Last week, U.S. chip designer Nvidia announced that it would resume sales of one of its best-selling artificial intelligence chips to China after obtaining the go-ahead from the U.S. government. In April, the Trump administration had blocked exports of the chip, known as the H20, but after months of lobbying from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang,…
Imagine this: U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin stand on either side of Chinese President Xi Jinping atop Beijing’s Tiananmen Tower, watching a Chinese military parade. What would that image evoke? Certainly a political storm and a wave of harsh criticism from Western media directed at Trump. But it might also be…
Monday marks five years since China imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong, criminalizing dissent and bringing the semi-autonomous city to heel after months of pro-democracy, anti-government demonstrations that drew as many as 2 million protesters into the streets. “The law itself was a weapon for Beijing to silence dissent in Hong Kong,…
Today, June 4, marks the 36th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre—a moment of both tragedy and hope. It was the bloody end to a nationwide democracy movement that brought together workers and students, the most promising push for political reform in the history of the People’s Republic of China. But despite the courage of…
The flurry of on-again, off-again tariffs that U.S. President Donald Trump has unleashed have thus far exempted the semiconductor chips that power much of the modern economy. That may be about to change. The Department of Commerce on Monday filed a so-called Section 232 investigation into semiconductors and their impact on national security, providing three weeks…
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at China’s response to the U.S. trade war, new European efforts to aid Ukraine militarily, and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s first court appearance. Sign up to receive World Brief in your inbox every weekday. Sign up to receive World Brief in your inbox every weekday. Sign Up…
In the 1950s, social scientists popularized an idea that would go on to shape geopolitics: modernization theory, or the belief that economic development leads to the growth of liberal democracy. The theory was powerfully supported by the second and third waves of global democratization in regions such as Eastern Europe and Latin America, and it…
Over the past month, through a flurry of phone calls and flattery, Canada and Mexico have twice successfully fended off U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs, at least earning temporary reprieves. Meanwhile, Chinese officials have taken a different tack. Like a seasoned boxer in the first round of a fight, rather than lunging in, China…