Summary: Xi Jinping and Donald Trump likely find it to be in their interest to hold a summit at the G20 meeting in Buenos Aires. The meeting will unlikely lead to a concrete deal to resolve the Sino-U.S. trade conflict. Xi will not be able to meet the Trump administration’s asks due to political and …
Read moreGeopolitics Watch: Trump-Xi Meeting at G20 Won’t Curb US Pressure
Summary We wrote in August that the CCP could be gambling that the U.S. midterm election results allow it to “avoid a consequential clash with America.” The CCP’s gamble may not work out. The midterm results should have little effect on influencing the Sino-U.S. trade war. Legislative gridlock may instead cause President Trump to focus …
Read moreGeopolitics Watch: Did the CCP’s ‘Gamble’ on the US Midterm Election Pay Off?
Summary Xi Jinping and Wang Qishan gave speeches recently in Shanghai and Singapore respectively. From their speeches, we believe that the CCP may still be having wishful thinking about its domestic situation, its influence capabilities, and geopolitical trends. The result of the 2018 U.S. midterm election will not change America’s policy shift on China. The …
Read moreGeopolitics Watch: What Xi and Wang’s Speeches Mean for the Trade War
President Donald Trump is doing a huge favor for Chinese leader Xi Jinping — and he should keep doing it. His administration’s increasingly hard-nosed policies can steer China away from a course that is leading inevitably to outright conflict with the West. Avoiding a U.S.-China war would be a genuine win-win outcome, not another of the rhetorical charades that, up …
The Chinese Communist Party traditionally holds the plenary session (an important all-hands meeting of the Central Committee) after the annual Two Sessions political conclave around the September to November period. Usually, the plenums are announced weeks or even months ahead of their convening. Oddly, the CCP has not yet announced anything on the Fourth Plenum …
By Don Tse and Larry Ong Summary Chinese Communist Party has long carried out influence operations to survive and dominate. Decades of CCP influence activity has created a “Red Matrix,” or an informational environment that is pro-China and missing critical knowledge about the Party and its operations. The Soviet Iron Curtain served to “block out” …
By Joseph Bosco President Donald Trump has not hesitated to tear up international commitments made by his predecessors if he determines they are not in America’s national interest. That was the fate of the Paris Climate Accord, the Global Migration Accord, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the U.S.-Korea trade agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan …
Read moreScrap the Third Communique With China, Keep the Six Assurances to Taiwan
Heading into the final quarter of 2018, it has become clearer that “strategic competition” between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has moved up several notches. On the U.S. side, President Donald Trump called out the PRC’s attempt to interfere in the November midterm election, while Vice President Mike Pence laid …
Read moreGeopolitics Watch: On Correctly Predicting Trends in China-US Relations
By Joseph Bosco Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nicaragua, Palau, Paraguay, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, Eswatini, Tuvalu. Those are the names of 16 governments that rarely make the international news unless they suffer some natural disaster — or, in the case …
From President Donald Trump’s remarks on China at the United Nations General Assembly to United States sanctions against a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) department and its head, recent signs indicate that the Trump administration is getting tough on the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and is planning to get tougher. We earlier analyzed that the …
Read moreGeopolitics Watch: America Presses on the CCP’s Vital Points