Beijing is making a spectacle of Capvision, whose shareholders and investors include a network of remarkably high profile and state-connected individuals and companies. Why?
In the corner of the Shanghai office, three heart-shaped balloons float silently over rows of empty desks. Laptops sit half-opened, full cups of coffee beside them, and jackets hang on chairs.
The images, shown earlier this month on China’s state broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV), imply that the office had been teeming with activity just hours before, but that the employees had to leave in a hurry. With interviews from anonymous whistleblowers and uniformed state security officers, the 15-minute segment covered in dramatic detail Beijing’s recent raid of Capvision, a Shanghai-based consultancy.
To many observers, CCTV’s segment felt like the latest shock in an earth-shattering few weeks for the international business community in China. Just weeks before, Chinese authorities detained five Beijing-based employees of the Mintz Group, a global consultancy, for unspecified “illegal business operations,” and raided the offices of Bain & Company. Now, CCT
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On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo met with Wang Wentao, the Chinese Commerce Minister, in Washington. It marked the first cabinet-level meeting in Washington between the U.S. and China during the Biden administration, and it was a signal of the Commerce Department’s increasingly central role in the current U.S.-China relationship. Usually, the Commerce Department is far from the center of anything, but as Katrina Northrop reports, the department is uniquely suited to address the China challenge.
The lawyer and author talks about the attack on a train in the 1920s which created an international incident, the rise of the Communist Party and the conditions for foreign media in China today.
