U.S., China Continue Trade, TikTok Negotiations

Welcome to Foreign policyChina’s summary.

Points this week: The United States and China enter another round of Commercial negotiationsBeijing Mulls Save the local governmentThe materials leak from The Great Protection Wall It displays Chinese monitoring and exporting control.

Welcome to Foreign policyChina’s summary.

Points this week: The United States and China enter another round of Commercial negotiationsBeijing Mulls Save the local governmentThe materials leak from The Great Protection Wall It displays Chinese monitoring and exporting control.

Another round of trade talks between the United States and China

The United States and China started a new round of commercial talks in Spain on Sunday.

Their first achievement was a “framework” deal on the fate of Tiktok, which was banned by the United States last year unless the Chinese owner is selling App to an American company. The deal is still far from certainty, however. US President Donald Trump has been delayed in carrying out the ban several times, only this week extends to stopping until December 16, and he will definitely do so again if necessary.

Trump seems to be not interested in banning Tiktok but in converting it into a more friendly platform for its management. Tiktok’s favorite buyer in the White House is likely to be Oracle, who is the owner of the billionaire, Larry Ellson, closely. Ellison’s son, David, is now the CEO of Paramount, turning CBS News to the right and trying to get CNN as well.

In the event of selling Bytedance Tiktok, China will lose a great source of soft energy in the United States, but Beijing may see that it is useful to do Trump like this great charity. If the reports that the application will use a minute bydance algorithm, China will get the best in the two worlds: effectively compliance with the law while maintaining control of the content consumed by American users.

But it is not sure how much TIKTOK user base will choose to stay in the event of sale. The application is almost equal to the right and right -wing political content and has a variety of American users. The initial ban news sparked a violent reaction and sparked a brief enthusiasm for Chinese applications such as Rednote. If the new ownership tries to redirect the application content to the right, this may face new problems.

Meanwhile, the prospects for a larger business deal remain. Despite the optimistic data on both sides, the customs tariffs are in record levels, and the United States continues to act vigorously. On Friday, Trump called for NATO allies to punish China and include two Chinese companies supporting chips making efforts, prompting Beijing to launch a fight against dumping in the American semiconductor sector.

One of the paradoxes of playing with these conversations is that both sides negotiate with the position of economic weakness. The United States sees the numbers of dwindling jobs and high inflation. Farmers are in a crisis of the loss of Chinese markets, as agricultural exports such as soybeans were one of the few elements on the American side of the public budget.

Meanwhile, the Chinese economy was seriously slowing amid a real estate collapse. While the country’s exports to the rest of the world have compensated for the large losses in the United States, the prices are sharply decreased for producers, and the main manufacturing areas are struggling.

If I have to bet on those who go forward from commercial negotiations, I will run my flakes alongside China from the table. The Chinese team is more experienced, more stable, and less owned by I am one man, and commercial conversations often return to days of penetrating the details. Collective federal shootings have cost the Trump administration a lot of experience you need to deal with.

All this assumes that an agreement will be reached in the end and the definitions will be contacted. If Beijing and Washington are not able to conclude a deal and Pont speaks forward for another three months, both wings of the global economy appear more fragile than ever.

What we are following

Save the local government? China is seriously considering saving local debt governments, according to another Bloomberg a report. Chinese local governments had a large debt burden even before Covid-19s, but two years of lock revealed many problems.

This position, which is doubled by the real estate crisis, left the local governments that cut public services and fight to pay the basic salary payments and pensions. The total of the first round of the proposed rescue financing will be at least at least a trillion yuan ($ 140 billion) and is directed towards paying private companies – in line with the increasing focus of Beijing on the private sector.

But even this is only a decrease in a bucket: the official estimate of debt through the local government financing vehicles alone puts a total of 44 trillion yuan (6.2 trillion dollars).

Disputed regional claims. Scarboro Shawwal, a region in the South China Sea that has long been waived between China and the Philippines, will become a Chinese natural reserve. Although it is correct that Shoal has an ecosystem for coral reefs and abundant hunting stocks – which makes it attractive to both countries – this is an aggressive step, seeking to increase China’s demand for the chain of islands and coral reefs. The Philippines and the United States refused to recognize this step.

China tends to prefer the regional conflict approach to the classes after demanding the disputed areas. This last claim is not important in itself, but it is part of a frequent batch in a very risky area. These clashes between Chinese and Philippine ships in the region – as recently on Tuesday – haven’t killed anyone yet lucky.

Read the most read this week

Technology and business

The great protection wall leakage. The largest leakage of the great protection wall materials, the China System for Control and Control on the Internet, was presented last week. (There is a good collapse of the technical aspect here; Chinafile also has a comprehensive explanation for online control in China for a public public.)

600 GB of files comes from the Chinese Geedge Networks company, which seems to play a major role in running the protection wall. The biggest revelation is that China has quietly exported monitoring and control tools to at least 40 countries, including Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Myanmar and Pakistan. Many of this digital trade appears to be linked to the digital silk road project.

In my experience, it is relatively easy to avoid internet ban efforts in other cases, and is usually limited to a limited number of sites. This is not the case inside China, where there is a continuous arms race between VPN service providers and large protection wall providers, and where the largest part of the non -Chinese internet is blocked.

This competition is visible in documents: Geedge employees discuss specific VPNS and develop new technologies to stop them.

Accounting standards. In a social publication on Monday, Trump called on US companies to use more financial reporting standards, saying: “China has a view from 50 to 100 years about the management of a company, while we manage our companies on a quarterly basis ???” This is not true, but it is however.

The orientalist claims that “China is thinking in centuries” dating back years and is often repeated by American business leaders. But the idea collapses on the slightest consideration of the Chinese government: its goals turn regularly with political winds, and its leaders often give the priority of short -term results and wasted projects.

It is more ridiculous than that of this is the irony of applying this idea to Chinese companies, which is mostly of contracts at most. Their strength is often their willingness to change quickly, investing in new areas, and crushing competitors. As for reporting requirements, in China on the mainland, it is a quarterly quarterly – just like the United States.

The fact that the ideas are not replaced by the main Chinese plans are still spreading between American politicians, critics, and business leaders are a sign of their lack of inconvenience to get to know the country over the past three decades of competition.