2026 Issue 23

The Chinese Communist Party has elevated ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ about Party building as a centralizing political doctrine.  This marks yet another step in the Party’s return to the horrors of Maoism and the unquestioning loyalty to a supreme leader.  As this is happening in the political landscape, the Party is tightening even further their capital controls to ensure that Chinese citizens cannot protect their wealth from being seized and used by the Party for the purposes of bolstering the Party.

Peter Robinson interviews Professor Frank Dikötter on the podcast Uncommon Knowledge about his new book, Red Dawn Over China, which seeks to dismantle the fairytale narrative that Party has used for nine decades to explain its rise to power.

While it appeared that Europe might finally confront the PRC’s economic aggression, European leaders blinked this week and refused to press forward the kind of protective measures Brussels built to handle this problem.  European leaders have become terrified of PRC retaliation and decided to kick the can down the road and directed the European Commission to develop “new tools” to use against Beijing which means a delay of a year or two.

And in news to the north, Mark Carney’s administration fired one of its defense civil servants for expressing opinions that were deemed too pro-American and too anti-China.  The official is suing the Canadian Government which might reveal just how compromised Ottawa is to CCP influence.