This episode of Sharp China is free for everyone.
Show Notes:
On today's show Andrew and Bill begin with a surprise, 24-hour trip to China for Elon Musk, and a Sunday meeting with Premier Li Qiang. Topics include: The Musk meeting as PRC response to mounting scrutiny in the US, the benefits to both sides of the Tesla-PRC relationship, and why this week's news may not answer Tesla's long term questions in the Chinese market. From there: Parsing the readout from the April Politburo meeting, including insights into how leadership sees the economy now, an announcement for the long-awaited Third Plenum, and policy changes that may or may not materialize in the months to come. At the end: Takeaways from Secretary of State Blinken's visit to Beijing last week, Xi Jinping prepares to travel to the EU amid a flurry of investigations into PRC entities and actors, and an emailer asks about the veracity of officially reported PRC economic data.
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Related Readings:
Elon Musk flies in to meet China’s premier as Tesla fights local rivals -- FT
Elon Musk Can’t Solve Tesla’s China Crisis With His Desperate Asia Visit -- WIRED
Politburo meeting and announcement of Third Plenum in July -- Sinocism
Macron plans to charm Xi in the Pyrénées -- Politico
EU President Xi Jinping Meets with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken -- MoFA
Blinken Meets With Xi as U.S. Pressures China to End Support for Russia -- WSJ
China Has Crossed Biden’s Red Line on Ukraine -- WSJ
Thread on EU-China by Finbarr Bermingham -- X
One thing we did not mention about Blinken's trip is he went to a record store and bought an album by famous old rocker Dou Wei:
I prefer Zhang Chu from that era:
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Sharp China: Elon Musk’s Surprise Trip to Beijing; A Third Plenum Set for July; An Uneventful Blinken Visit; Xi’s Trip to Europe