We recorded this week’s episode of Sharp China earlier today - China's Global Strategy; Tragedy on the Nepal-Tibet Border; A 19-1 Vote at the G-20; TikTok Dodges Congress - and will come out at 5AM ET Friday, and will be outside the paywall.
Monday is Labor Day here in the US and so there will not be a regular edition of the newsletter until Tuesday the 8th.
In this issue:
PRC explanation of why there was no G20 communiqué
NDRC wants to accelerate “Six Networks” projects
EU-China
Q2 carbon emissions fall
China and AI
The Memory Museum
The Feed: Business, Economy and Trade - Politics and Law - Foreign and Defense Affairs - Hong Kong - Taiwan - Tech and Media - Society, Arts, Sports, Culture and History - Energy, Environment, Science and Health - Rural and Agricultural Issues
Today’s top items:
1. PRC explanation of why there was no G20 communiqué - The G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting in Asheville ended September 1 with a US chair's statement rather than a communiqué. The statement noted that all members present except the PRC agreed to the text and that the PRC objected to paragraphs 4, 10, 11 and 13. Asked about it Wednesday, the MFA spokesperson said the PRC "deeply regrets" the outcome and that the G20 should coordinate "based on the principles of consensus and equal participation."
Yuyuan Tantian, the CCTV-affiliated account that carries authorized leaks on trade issues, on Thursday published an "exclusive" laying out the objections. I have posted a full translation here.
The three "concerns," in its framing: the text described the global economy without mentioning tariffs or high-tech export controls; paragraphs 10 and 11 were the US "smuggling in its own agenda" (夹带私货), since "non-market policies and practices" and "excessive reliance on export-led growth" are, per the piece, "the claims the United States has recently and repeatedly hyped—'overcapacity,' 'China shock 2.0' and the 'China squeeze' thesis"; and the debt paragraph singled out official bilateral creditors, who hold only about 15% of developing-country debt, while saying nothing about shrinking aid from developed countries.
A "person involved in the negotiations" told Tantian:
The G20 has never discussed a definition of the term "non-market policies and practices"... Moreover, the so-called "non-market policies and practices" language actually comes from the United States' 2018 Section 301 investigation of China.
G20从未讨论过"非市场政策和做法"这一表述的定义……更不要说，所谓"非市场政策和做法"，其实来自于2018年美对华"301调查"
The article sees the US moves at the meeting as an attempt to "reap the benefits twice": tariffs and export controls first, then a multilateral label that becomes the "basis" for more of both. And the “atmosphere for China-U.S. cooperation” is now damaged:
A person close to the negotiations told Tantian: “By doing this, the United States is undermining the broader multilateral agenda this year. The G20 and APEC have always been the most important multilateral platforms for global economic governance, and this year the United States and China are serving as hosts, respectively. China-U.S. relations are at a critical stage, and the two countries’ heads of state have charted the direction for bilateral relations and multilateral cooperation. By playing these petty tricks at the G20 meeting, the United States has damaged both the G20’s credibility and the atmosphere for China-U.S. cooperation.”
一位接近谈判的人士告诉谭主：美方这么做，就是在破坏今年多边议程的大局。G20和APEC历来是全球经济治理最重要的多边平台，今年又恰逢美国和中国分别担任东道主。中美关系正处于关键阶段，两国元首为双边关系和多边合作划定了方向。美方在G20会场里搞这种小动作，既损害了G20的信誉，也破坏了中美合作的氛围。
2. NDRC wants to accelerate “Six Networks” projects - A deputy director of the NDRC “chaired a meeting of the coordination mechanism for major “Six Networks” projects to study improvements to the government-bank-enterprise cooperation mechanism and the development of project pipelines.” From the brief readout, translated here:
The meeting focused on urging the lead departments and localities to accelerate the creation of project pipelines for the “Six Networks,” strengthen information sharing with financial institutions, and achieve efficient coordination between investment and lending; accelerating the identification of a group of attractive engineering projects to be publicly promoted
This is part of the accelerating implementation of existing policies that the leadership has been talking about in response to some of the recent weak economic data.
3. EU-China - In yesterday’s discussion of EU-China trade discussions I asked “Has the EU finally reached its breaking point on the trade imbalances?”
According to Noah Barkin, the answer is yes:
It is a near certainty at this point – even if Beijing were to make last-minute concessions in its ongoing talks with Brussels – that the EU will begin rolling out a series of new trade measures targeting China next month. This could quickly devolve into a full-blown trade war if Beijing responds with brute force. Still, the determination to act has never been higher in Europe.
This is because of a fundamental shift in how Germany has come to view the costs and benefits of economic engagement with China.
4. Q2 carbon emissions fall - Carbon Brief is out with a report titled China’s CO2 emissions fall in Q2 2026 due to plummeting oil use that cites plummeting oil consumption and the surge in EVs in the wake of the disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz as the main reason:
The effect of EVs on oil consumption was almost twice as large as would be expected based on the increase in the number of EVs on the road alone, as the usage of existing EVs surged.
Oil consumption displaced by EVs in China in the first half of 2026 exceeded the UK’s total oil consumption over a six-month period.
5. China and AI - Both ChinaTalk and the Oxford China Policy Lab have interesting articles on the “Hugging Face Incident” and Chinese views on AI safety.
Do you know what the PRC AI safety community means when they talk about “loss of control shikong 失控”? Thanks to Zilan Qian, the answer is “it depends”:
To answer that question, this article compares how “loss of control” is used in Western AI safety discourse with how shikong is used in China. In specific English-language discourse, the term increasingly points to the scenario where AI agents deployed inside the labs go rogue, and thus the risk of humans permanently losing control over AI. In China, shikong is used more broadly and mundanely, but the discourse is changing rapidly. By categorizing existing usage of LoC in China across three loci defined by who loses control, the piece argues that Western observers should not over-index on top-level mentions of words without context. Rather, it calls for a stronger focus on specific operational problems, and an end to one actor invoking specific terminologies assuming that their counterpart shares a similar understanding.
One thing I will add is that for the Party, loss of control concerns will also include any AI that could threaten political stability.
And as we discussed on this week’s episode of Sharp China, what happens when someone removes safeguards and uses a PRC model to try to hack the GFW, for example?
6. The Memory Museum - Shen Lu has a wonderful discussion of M Lin’s new book “The Memory Museum” in the latest issue of the Hǎi 海 newsletter:
The Memory Museum, 记忆博物馆, is a collection of nine short stories by New York-based writer M Lin. Some stories felt so real they read like nonfiction. They are, in a nutshell, about the collective experience of the generation of urban Chinese women who came of age in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
I had never read a book like this—about us—in either Chinese or English. It would not have passed censorship in China. Yet it’s nothing like the English-language literary fiction about China I’ve read in the past, which tends to be set in periods more familiar to the West, such as the Cultural Revolution. Some of the most established writers from China, Ha Jin and Yiyun Li for instance, write out of complicated political and personal relationships with a China distant from the one I have lived in. Reading The Memory Museum felt like reading my own life. It was almost alarming to find myself and my friends, our memories, feelings, and choices, laid bare like that.