China News - 5 May 2021

International

China tops agenda as G7 foreign ministers meet in London. Today is the final day of G7 foreign ministers’ summit in London. China was allotted two hours in Tuesday morning’s agenda compared with 30 minutes for Myanmar and Syria and 90 minutes for Russia. Separately, Antony Blinken also met with Boris Johnson in Downing Street, where they discussed the "close alignment" between foreign policy in London and Washington. SCMP, The Times, BBC, 4 May

More: UK and Japan agree strengthened trade and security partnership ahead of G7 meeting (UK gov statement), UK-India agree partnership to boost work visas for Indian nationals (Gov)

EU efforts to ratify China investment deal ‘suspended’ after sanctions. “We now in a sense have suspended … political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” said the commission’s executive vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis, on Tuesday. An EU spokeswoman later said the comments had been taken out of context, and said that the technical aspects such as legal scrubbing are still going on but, on the subject of political ratification, remarked: "We are not there yet." The Guardian, Politico, SCMP, 4 May

Washington shies away from open declaration to defend Taiwan. Kurt Campbell has warned that any declaration that the US would defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack would carry “significant downsides”. FT, 5 May

New Zealand draws back from calling Chinese abuses of Uyghurs genocide. Parliament opted instead on Tuesday to water down the language, and discuss concerns about human rights abuses in the region in more general terms. The Guardian, 4 May

Economy & tech

EU to crack down on Chinese state-subsidised companies. The proposed legislation would grant the bloc’s muscular antitrust authorities new powers to block foreign companies from making acquisitions in Europe or receiving public contracts if they are deemed to have benefited from government subsidies. WSJ, 4 May

US-China tech war: Beijing's secret chipmaking champions. Once a month, senior executives of Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. fly to Beijing for a flurry of meetings with China's top economic management bodies. Nikkei Asia, 3 May

Longer reads & opinion

Comment: Western companies in China succumb to Stockholm syndrome. Businesses tend to blame politicians, media or human rights groups in their home countries for antagonising their captors. FT, 5 May

Germany’s Indo-Pacific frigate may send unclear message. Rather than coordinating with European allies, let alone the United States, Germany is doing its own thing. Chatham House, 4 May

China tensions spill over as Europe moves towards Biden’s side. The biggest shift could be yet to come, with polls showing the German Greens party on course for a significant role in government. Bloomberg, 4 May

Comment: China’s pension crisis threatens Xi’s regime. Roger Boyes in The Times, 5 May

Opinion: US is misleading in its assessment of China’s Taiwan threat. FT, 5 May