Japanese schoolboy dies in Shenzhen; PRC lobbying progress in EU; Xi on energy security; Lawfare to silence critics; Hunan finance chief murdered
Summary of today’s Essential Eight:
1. State Council mobilization meeting on delaying retirement age - Li Qiang oversaw a mobilization meeting on implementing the delayed retirement ages. Among the attendees were officials from the Central Propaganda Department and the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission. The propaganda workers try to make everyone happy with the reforms, and the CPLAC folks make sure they get in line if they are not? One of the advantages of the PRC system when you are pushing out controversial and potentially dislocating policies.
2. PRC lobbying against EU EV tariffs appears to be working - Minister of Commerce Wang Wentao is in Europe for talks, and while no deal has been reached he did manage to convince the European Commission to reconsider “price undertakings”, after it rejected a previous PRC proposal and then said it was too late to submit a revised version. If I could bet on the outcome on Polymarket I would wager the EU will back down.
3. Japanese schoolboy dies from knife attack - The ten year-old Japanese-citizen attacked on his way to school Wednesday in Shenzhen has died from his knife wounds. RIP. Between this murder and the June Suzhou attack it will not be surprising if we see an accelerated withdrawal of Japanese and Japanese firms from the PRC.
4. Lawfare to silence critics overseas - The US House select committee on China held a hearing today to examine “how the CCP uses the law to silence critics and enforce its rule”. In the hearing Anna Puglisi, a former Senior Fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), testified (PDF) about the legal threats she received after publishing “China, Technology, and BGI: How China’s Hybrid Economy Skews Competition” (PDF) through CSET. She says she received letters from counsel for BGI and MGI and that “BGI’s letter accused me of defamation and asked me and CSET to retract my paper, say I was wrong, and stop discussing this analysis. MGI’s letter also wanted me to change what I said”. She said that Georgetown did not back her up, though her paper remains on the CSET web site. After the hearing Dewey Murdick, Executive Director at CSET, posted a statement to LinkedIn stating that “CSET and Georgetown stand fully behind the report, Anna, and her co-author, and are prepared to defend the report and its authors should the letters lead to formal legal action. This was communicated to Anna and any insinuation otherwise is false.” Puglisi testified today under oath, so perhaps Murdick can submit a sworn statement to the committee? The hearing was not a good look for Georgetown, CSET or the lawyers working for BGI and MGI, and will only make things worse for BGI and increase the likelihood that the Biosecure Act becomes law.
5. Hunan finance chief murdered - Liu Wenjie 刘文杰, director of Hunan provincial government’s finance department since December 2022, died in a fall from her apartment. Two men fell to their deaths soon after her. Police are calling it a criminal case and there are some crazy rumors flying around about why she was killed. Murdering a senior provincial official is not just a simple criminal case; this is a significant political incident and so expect Beijing investigators to get involved. Perhaps this will end up being a case for the newly launched “central supervision for the ‘normalized fight against organized crime and evil’”.
6. NDRC official confident in meeting economic and social development goals - On September 19 the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) held its September press conference. At the meeting, Jin Xiandong, Director of the Policy Research Office and spokesperson for the NDRC, responded to hot topics such as the current economic situation, stimulating private investment vitality, and stabilizing prices and ensuring supply of livelihood goods during the National Day holiday. He stated that “we have the conditions, ability, and confidence to achieve the economic and social development goals and tasks for the whole year” and that they will “timely introduce a batch of incremental policy measures that are highly operational, effective, and tangible”.
7. Typhon mid-range missile system in the Philippines - Reuters reports that the US’ Typhon mid-range missile system is still in the Philippines. Its presence has been driving PRC officials a bit nuts, probably because they realize it is a powerful system that could cause them lots of problems.
8. Xi on national energy security - Page 6 of the September 20th People's Daily has a long piece from the Institute of Party History and Literature of the CPC Central Committee on studying "Excerpts from Xi Jinping's Discourses on National Energy Security", a book that came out in June. The article is titled “Providing Safe and Reliable Energy Security for the Construction of Chinese Modernization” and it makes clear Xi is a man with a plan not just to secure energy security but also the commanding heights of the global renewable energy supply chain. And given the PRC’s dominance in renewable energy, from critical minerals to supply chains to manufactured goods, they seem well on the way to achieving that goal, while building a “fortress economy”.