Evaluation and Assessment Measures for Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality; Crackdown on Cambodian scam centers?; AI distillation; US as a "predatory hegemon"; PLA Navy turns 77
Today’s top items:
1. Evaluation and Assessment Measures for Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality - On Thursday the government publicly released the “Comprehensive Evaluation and Assessment Measures for Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality 碳达峰碳中和综合评价考核办法”, approved by the Politburo Standing Committee on February 26, 2026 and issued by the General Offices of the CCP Central Committee and the State Council on April 12. The Measures institutionalize an annual cadre-evaluation regime that grades every provincial Party committee and government on their climate performance, beginning with the 2026 reporting year. I have posted a full translation here.
The Measures instruct the NDRC to draft the 15th Five-Year Plan Carbon Peaking Action Plan to meet 2030 targets: cutting emissions intensity by more than 65% from 2005, raising non-fossil energy to 25% of consumption, peaking both coal and oil use, and progressively covering new electricity demand with clean generation.
This document is important as it provides political accountability and incentives and enforcement powers for the pledges of peaking emissions before 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality before 2060. Local officials have long been measured primarily on GDP growth, and “dual-high” (energy- and emissions-intensive) projects have repeatedly been waved through despite central-level guidance against them. Climate performance is now a formal input into cadre evaluation, promotion, and discipline, with the Central Organization Department coordinating the process.
In a Xinhua Q&A published April 23, 2026, a senior NDRC official explains the Measures. The official frames them as a keystone of China’s dual carbon-control system that formally embeds emissions control into the Party’s internal regulatory apparatus so that provincial leaders are unambiguously responsible for delivering the “dual carbon” targets.
The official confirms that the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026–2030) is the “decisive window” for peaking, and that the assessment system is built around binding 2030 outcomes: peaking coal and oil consumption, cutting carbon intensity more than 65% below 2005 levels, and raising non-fossil energy to 25% of total consumption. To reach them, the Measures deploy a “5+9” indicator architecture—five decisive control indicators (total emissions, intensity, coal, oil, non-fossil share) plus nine supporting indicators covering energy efficiency, industry, buildings, transport, public institutions, and the carbon market. I have posted a full translation of the Q&A here.
2. Crackdown on scam centers in Cambodia - Wang Yi has been in Cambodia for the China-Cambodia foreign ministers’ and defense ministers’ “2+2” strategic dialogue. The scam centers have been a focus of discussion based on the readouts. In his briefing to the media after the meetings, Wang listed six points of agreement, including:
Fourth, the two sides agreed to strengthen law-enforcement cooperation, with the emphasis on resolutely and thoroughly cracking down on online gambling and telecom fraud, protecting the lives and property of the people, and creating a favorable external environment for China-Cambodia cooperation.
They also agreed on strengthening political- security cooperation:
Third, the two sides agreed to strengthen political-security cooperation, with the emphasis on safeguarding the security of their respective governing authorities and political systems, jointly resisting external infiltration, and guarding against “color revolutions.”
I have posted translations of all six in the full section below.
According to the readout of his meeting with Hun Sen, Hun Sen said:
Online gambling and telecom fraud endanger the lives and property of people in all countries as well as Cambodia’s national image; the Cambodian side is determined to combat these crimes to the end and is willing to continue close cooperation with China.
It is probably a coincidence, but the US today announced that “two Chinese nationals have been charged for allegedly managing a cryptocurrency investment fraud compound in Burma, then later in Cambodia, where they trafficked thousands of people”. The sooner this scam scourge can be eradicated the better, and China does appear to have finally decided enough is enough. How it persisted for so long on the PRC’s border, while victimizing so many PRC citizens, may remain a mystery.
3. Finland to block any EU-China trade deal? - Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen told Finbarr Bermingham of the South China Morning Post that “Beijing’s close ties with Moscow will block progress towards any EU-China trade deal.”
4. US government takes on “Adversarial Distillation of American AI Models” - Several weeks after Google, OpenAI and Anthropic issued statements about PRC AI developers using “distillation attacks” to piggyback on those three firms’ hundreds of billions of dollars of investments to improve their own models, the White House has now weighed in with a memo titled Adversarial Distillation of American AI Models:
the United States government has information indicating that foreign entities, principally based in China, are engaged in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to distill U.S. frontier AI systems. Leveraging tens of thousands of proxy accounts to evade detection and using jailbreaking techniques to expose proprietary information, these coordinated campaigns systematically extract capabilities from American AI models, exploiting American expertise and innovation.
Models developed from surreptitious, unauthorized distillation campaigns like this do not replicate the full performance of the original. They do, however, enable foreign actors to release products that appear to perform comparably on select benchmarks at a fraction of the cost. These distillation campaigns also allow those actors to deliberately strip security protocols from the resulting models and undo mechanisms that ensure those AI models are ideologically neutral and truth-seeking.
