Trump's overhaul of State Department may play into Beijing's hands for decades
'They are very good hosts and can be really charming when they want to be,' Ingeneri, now in the private sector, said, adding that the US State Department budgets were far smaller and corruption concerns greater. 'We had a hot dog on a Ritz cracker.'
But Chinese officials also mixed their soft power with unbending deportment when espousing Beijing's red lines, he added.
'It's all fun and games – until you want to keep your claim to the South China Sea.'
The US effort to counter China's growing global footprint is difficult enough. President Donald Trump's radical State Department overhaul is not making it any easier and could play into Beijing's hands for decades, according to lawmakers and past and current department officials.
'Our competition with China requires all hands on deck. It's global in nature. It affects virtually every issue, every topic that crosses borders,' said Mark Lambert, a 35-year State Department veteran and former head of its China House overseeing Beijing-focused diplomacy.
'We just gutted [development programmes] ourselves, a huge win for China.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
Robotics' ‘ChatGPT moment' could come within 2 years, founder of China's Unitree says
The 'ChatGPT moment' for the robotics industry could arrive in as little as two years if powerful artificial intelligence technology develops to propel robots' movements, according to the founder of China's industry leader Unitree Robotics Wang Xingxing defined this moment as the first time a robot could perform a task, such as cleaning a room or bringing a bottle of water to a targeted person, in a venue that it had never been to before. 'If things develop fast, it could happen in the next year or two, or maybe two to three years', he said on Saturday at the World Robot Conference in Beijing. Although both robot hardware, such as dexterous hands, and training data were good enough to enable the feat, the crucial element of 'AI for embodied intelligence is completely inadequate', he said. He had 'doubts' about whether popular vision language action (VLA) models, which used a rather 'dumb' architecture, were up to the task, he said. Although Unitree also used such models, along with reinforcement learning to improve pre-trained VLAs in downstream tasks, the approach required a lot of optimisation, he said. Another approach, generating a video or interactive model based on text prompts and making robots follow this to perform tasks, could have a 'higher probability' of succeeding in robot motion control, Wang said. He cited Google's general-purpose Genie 3 'world model', which was launched on Tuesday and is billed as capable of generating models of dynamic worlds that include information on physical properties, as an example of technology development in this area.
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Rocketing to riches: China's cash-hungry aerospace firms aim for IPOs
A recent surge of Chinese commercial aviation companies, either formulating or reviving listing plans, highlights the sector's strong appetite for funding, according to analysts, as Beijing steps up support for innovation-driven businesses seeking to raise capital. LandSpace Technology – which launched in 2023 the world's first methane-fuelled rocket into orbit, ahead of US competitors SpaceX and Blue Origin – entered a coaching agreement with China International Capital Corporation on July 25, targeting an onshore listing on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style tech board Star Market. Just a day before, Jiangsu Yixin Aerospace Technology, a microsatellite communication systems maker, signed with Minsheng Securities, according to filings published on the CSRC website. The pre-listing coaching process – overseen by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the primary regulatory body for the securities market – is a prerequisite for companies aiming to list on the country's A-share market. Conducted by investment banks, the training covers initial public offering (IPO) regulations, legal compliance and business due diligence. Workers complete the final assembly of a launch vehicle . Photo: LandSpace Those moves indicated the companies' intent to raise capital, but the timing and formal submission of IPO applications would ultimately depend on the regulatory climate, said Shen Meng, a director at Beijing-based investment firm Chanson & Co.
The Standard
2 hours ago
- The Standard
HK to lure non-local companies while tapping emerging markets, says John Lee
Further Collaboration with the ASEAN Market -- Hong Kong as a Hub for High-Quality Projects along the Belt and Road
