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Conservative MP Michael Chong speaks during a news conference in Ottawa.

Reuters

China's threats as Mr Chong goes to Washington

National security threats have a way of uniting politicians from across the aisle and that was on full display this week when the US Congress, investigating Chinese foreign interference, asked a Canadian politician named Michael Chong to testify. Not your average Tuesday on Capitol Hill, but Chong has a compelling story to tell.

In 2021, after he tabled a motion in the Canadian Parliament to declare the Chinese repression of the Uyghur population a genocide, he and his extended family in Hong Kong were actively targeted by agents of the People’s Republic of China. China has denied the allegation, but there is plenty of evidence to support Chong’s claims about Chinese interference. With a US election in just over a year and Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns ratcheting up, US politicians are looking to learn from his experience to develop their own countermeasures.

Chong, now the Conservative Party’s chief foreign affairs critic, was elected in 2004, which is when I first met him as I covered his campaign. Born in Canada, Chong has relatives in Hong Kong, who he now fears will experience ongoing reprisals by Beijing.

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U.S. President Joe Biden holds a press conference in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Reuters

What's Biden doing in Vietnam?

US President Biden flew to Vietnamon Sunday for a series of meetings with Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. Speaking in Hanoi, Biden said the United States had “strengthened our ties with another critical Indo-Pacific partner,” after Vietnam officially elevated its relationship with Washington to the top level of the country’s three-tier hierarchy for bilateral relations, one also bestowed on both China and Russia.

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Flags of China and U.S. are displayed on a printed circuit board with semiconductor chips.

REUTERS/Florence Lo

US Treasury chief goes to China

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is kicking off a four-day visit to China on Thursday. The last time such a visit took place was four years ago, at the height of the Trump’s US-China trade war.

To be sure, Yellen’s trip is more about messaging than substance, with both sides already trying to mitigate expectations of a significant breakthrough as bilateral relations remain extremely tense.

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Picture of the Tik Tok symbol over the US Capitol Building.

Annie Gugliotta

TikTok "boom"! Could the US ban the app?

As a person over 40, the first thing I did when I heard about a new bipartisan US bill that could lead to a ban of TikTok was: call my niece Valeria in Miami.

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Luisa Vieira

Lessons from “balloon-gate”

By now you’ve heard and read plenty about the Chinese spy balloon that floated across the continental United States last week before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, so I’ll spare you the details. Absurd as it was, we’re not going to remember the incident in a couple of months. Heck, you probably don’t care already.

And that’s fair enough: The fact is the hullaballoo(n) was no big deal, for several reasons.

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Luisa Vieira

GOP-led US House will get tougher on China — but not as much as you'd think

Republicans succeeded in unseating Democratic leadership of the House in this US midterm election and will take control of the lower chamber early next year. Still, one foreign policy issue that seems to enjoy unusual bipartisan consensus in Washington is China. While there’s some truth to that assessment, there are differences in the China-related issues that each party tends to emphasize. There’s also quite a lot of partisan politics undergirding deliberation and debate over China.

Both parties are vying to position themselves as the better choice to lead the United States in rising to the China challenge. The Republican primary for the 2024 presidential race will get underway soon, and GOP hopefuls will be competing with each other, seeking to convey to voters their credentials as critics of the Chinese Communist Party. More than 80% of Americans now hold unfavorable views of China, but Republican voters express comparatively greater concern, and that is reflected in GOP candidates’ relatively outspoken support for hawkish China policy.

For both of these reasons, even though the Biden administration continues to take a tough line on China, Eurasia Group analyst Anna Ashton fully expects a Republican-controlled US Congress to charge that the White House is not being tough enough. We asked her how this might affect American policy toward Beijing.

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U.S. President Joe Biden shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping as they meet on the sidelines of the G20 leaders' summit in Bali.

Reuters

Biden and Xi’s Bali face-off: Agenda, forecast, and sticking points

On Monday, US President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping met for their first face-to-face meeting since Biden was elected in 2020. “I look forward to working with you, Mr. President, to bring China-U.S. relations back to the track of health and stable development for the benefit of our two countries and the world as a whole,” Xi told Biden.

What’s at stake: Stopping the Russia-Ukraine war, Taiwan’s sovereignty and defense, North Korea’s increased weapons testing, battling COVID, resumption of global supply chains, and tackling climate change.

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Paige Fusco

Biden’s “new” Taiwan policy: strategic clarity or confusion?

China on Monday blasted the US for egging on Taiwan “separatists” after President Joe Biden vowed that the US would defend the self-ruled island from a Chinese invasion. Okay, nothing new here, right? Not exactly.

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