Xi Jinping Thought and US-China relations; Rectifying the tutoring industry; Foreign journalists; Fort Detrick frenzy

The visit to Tianjin by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has given us another another milestone in the New Era in US-China relations, as the PRC side delivered and publicized a list of demands to the US in order to restore the relationship to the right track. Even if the Biden Administration had been considering some of the steps the PRC has now publicly demanded, doing so after the receipt of this list is likely politically impossible here in DC. Expect the relationship to get worse and the decoupling, scattershot and in many areas lobbied into toothlessness on the US side while targeted and disciplined on the PRC side, to intensify.

The crackdown on the tutoring industry that has destroyed billions of dollars of wealth in just a few days has been more brutal than many expected. There is a strong political logic to it, as the tutoring industry is a clear example of “disorderly expansion of capital” that has helped to exacerbate inequality in education and increased stress f…