ASPI The Strategist

When China last hosted the Olympics, in the summer of 2008, the country was a vastly different place. The Beijing 2008 Summer Games was China’s coming-out party to the world. Less than two decades after People’s Liberation Army troops crushed pro-democracy protests at Tiananmen Square, China was eager to show the world how much it…

In its efforts to remake Hong Kong into a city in its own image, the Chinese Communist Party has created a new security apparatus and court system to enforce new national security laws. CCP authorities have forced civil servants to take loyalty oaths. They are overhauling the education system to weed out Western-inspired ‘liberal studies’…

THE STRATEGIST – Is President-elect Joe Biden’s administration set to go soft on China? That seems to be the view of officials in outgoing President Donald Trump’s administration, who in recent days and weeks have been implementing a flurry of rule changes and policy pronouncements aimed at tying Biden’s hands on China. In rapid succession,…

In the end, the result didn’t come as quickly or definitively as many wanted, and as the nation deserved. President Donald Trump and his remaining sycophants are still clinging to fading fantasies about fake ballots and systemic fraud. And the transition of power, if it happens, may be messy, brutish and short. But make no…

With the US presidential election drawing to a close, everyone, it seems, is absorbing the lessons from the surprising 2016 contest. Pollsters, largely blamed for failing to foresee President Donald Trump’s stunning victory last time, have been busy tweaking their turnout models, adjusting their survey samples and warning that a potential ‘hidden’ Trump vote could…

THE STRATEGIST – China’s Communist Party leaders have long understood the potency of symbols and the power to write history. It’s why Hong Kong protesters defacing the Chinese emblem with black paint and throwing a Chinese flag into the harbour were such an affront. It’s why many pro-China stalwarts here were so incensed by Hong…

Hong Kong’s first handover to China, in 1997, came with fireworks, lion dances and a mood of cautious optimism that this former British colony would enjoy ‘a high degree of autonomy’ for at least the next 50 years. Just 23 years later, Hong Kong’s second handover to China—punctuated by a draconian new national security law that…