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Both Democrats and Republicans in the US agree that China is a threat. Together, US senators have presented the “Lex China”, as Felix Lee reports. Its goal is to curb the global influence of the People’s Republic. To this end, Washington plans to spend a lot of money, emphasizing above all, its support for Taiwan and demanding clarification of the gender-specific violence against the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
When the market regulator calls, it’s over with laissez-faire. Christiane Kühl examines how the two biggest tech platforms, Alibaba and Tencent, are settling their previous trench warfare to at least appear remorseful within the antitrust agency’s grace period.
Montenegro can’t repay its debt to China. But the cries for help from the small state in the Western Balkans are falling on deaf ears at the EU Commission. Marcel Grzanna has asked why Beijing has financed the cost of a motorway from the Adriatic coast to Serbia and how this could further divide the EU.
Have a good start to the day.
Ning Wang
Feature
US senators plan ‘Lex China’
It’s still a draft but it is already making waves. The recent military maneuvers by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Taiwan’s airspace may be a first response. At issue is the so-called “Strategic Competition Act“, a bill that the influential chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez (Democrat), along with Senator Jim Risch (Republican), bipartisanly introduced last week. The bill is expected to pass first in committee next week, then be debated in the Senate.
The bill has its work cut out for it. Should it actually pass through both chambers of Congress in the near future, it would be a law explicitly designed to counter China’s global influence. And it would do so on several levels.
Specifically, it is about several billion US dollars that the US government is to provide for a number of initiatives. Of that, $655 million is to go to the US military for rearmament in the Indo-Pacific. Some $450 million is earmarked in the bill to ensure freedom of navigation, particularly in the South China Sea.
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