Outbreak; China-Russia; Taiwan and the "Summit for Democracy"; Cheng Lei; Patriotic entrepreneurs

I have been trying to write something cogent about the ongoing regulatory storms/crackdowns/rectifications/pick your descriptor. I am not there yet, but I do hope we can discuss what may be going on during the weekly discussion thread that starts tomorrow. While there are reasonable and legitimate explanations for the regulatory moves in the targeted sectors, it looks like focusing on those sector-specific rationales may be missing the forest for the trees.

The comments from Xi last year about patriotic entrepreneurs and the “Private Economy in the New Era” have not gotten as much attention as they may deserve. We had a good discussion of it in the 11.13.2020 Sinocism weekly discussion thread. As I wrote in the intro to that discussion:

Xi is on an inspection tour of Jiangsu. As noted in yesterday’s newsletter he visited an exhibition of the life of Zhang Jian, “a Chinese industrialist and educator in the late 19th century and early 20th century”.

There is a direct thread to this visit …