The memo goes on to say that the Trump Administration will “explore a range of measures to hold foreign actors accountable for industrial-scale distillation campaigns.”
What might “a range of measures to hold foreign actors accountable” include? Attempts to hijack their distillation efforts and try to poison their models? Entity listing or other sanctions on the accused? Blocking access by the accused to advanced US chips anywhere in the world, including in overseas data centers?
5. US as a “predatory hegemon” - The April 23 People’s Daily carries a scathing commentary by “Zhong Sheng” titled Sliding Toward “Predatory Hegemony,” the United States Is “Walking Into the Future Backwards” (Zhong Sheng)滑向”掠夺性霸权”，美国正”以倒退的方式步入未来”（钟声). I have posted a full translation here. It cites the work of Harvard’s Stephen Walt about the concept of “predatory hegemony”:
U.S. conduct has laid “predatory hegemony” bare for all to see. From wantonly withdrawing from international organizations and shirking international responsibilities, to invoking international rules when convenient and discarding them when not; from attempting to extort the world economically through tariff wars and trade wars, to now using or threatening military force against sovereign states without scruple, seizing resources and demanding territory — all of this clearly confirms that the United States is accelerating its degeneration toward “might makes right.”..
美国的所作所为已将”掠夺性霸权”暴露无遗。从肆意”退群”、抛弃国际责任，到对国际规则”合则用、不合则弃”；从试图通过关税战、贸易战对全球搞经济勒索，到如今动辄对主权国家使用或威胁使用武力，全无顾忌地抢资源、索领土……所有这些都清晰印证，美国正在向”以强权凌驾一切”加速退化。
For the United States to slide toward “predatory hegemony” is, in effect, to choose to “walk into the future backwards.” From “builder” of international rules to “saboteur”; from “promoter” of global cooperation to “extractor”; from “trustee” of allies and partners to “extortionist” — this chain of regressions is, at its core, a self-imposed exile driven by hegemonic anxiety. Walt offers a biting yet clear-eyed verdict: in the short term, “predatory hegemony” may extract some “gains,” but in the long run, the United States will become poorer, less secure, and progressively less influential.
美国滑向”掠夺性霸权”，无异于选择”以倒退的方式步入未来”。从国际规则的”建设者”退化为”拆台者”，从全球合作的”推动者”退化为”榨取者”，从盟友伙伴的”信任者”退化为”勒索者”——这一连串的倒退，本质上是美国在霸权焦虑驱动下的自我放逐。沃尔特给出一个辛辣而清醒的判断：短期内，”掠夺性霸权”或许能榨取一些”收益”，但从长远看，美国会变得更贫穷、更不安全，逐渐丧失影响力。
6. PLA Navy’s 77th birthday - April 23 is the 77th anniversary of the founding of the PLA Navy. A Xinhua commentary wrote that “in a turbulent world marked by intensifying geopolitical conflicts, the Chinese navy has consistently promoted peace, cooperation and friendship…The Chinese navy will continue to actively shoulder its international responsibilities, safeguard the security of international waterways, and provide more public goods for maritime security.”
So they will be sending ships to help open the Strait of Hormuz?
The PLAN released a video titled “Into the Deep 向大洋“ to celebrate the anniversary. You can watch here on YouTube, with English subtitles:
The appearance of a young cadet named “He Jian”, after the appearance of three others whose names sound like the names of the three current aircraft carriers, has led to speculation that he symbolizes the next carrier, which will be nuclear-powered.
Earlier today I published this week’s episode of Sharp China - Xi Wants the Strait of Hormuz Reopened; Cakes and An E-Commerce Crackdown; The Next Stage of Decoupling; The MATCH Act in Congress. From the show notes:
On today's show Andrew and Bill return to discuss the PRC's posture amidst the ongoing war in Iran. Topics include: Xi's call to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, an interdicted Iranian ship that may have been carrying missile precursors from China, Trump's posture toward China three weeks before his summit in Beijing, March export numbers, and deals between the US and Indonesia and the US and the Philippines. Then: The SAMR fines several e-commerce giants over food safety concerns in the "ghost delivery" sector, plus thoughts on the ongoing struggle to combat involution. From there: New regulations in Beijing to crack down on foreign companies attempting to diversify supply chains, the USTR's Jamieson Greer comments on US partners and a new rare earth strategy, and notes on tensions between the PRC and Japan. At the end: The MATCH Act in Congress and the continued scrutiny over semiconductor manufacturing equipment, an updated timeline for DeepSeek's new model, and a Mandelson mess continues to unspool in the U.K.
You can listen to it here.