2025 Issue 40

Despite all the headlines about China’s clean energy leadership, the country continues to burn coal at a rate far higher that the combined carbon emissions of the United States, Europe and Japan, all but guaranteeing more severe outcomes given more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Zhang Zhan, the citizen journalist who reported on conditions in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic has just been convicted of speaking out against the Party and sentenced to a second four-year term in prison.

For years, the United States has known that PRC state supported hacking groups have been stealing commercial and national security data, Google and Mandiant the cybersecurity firm, report that it is worse than ever, suggesting that efforts by the United States to curb these activities have completely failed.

Janka Oertel at the European Council on Foreign Relations observes that Beijing forces foreign companies doing business in the PRC to turn over massive amounts of data on their supply chains and commercial activities, giving the PRC the data to impose economic coercion on the companies and their home countries.  Europe and the United States do not collect that data and companies resist turning it over, making it impossible for the West to respond.  She recommends changing that dynamic and questions companies’ sincerity over privacy when they provide the same data to the PRC.

Pew Research Center released an updated report that 1 in 5 of all Americans get their news from TikTok, up from just 3% in 2020, those numbers are over 43% for Americans between the ages of 18 and 29.