Our picks: China syndromeTech Cold War Is Here – U.S. Isn’t Winning | China’s Threatening Western Acquisitions | China Will Not Save Huawei, and more

Who Is Guo Wengui, the Chinese Emigre with Links to Steve Bannon?(James Palmer, Foreign Policy)
The billionaire fell out of favor in Beijing in 2015, but he is not a dissident. That should make U.S. policymakers wary.

Pentagon Extends Deadline for Contractors’ Ban on Chinese Equipment(Mila Jasper, Defense One)
Vendors will get additional time to comply, but the department is not seeking mass extensions, Acquisition Chief Ellen Lord told reporters.

Chinese Acquisitions of Western Firms Threaten National Security(Elizabth Braw, Foreign Policy)
If the invisible hand won’t produce buyers at home, governments will need to step in.

Here’s What U.S. Intelligence Actually Said China Wants in 2020(Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine)
At the Republican convention, Donald Trump Jr. asserted, “Beijing Biden is so weak on China that the intelligence community recently assessed that the Chinese Communist Party favors Biden.”
U.S. intelligence did say something about China and the election. But it was not that.
Several weeks ago, Robert Draper reported a harrowing account of Trump pressuring intelligence officials to suppress their findings that Russia was taking active measures to promote his reelection. Trying to get ahead of the story, intelligence officials released a statement acknowledging that Russia was indeed working to help Trump, and that this assistance included promoting disinformation that was actively disseminated by Trump and his congressional Republican allies.
But to soften the blow, the statement also threw in mentions of two other countries who are rooting against Trump: Iran and China. Unlike Russia, neither of these countries was assessed to be taking any covert actions to affect the elections. And why is China rooting against Trump? The statement said nothing about Biden being “weak.” In fact it said nothing about Biden at all.
The analysis, in its entirety, stated, “We assess that China prefers that President Trump — whom Beijing sees as unpredictable — does not win reelection.”
“Unpredictable” does not mean Trump is tough on China. Because he isn’t — certainly not with any consistency. Sometimes he’s lavishing China’s president with praise and letting Chinese spies into his resort and refusing to condemn China’s crackdown in Hong Kong. Other times he is levying tariffs on Chinese goods and trying to whip up Sinophobic anger. It’s difficult to handle a foreign counterpart who toggles between sycophancy and rage for no apparent reason.