Our picks: China syndromeTikTok & Internet’s Future | Fears of Chinese Surveillance | Chinese Expats & Espionage, and more

China May Never Catch up with Its Commitments to the U.S. in “Phase One” Deal, Expert Says (Yen Nee Lee, CNBC)
China may never catch up to buying the agreed amounts of U.S. goods and services under the “phase one” trade deal, said Scott Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The trade deal, signed in January, committed China to buying, over two years, at least $200 billion more U.S. goods and services in addition to its 2017 purchases. Kennedy said the White House would not want to “junk” the deal because “it’s the only reason the Chinese are buying agricultural goods from farmers in red states that the president needs for reelection.”

A Self‐Destructive War on Chinese Software (Julian Sanchez, CATO Institute)
Donald Trump has made good on his threats against Chinese‐owned tech companies, issuing executive orders that aim to effectively ban not only the popular video sharing app and platform TikTok, but also the Chinese‐owned messaging app WeChat as of September 20. The former is a platform for speech and expression used by millions of Americans, but the order targeting the latter may ultimately be even more disruptive. WeChat’s massive popularity in China—it’s the most popular app in the country by a huge margin, with more than a billion users worldwide—makes it an essential tool for Americans (and visitors) communicating with family, friends, and business contacts there. WeChat isn’t just used for messaging either: it’s also a major payment platform with hundreds of millions of active users (vastly more than domestic equivalents like Apple Pay), which makes the order barring “transactions” with the company a grievous self-inflicted blow to any American company trying to compete in Asian markets. It will also disadvantage American makers of mobile devices, who will be stuck trying to sell Asian consumers hardware on which they may not be able to easily install the single most popular piece of software.
And while the “national security” case for targeting TikTok may be little more than an effort to benefit American corporations by forcing the app’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell it off on the cheap, it is harder to see how WeChat, with its primarily Chinese user base, could spin off its American operations as a separate, viable company.