Senior Analyst (China, Taiwan) at Wikistrat. Former U.S. diplomat. Op-eds: Forbes, National Interest, Newsweek, SCMP. Lived in China 2006-12, Vietnam 2013-18.
Taipei and Tokyo
Joined June 2013
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Gary Sands retweeted
The New York Times quietly deleted “the nation” from its piece on TSMC. Taiwan is no longer one.
Dan Wang’s Oct. 23 guest essay originally read: “TSMC manufactures nearly all of its chips in Taiwan, the nation that China’s Communist Party has long coveted.”
The live article now reads: “Taiwan, which China’s Communist Party has long coveted.” Same piece, same author, two words gone. No correction note.
The original wording is documented across search results and quotes. The current version is what appears on the NYT site itself.
This matches a long pattern. The Times has preferred “island” or “self-governing island” over “country” or “nation” in its own voice for years, a style choice reported in Taiwanese media as far back as 2006 and shared by most major Western outlets under the One China framework.
Beijing polices that vocabulary. After the Times hosted Taiwan’s President Lai at its DealBook Summit and the host’s wording was read as treating Taiwan as a state, China expelled NYT correspondent Vivian Wang (who had no role in the interview). The paper called it wrong. The U.S. revoked a Xinhua journalist’s visa in response.
When the cost of one word can be a reporter’s visa, it’s fair to ask who is editing whom.
My MBA may be 40 years old, but my guess is if you throttle Starlink/Starshield you throttle your business model.
After Elon Musk posted on X saying he had throttled Ukraine’s use of Starlink after it was used for offensive attacks, House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) says the billionaire’s ability to wield that power is “beyond disturbing to me.”
“It cannot and should not be the case that a tech oligarch, a private citizen, who has that much control over our national security, who is unaccountable, who is unelected, with zero transparency, is making life and death decisions on the battlefield in systems that our service members and our partners and allies rely upon,” he adds.
Gary Sands retweeted
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wins reelection in Brazil, securing his fourth term in office. apnews.com/article/brazil-el…
Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) plans to build a rare-earth demonstration plant that could meet half the nation’s relatively small needs by the end of 2030. taipeitimes.com/News/front/a…
Gary Sands retweeted
In 2023 I secured new powers so Confucius Institutes could be shut down.
The Labour Government scrapped those powers in their first months.
The threat is inside our universities, and Labour *chose* to let it fester and grow.
Gary Sands retweeted
Umm, so does this apply to the U.S. military too? SpaceX will disable Starshield when it thinks that the U.S. military defending Taiwan, for example, is using the network for “unequivocally offensive” strikes? Or does this only apply to Ukrainians?
The US International Development Finance Corporation, not to be confused with China's DFC set up by the Frenchman Jean Monnet in the 1930s and now defunct.
Under President @realDonaldTrump and @SecRubio, America is helping our Western Hemisphere neighbors grow by mobilizing private capital – free from the coercive hand of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Taiwantown
I went to Phoenix to spend time with the Taiwanese community. TSMC will invest $265 billion and send thousands of engineers and their families, which marvel at their new lives in the Sunbelt
My first feature as a contributing writer to the New York Times:
nytimes.com/2026/10/23/opini…
Sad to read, but on the plus side, Shanghai would never had any offices if Mao had gone ahead with plans to abolish the city in 1949.
Shanghai tops world in empty offices as overseas investment pulls away s.nikkei.com/4hSDyHn
As he lay dying after an assassin's attack, Song told Sun Yat-sen, "I humbly hope that your excellency will champion honesty, propagate justice, and promote democracy, so that the parliament can produce an everlasting constitution."
Now available! Song Jiaoren (1882–1913) was early-twentieth-century China’s greatest champion of constitutional democracy. Don C. Price provides the definitive biography of Song Jiaoren. buff.ly/5pUWeKk #Biography #China
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"What misleads the country can be expressed in one word, selfishness, and what suffocates all under heaven is precedent." - the Empress Dowager Cixi.
This is one of the more interesting graphs on CCP disciplinary enforcement I’ve seen in some time. “Hedonism and extravagance” are relatively well-defined offenses (essentially, abusing reimbursement policies and engaging in overly conspicuous consumption—this is why Chinese bureaucrats all wear Longines watches), whereas “formalism and bureaucratism” were, in the past, so poorly defined that they were effectively unenforceable. Since about 2018, there’s been a flurry of regulatory activity seeking to give those terms clearer definition, mainly focusing on “lack of concrete action when implementing top-down directives.” That’s still pretty vague to external observers, but the more interesting question is whether they can at least generate predictable standards of behavior to party insiders. The incredibly rapid growth of disciplinary cases against those offenses suggests, at least, that they’ve become well defined enough to permit large scale, top-down enforcement.
"Since the mechanism’s creation in 2019, none of the 45 complaints tracked on its website as of September 15 this year had passed the admissibility stage. "
thediplomat.com/2026/10/inac….
Gary Sands retweeted
This is one of the more interesting graphs on CCP disciplinary enforcement I’ve seen in some time. “Hedonism and extravagance” are relatively well-defined offenses (essentially, abusing reimbursement policies and engaging in overly conspicuous consumption—this is why Chinese bureaucrats all wear Longines watches), whereas “formalism and bureaucratism” were, in the past, so poorly defined that they were effectively unenforceable. Since about 2018, there’s been a flurry of regulatory activity seeking to give those terms clearer definition, mainly focusing on “lack of concrete action when implementing top-down directives.” That’s still pretty vague to external observers, but the more interesting question is whether they can at least generate predictable standards of behavior to party insiders. The incredibly rapid growth of disciplinary cases against those offenses suggests, at least, that they’ve become well defined enough to permit large scale, top-down enforcement.
A majority of Taiwanese (52.3%) believe the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is undermining peace across the Taiwan Strait, while 28.5% said both Taiwan and the CCP were responsible. taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/…
"The politicization of the military (along with the diplomatic corps and intelligence communities) is making it less likely that policymakers will receive the best advice, including frank warnings about risks and costs." foreignaffairs.com/united-st…
Gary Sands retweeted
👋Join us! 👋
The Liu Xiaobo Fellowship application is out!
Deadline: Nov. 5th
Details➡️bit.ly/4yXAxLw
