- The New York Times profiles China's 'loud, direct and gregarious' internet czar Lu Wei, who has been a driving force behind stricter internet controls.
- South Africa's African National Congress to build a new political leadership school, which is inspired and funded by the Communist Party of China.
- Hugh Jorgensen and Daniela Strube argue in a Lowy Institute Analysis that China will seek a greater role in global economic governance processes, but will pursue a combination of approaches involving both existing Bretton Woods institutions and new forums.
- Xi Jinping's recent speech to Communist Party officials asserts China's global role. Rory Medcalf writes that the speech emphasises diplomacy, not raw power.
- CSIS has a good introduction to Taiwan's recent nine-in-one local elections, the results of which have seen Ma Ying-jeou quit as KMT chairman.
- Official figures for China's global outward FDI indicate impressive growth,but they neglect the stagnant or even declining level of net outbound FDI. State-owned extractive megadeals are also disappearing.
- This James Leibold interview is a good primer for China's ethnic policies. He says Falun Gong is a bigger threat than ethnic minorities simply because of its numbers.
- The People's Bank of China's latest fixes for the Yuan indicate it won't weaken China's currency to boost exports as growth slows.
- China's Chief climate negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, says in a wide-ranging interview with Caixin that 'countries will resolve disagreements through negotiations and draft a tidy agreement' before next year's climate change conference in Paris.
- Chinese historian Zhang Lifan argues in an interview that recent anti-foreign sentiment mirrors historical trends from other periods of domestic instability and that this round is merely political point scoring:
Members of the Chinese political establishment are not anti-foreign themselves. Xi sent his own daughter to be educated to the United States. [The daughter, Xi Mingze, was a recent undergraduate at Harvard University.] The anti-foreign sentiment is merely a political necessity. The people have many grievances, because income disparity has reached crisis levels. The political establishment needs the public to turn their rage toward foreign countries.