Editor’s note for June 22, 2023

A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.

Dear reader:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the toughest-on-China of them all? Politicians in the U.S. and elsewhere continue to compete for China-bashing credentials, and some of them are calling for divestment.

But as our top story today shows, some of the rhetoric is just that. Scroll down for a summary or click through for the whole thing.

Happy Dragon Boat Festival, which falls today. One of the most popular origin stories for the holiday, known as 端午节 duānwǔ jié in Chinese, is that it honors an upright government official who is sometimes called the father of Chinese poetry: Qū Yuán 屈原.

Our Word of the Day is a Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 aphorism from today’s People’s Daily:

Don’t engage in political achievement projects that promise instant success

不要搞急功近利的政绩工程

bù yào gǎo jígōngjìnlì de zhèngjì gōngchéng