• AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    While the world is distracted by war in the Middle East and Ukraine, a Stalin-like purge is sweeping through China’s ultra-secretive political system, with profound implications for the global economy and even the prospects for peace in the region.

    With such a febrile atmosphere in the celestial capital of Beijing, there are fears that an isolated and paranoid Chairman Xi could miscalculate, provoke armed conflict with one of its weaker neighbors or even launch a full-scale invasion of democratic Taiwan in order to distract from his domestic troubles.

    “We see a China domestically that is challenged; an aging society, demography, a severe housing crisis, slowing down growth, unexpected unemployment because the young generation leaving university does not find adequate jobs in the private sector anymore,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who heads to Beijing this week with her European Council counterpart Charles Michel for the first face-to-face EU-China meeting in nearly five years, told POLITICO last week.

    Fu attended Cambridge University, a traditional recruiting ground for Britain’s intelligence agencies, and first met Qin more than a decade ago when he was posted to the Chinese Embassy in London.

    In 2016, Churchill College, Fu’s alma mater at Cambridge, named a garden after her in gratitude for her “very rare … series of generous gifts,” reportedly adding up to at least £250,000, an enormous sum for most journalists.

    It said Wang Shaojun, commander since 2015 of the Central Guard unit that protects China’s top leaders and oversees Chairman Xi’s personal bodyguard, had died three months earlier due to “ineffective medical treatment.”


    The original article contains 1,543 words, the summary contains 261 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!