Our picks: China watchHow America Turned the Tables on Huawei | Biden Worries China Might Win | China’s Demographic Predicament, and more

China Is Our No. 1 Priority. Start Acting Like It, Austin Tells Pentagon  (Jacqueline Feldscher, Defense One)
Task force says the military Biden inherited from Trump had a “say-do gap” in the resources directed at China.

The China Challenge: A Demographic Predicament Will Plague the Mainland for Decades  (Nicholas Eberstadt, Discourse)
Faced with a rapidly aging population, a shrinking workforce and a falling fertility rate, there’s little the country can do

Joe Biden Worries That China Might Win  (Thomas Wright, The Atlantic)
The president has put his finger on an important geopolitical development.

TikTok’s Trump Problem Is Now TikTok’s Biden Problem  (Shirin Ghaffary, Vox)
Biden reversed Trump’s executive order banning TikTok, but he’s still pursuing a broader crackdown on Chinese tech.

Soaring Factory Prices in China Add to Global Inflation Fears  (Economist)
Long a source of cheap goods, is China now exporting higher prices?

If China Is the No. 1 Threat, Why Doesn’t the 2022 Budget Reflect It?  (Tara Copp, Defense One)
The Middle East will continue to demand resources even as troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

China’s Diplomacy Is Limiting Its Own Ambitions  (Ali Wyne and Ryan Hass, Foreign Policy)
Beijing’s self-imposed problems make it a less threatening challenger than it seems.

China, Russia Military Budgets Combined Exceed US Spending, Top General Says  (Carla Babb, VOA News)

How America Turned the Tables on Huawei  (Natalie Liu, VOA News)
Former Trump administration official recounts drive to keep Chinese company out of 5G systems of allies, partners

Comrades in Tweets? The Contours and Limits of China-Russia Cooperation on Digital Propaganda  (Alexander Gabuev and Leonid Kovachich, Carnegie Moscow Center)

·  “Russian information operations have drawn greater attention in the West since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and many analysts have seen echoes of such online trolling and disinformation in the more assertive, confrontational posture of Chinese diplomats on social media during the coronavirus pandemic. Russian and Chinese propagandists also seem to be mirroring each other’s tactics and cross-promoting each other’s content, leading some Western analysts and governments to warn of deepening digital cooperation between Moscow and Beijing.”

·  “China and Russia do indeed share a lot of strategic objectives, and their partnership has been deepening across the board since the 2014 outbreak of war in Ukraine and Western sanctions against Moscow. After all, both countries’ leaders decry U.S. hegemony and see the United States and its alliances as challenges to their national security and national interests. And both Chinese and Russian policymakers are striving to exploit existing fissures in Western societies while weakening ties between the United States and its allies through information operations and other means. … Beyond these commonly held strategic objectives, both countries have drawn tactically on their own histories while also learning from one another and others.”

·  “Despite all these signs of nascent support and shared goals, it would be a mistake to overstate the degree to which Moscow’s and Beijing’s propaganda machines are actively working in tandem…”

·  “At root, both Russian and Chinese leaders are driven by great power calculus. Therefore, they want to maintain strategic autonomy above all else, including in pushing back against the United States and its allies. Rhetorical support from a like-minded great power is nice to have, but it is not indispensable when it comes to the global information domain, an area unregulated by international legal norms. On the UN Security Council, by contrast, Moscow and Beijing frequently act far more in tandem because of the bureaucratic nature of the organization and both countries’ unique position as permanent members. For now, however, Chinese and Russian influence operations can be—and continue to be—conducted independently.”