National security, Anti-monopoly work; New disease control agency

Thanks to everyone who participated in Friday’s open discussion.

Some of the highlights from today’s newsletter:

• The Politburo held a group study session on national security. Yuan Peng, head of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, and an "America hand", was the lecturer. Among the ten requirements Xi outlined was a call to “pay equal attention to development and security”;

• The Friday Politburo meeting, which we discussed a little in the Friday discussion thread, presaged a budding anti-monopoly crackdown on the Internet giants. One of the motivations behind the growing anti-monopoly crackdown and the Politburo readout phrase "disorderly expansion of capital" appears to be to channel money and technical talent into real technology innovations;

• Several Western newspapers wrote stories over the weekend about a leaked 2016. The coverage has been a bit hyperbolic in my view, but two angles from the…