Previous Columns

July 13, 2026

CNY800bn: The Freeze That Made The Widening Possible

Beijing's July 7 package reads as capital account liberalization only if you ignore the two-year retail brokerage freeze it completed the same week.

Vincent Lai

July 13, 2026

The Statement Was Never For Beijing

The joint statement rejecting China's maritime claims was addressed to Beijing in form only; its real target is a Code of Conduct that Manila's own chairmanship cannot deliver.

Mei Chen

July 13, 2026

The Anniversary Statement Changed Nothing at Sea

The rejection of a decade-old ruling is not this week's real story; a stalling Code of Conduct and Iran's pull on the Pacific fleet are.

Mei Chen

July 12, 2026

Beijing Widens the Hong Kong Pipe, Not the Door

The Hong Kong package expands how much capital can move through state-monitored channels, while a new outbound investment law narrows every channel outside them. That pairing is the actual policy.

Vincent Lai

July 12, 2026

Beijing's SLBM Test Radicalizes Fiji, Not Taipei

Beijing built the July 6 submarine missile test to punish Canberra's new Pacific pact, but the coercion that wears Taipei down is radicalizing the smaller states it also hit.

Mei Chen

July 5, 2026

CSRC's 2.2 Billion Yuan Fine Redirects Hong Kong Flows

The crackdown on informal cross-border brokerages does not shrink Hong Kong's role as capital gateway. It narrows the paths money can take to get there, and that narrowing is the point.

Vincent Lai

July 5, 2026

Taiwan's $25 Billion Answer to a Frozen $14 Billion

The $14 billion arms freeze and Taiwan's collapsing conscript pool arrived in the same month, and Taipei's answer to both was to stop treating Washington as the plan.

Mei Chen

June 28, 2026

HKEX's August 3 Futures and the Futu Shutdown

Beijing is not closing its capital architecture, it is rebuilding it so that only state-sanctioned instruments survive the renovation.

Vincent Lai

June 28, 2026

52 Percent of PLA Leadership, Six Generals in One Day

Xi's removal of six generals in a single day and a completed US warship replica in Xinjiang are not separate stories; together they define whether Beijing's military is hardening or fracturing.

Mei Chen

June 28, 2026

Xi Cleared Six Generals in a Week

The removal of six PLA generals in a single week is not a corruption sweep; it is Xi Jinping remaking the command chain for a military he expects to use.

Mei Chen

June 28, 2026

Beijing Built the Target. Read It.

Beijing's full-scale replica of a US destroyer is not a training aid; it is the clearest statement of intent the PLA has issued in years, and Washington has not read it as one.

Mei Chen

June 21, 2026

PBOC's Repo Goes Direct; HKEX Books August 3

The PBOC's FIMA RMB Repo gives foreign central banks yuan liquidity without routing through Hong Kong; HKEX's August 3 CGB futures are Hong Kong's counter-bid for the same sovereign accounts.

Vincent Lai

June 21, 2026

F-35 at 25 Percent; Lutnick's ASML Call Unsubstantiated

Washington's technology-denial export controls and its F-35 air readiness both showed visible cracks in the same week, and neither crack has been explained away.

Mei Chen

June 14, 2026

Washington Paused $14 Billion; Gao Named 3,000 Kilometers

China's Teodoro sanctions and its doctrine of Guam-range carrier strikes are sequenced coercive moves, not coincidences, timed against Washington's fractured attention and paused Taiwan arms pipeline.

Mei Chen

June 1, 2026

Beijing Read the Iran Kill. Washington Has Not.

The Jerusalem Post report of a Chinese missile downing a U.S. F-15 over Iran is a Taiwan deterrence story, and Beijing read it before Washington framed it.

Mei Chen

May 29, 2026

PBOC's August Fixing Lands Before Tehran Does

China's central bank is reading the 60-day Iran ceasefire as an energy financing window, not a diplomatic pause, and the window expires before the tariff agreement monetary easing requires.

Vincent Lai

May 25, 2026

100 Ships While Washington Watched Tehran

Beijing's 100-ship encirclement of Taiwan arrived within weeks of Washington's Iran ceasefire offer, and the sequencing was not coincidental.

Mei Chen

May 22, 2026

24 Aircraft, One Summit Week

Beijing's military-trust claim from the Xi-Trump summit ran concurrent with 24 PLA aircraft against Taiwan; the sortie count is the operative signal for institutions pricing cross-strait risk.

Vincent Lai

May 18, 2026

NDAA Markup Arrives Before the Deal

The Beijing summit converted Taiwan arms transfers from a US defense obligation into a trade concession, and Taiwan's defense planning now incorporates a variable that Beijing can move.

Mei Chen

May 17, 2026

Trump Is Pricing Taiwan, Not Defending It

Trump's refusal to commit to Taiwan's defense is not deterrence doctrine; it is price discovery, and Beijing is treating the US commitment as negotiable inventory.

Mei Chen

May 16, 2026

The Summit Framework Neither Capital Can Sustain

The Trump-Xi summit produced a Taiwan framework both capitals can describe but neither can operationalize; the PLAN's nine ships make the gap visible.

Vincent Lai

May 16, 2026

Nine Warships, No Defense Commitment

Trump's refusal after the Beijing summit to say whether the US would defend Taiwan gave Beijing the answer it needed before the warships were underway.

Mei Chen

May 16, 2026

Trump's Taiwan Clarity Runs One Way

Trump warned Taipei against independence and declined to commit to its defense; the summit produced not strategic ambiguity but asymmetric clarity that Beijing can sequence against.

Mei Chen

May 16, 2026

What the Nine Warships Actually Confirmed

The Trump-Xi summit's deliberate silence on Taiwan's defense guarantee was not diplomatic hedging; it was operational clearance that the PLA's Eastern Theater Command confirmed within hours.

Vincent Lai

May 15, 2026

The Framework Arrives After the Posture

The Trump-Xi Taiwan framework is being negotiated above a military posture layer, defined by Philippine basing arrangements and AUKUS hull allocation schedules, that no summit text can undo.

Vincent Lai

May 11, 2026

The Budget Cut Before the Summit

Washington's decision to frame Taiwan's defense spending reduction as a China concession tells Taipei what it needs to know about the forthcoming summit's terms.

Mei Chen

May 10, 2026

Duration Risk the Summit Cannot Clear

The Trump-Xi meeting extends the Taiwan Strait interval rather than clearing it, leaving PBOC open-market operations and SAR capital flow architecture holding unpriced duration nobody is discounting.

Vincent Lai

May 8, 2026

Beijing's Arithmetic Before the Summit Table

With Washington pressing simultaneously on Hormuz and Taiwan, Beijing's insistence on setting preconditions tells you more about its balance sheet calculus than its political posture.

Vincent Lai

May 4, 2026

Distributed Deterrence and the Manila Variable

Washington's anti-ship missile deployment near Taiwan marks a shift toward permanent deterrence architecture, but the Philippine-China diplomatic thaw introduces a variable Washington cannot manage.

Mei Chen

May 1, 2026

The Balance Sheet Beneath the Fleet

Beijing's physical buildout in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea constitutes a financial commitment that forecloses optionality well before any political decision is made.

Vincent Lai