Joel Atkinson
@Joel_P_Atkinson
Researching and teaching Northeast Asian international politics in Seoul. Opinions my own.
I explain why Xi Jinping’s signature “Great Changes Unseen in a Century” is likely derivative of a popular Chinese nationalist self-help book, Liu Mingfu’s “China Dream” (2010), which is riffing on a 1994 quote from Kissinger thediplomat.com/2025/07/the-em…
FT: "“We should not only focus on how much GDP has grown and how many major projects have been built, but also on how much debt is owed,” Xi Jinping told the Central Urban Work Conference." ft.com/content/9c19d2…
A world where each state had it own social media discourses, and foreigners needed a visa to visit would be interesting/different
I'm a digital nativist. I love people immigrating to my country and becoming Americans, but I'm sick and tired of foreigners poisoning American discourse with their extremist politics from halfway around the world.
Some interesting stuff in this, but Zhong Houtao's suggested discourse strategy is what's already been in the Global Times for years
"So how should 🇨🇳 respond? It comes down to three characters—the first is “expose” [破]. What does this entail? It means exposing #Taiwan’s #democracy as fake democracy—a low-quality, dysfunctional version of democracy." This is Part 2 of Zhong Houtao's talk: [KEY POINTS] 🧵
And yet here we are...
Europe’s lack of confidence in industrial policy remains striking. Worried the EU can’t build rare earths? The global market is only €3.5B/year. Germany spent more bailing out gas wholesaler Uniper than it would cost to buy 10 years of global rare earth supply.
I thought so too. And maybe Sanseito didn’t win as wildly as predicted. Many weird parties and candidates failed to get seats, unlike in typical Upper House elections. With Trump in the White House, voters know that Japan has no time for playing around.
With all the votes counted in Japan's Upper House election, it looks like the LDP'S defeat was not quite as bad as some exit polls expected. The ruling coalition did lose their majority, but only by a few seats. This leaves open the chance to pass legislation with the cooperation…
TL;DR: rare earths give Beijing considerable leverage, Trump Admin already predisposed to allowing H20 chips nytimes.com/2025/07/20/us/…
Lithuanian ForMin: “If I had a nickel for every time a Chinese ship was dragging its anchor on the bottom of the Baltic Sea in the vicinity of important cables, I would have two nickels, which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice.” carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2024/…
SecDef Hegseth: “I'm announcing that China will no longer have any involvement whatsoever in our cloud services, effective immediately”
Update on DOD’s cloud services
LOL. someone added the student riding bike in 1989 Tiananmen sound to Jack Ma (Ma Yun) writing bike in Hangzhou.
历史总是有惊人的相似
Nauru is the 3rd smallest country in the world after the Vatican and Monaco. But more importantly right now, it's also the Kyrgyzstan of Micronesia. China's exports to Nauru are up 1400% in May from a year before. A sign how desperate China's exporters are to offload their stuff.
Korea university, Seoul. Chinese student threatened to report Taiwan national flag to university admin office. He is too brainwashed to understand Taiwan is not part of China. Or he should go to Kim Il Sung University in North Korea instead, no Taiwan flag over there for sure.