July Politburo meeting; 4th Plenum set for October; US-China; AI safety

I will be taking my annual version of the Beidaihe break again this year, and so the newsletter will not be publishing regularly from July 31 until the leadership returns in mid-August. We did record this week’s episode of Sharp China earlier today, so look for that in your inbox/feed sometime July 31. We had a good discussion of the Politburo meeting and US-China relations.

Summary of today’s top items:

1. July Politburo meeting - The Politburo met on July 30. According to the readout the Fourth Plenum is scheduled for sometime in October, and the main agenda item for that meeting will be to "study the proposals on formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development."

As expected, this Politburo meeting "analyzed and studied the current economic situation and made arrangements for economic work in the second half of the year". There was no mention of the Miao Hua or He Weidong cases.

The general tone seems to be "steady as she goes", with confidence in the …