Xinjiang work Conference; 5th Plenum; Frozen food imports and the virus; TikTok, SMIC and Nvidia

The 5th Plenum will convene from October 26-29th, the Politburo announced today.

As I speculated in last Thursday’s newsletter, Xi convened the Third Xinjiang Work Conference on Friday and Saturday. The readout from the meeting did not provide many details, but it declared that “practice has proven that the Party's new era strategy for governing Xinjiang is entirely correct and must be adhered to over the long term 实践证明，新时代党的治疆方略完全正确，必须长期坚持”.

The entire Politburo Standing Committee attended, Li Keqiang presided over the meeting and Wang Yang gave the summing up speech, thus showing the world, in case there has been any doubt, that the top leadership is united in the policies toward Xinjiang.

Other issues worth mentioning:

• TikTok won its injunction to avoid removal from the US app stores of Google and Android last night;

• The US is moving to restrict exports to China’s biggest chipmaker SMIC. The mooted measures are not as harsh as those taken against Huawei, yet;

• China is gearing up for the…