Washington's China strategy?

And who holds policymakers accountable when measures intended to constrain China end up weakening American competitiveness?

In my latest Substack essay, I examine the controversy Jensen Huang, which raises questions that go well beyond one executive, one company, or even semiconductor export controls.

For years, Washington's bipartisan national security consensus on China has increasingly marginalized competing perspectives from corporate America. Businesses have been left to manage the consequences of policies they have had diminishing influence in shaping.
Huang's willingness to challenge that consensus represents something important: the potential return of corporate America as an independent counterweight in American policymaking.

Drawing on examples from semiconductors, biotechnology, and telecommunications, I explore a fundamental distinction:

America's strategic position depends not simply on what China is prevented from acquiring, but on what America becomes capable of doing.

National security concerns are legitimate, and some restrictions are necessary. But exclusion should be an instrument of strategy, not a substitute for strategy itself.

The larger issue is one of accountability and checks and balances. Neither Washington's national security establishment nor corporate America should have the final word without meaningful challenge from the other.

And that is why Huang's intervention matters, regardless of the outcome of the current controversy. He has helped reopen an essential debate over how best to advance America's long-term competitiveness.

My latest Substack essay:
Who Pays for Washington's China Strategy?

mitchpresnick.substack.com/p/who-pays-for…

#USChinaRelations #AmericanCompetitiveness #ChinaStrategy

a tell for me. everybody knew the hammer was ready. only question: if and when it would drop. Rubio waited until the midterms crippled Trump and he didn't have to sweat his opposition. That's the boring story I don't see anybody covering.

Many people who should know better are treating the Jensen Huang / China spy allegation as an established fact, rather with the skepticism due to a concerted campaign of anonymous intel leaks, with no evidence provided and obvious ulterior motives to discredit Huang/Nvidia/Trump.

China hawks don't like that Nvidia sold advanced chips to Southeast Asia, even though doing so was legal. Fair enough, let's have the policy argument. But the campaign of anonymous, evidence-free intel leaks about spying seems obviously designed to wage this fight by other means.

The problem is compounded by the appearance of a new generation of made to order careerist China “experts”. These ambitious and cunning folk entirely understand their government’s need to appear to factor in China expertise but not be influenced by it. They proceed to equip themselves with a bare minimum of China “experience” and “expertise” to be able to pass themselves off as knowledgeable about China (a Taiwan sojourn being a top choice). They make themselves available to fill ever more senior roles involving some kind of decision making about China (but not only about dull China, preferably) and are rewarded by rapid promotion for their genuine lack of interest in China and total willingness to tell their bosses what they want to hear.

No surprise that western governments are running short of China experts. People with genuine China expertise in western governments find themselves often regarded as too understanding of Chinese positions. Their expertise is exploited when expedient and more often disregarded as politically inconvenient. They usually will have a boss who is hostile to China, not by accident. Their promotion prospects will tend to depend on confidence that although expert, they are not interested in China and, preferably, hostile to China. Seeing all this happening, younger staff steer clear of making too much investment in acquiring Chinese experience and skills. Anyone with actual recent experience of living in China is likely to be excluded from ability to get a security clearance and so unemployable in government. The result is western governments flying ever blinder and more prejudiced on China.

The problem is compounded by the appearance of a new generation of made to order careerist China “experts”. These ambitious and cunning folk entirely understand their government’s need to appear to factor in China expertise but not be influenced by it. They proceed to equip themselves with a bare minimum of China “experience” and “expertise” to be able to pass themselves off as knowledgeable about China (a Taiwan sojourn being a top choice). They make themselves available to fill ever more senior roles involving some kind of decision making about China (but not only about dull China, preferably) and are rewarded by rapid promotion for their genuine lack of interest in China and total willingness to tell their bosses what they want to hear.