About: William Holstein

Having covered Chinese leaders since the days of Deng Xiaoping, the line of analysis I find most interesting about the meeting in Bali is that Xi Jinping wanted to buy a little more time in China’s relations with the United States. Nothing has changed in his ideology or his ambitions–he is still an authoritarian dictator […]…

It’s gradually sinking in that the Biden Administration has launched perhaps the greatest industrial policy experiment in history–stopping China from assuming technological leadership over the United States and the rest of the world. The two major thrusts are (1) sweeping, coordinated restrictions on the sale of semiconductors and chip-making equipment to China and (2) massive […]…

As the dust settles from this big meeting, there are two major takeaways for the American financial and business audience. First, the idea that one can invest money in a Chinese entity, expect that it will conform to generally accepted accounting principles, and return profits to its investors is pretty much gone. Every Chinese company […]…

Reading the flood of commentary about the major Communist Party gathering in Beijing, I keep seeing the point being made by highly intelligent analysts that Xi Jinping is now China’s most powerful leader since Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), who died in 1976. But I’d argue that Xi has far surpassed Mao and indeed any Chinese […]…

Amazon link here. The pre-orders really matter: they will shape the publisher’s decisions about when to publish and how many books to print, plus how much money to set aside for promotion. We hope to persuade Prometheus to publish before June 2023. That’s an eternity! Battlefield Cyber: How China and Russia are Undermining Our Democracy […]…