Zuckerberg's 180 on China; MoFA says TikTok is a Chinese Company; Semiconductor chokehold

Saturday, August 1 is the 93rd Birthday of the PLA Day, known as Army Day. Most years Xi promotes new generals right before the anniversary, and this year he promoted just one, Xu Zhongbo 徐忠波, political commissar of the PLA Rocket Force.

The CEOs of Amazon, Google, Apple and Facebook testified today at a US house of Representatives hearing on antitrust issues. China did not loom large, other than in Mark Zuckerberg’s opening statement, in which he made ironic comments using China as a foil to argue against more regulation of or a breakup of Facebook. They are ironic because Zuckerberg tried so desperately for many years to find a way to launch Facebook in China.

Here is what he said in his prepared remarks:

Although people around the world use our products, Facebook is a proudly American company. We believe in values -- democracy, competition, inclusion and free expression -- that the American economy was built on. Many other tech companies share these values, but there’s no guarantee …