GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
————————————-
THIS IS CHINA POST #600.
ITS FUNCTION IS TO BRING TOGETHER COMMENT IN THE FOREIGN MEDIA ABOUT CHINA AND TO ADD A PERSONAL VIEW.
WHY?
AS CHINA GROWS IN IMPORTANCE THERE IS A NEED TO CORRECT THE IMBALANCE THAT FLOWS FROM OFTEN PREJUDICED COMMENT THAT PERMEATES THE REPORTS BY FOREGN MEDIA.
THERE IS ALSO A NEED TO EXPLAIN CHINA POLICY SO THAT ITS ESSENCE BECOMES KNOWN TO A WIDER AUDIENCE.
GENERALLY, THIS COLUMN IS POSITIVE ABOUT CHINA – EYES WIDE OPEN ALWAYS. INFORMED COMMENT IS NECESSARY TO CORRECT THE IMBALANCE THAT IS EVER PRESENT IN REPORTS FROM WESTERN WRITERS AND REPORTERS.
CHINA POST #600 REMINDS THAT ALL EARLIER POSTS CAN BE SEEN ON THE WEBSITE – : https://grahamperryonchina.com
——————————–
MEDIA EXTRACTS
EXTRACT #1
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
WEDDINGS IN CHINA
“The six storey INS Land complex in Shanghai is usually thronged with partygoers swarming nightclubs dedicated to hip hop, disco and metal. But this month it made a very different pitch to the city’s young: as a venue for wedding ceremonies.
When the Financial Times visited the site, construction workers were setting up a lavish reception room bedecked with piles of fake grass where couples will register their marriage and celebrate with friends with a themed musical performance.
INS Land is part of an unexpected boom in weddings in China, after officials relaxed rules on marriage registration. In what the state-owned China Daily described as a “youth-oriented transformation of public services” to encourage marriage, couples are now allowed to tie the knot in far-flung holiday resorts and even music festivals. Civil servants are stationed at popular wedding venues to handle the paperwork.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
China wants to boost its low birth rate.
The early evidence is encouraging. In the first three quarters of 2025, 5.2mn new marriages were recorded, according to statistics from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, an increase of 405,000 from a year earlier. The Shanghai venue is part of an unexpected weddings boom
Beijing faces a long-term challenge as its rapidly ageing population is supported by a shrinking pool of working-age citizens. A 2024 UN study predicted that China will shrink from 1.4bn people last year to 1.3bn by 2050, and then plunge to 633mn by 2100, a demographic shift that officials and economists fear will drag on growth.
Other elements of a nationwide campaign to encourage young people to marry and have children range from subsidies for new parents to “love courses” at universities designed to teach students about relationships. Local initiatives offer financial incentives for newly-weds and extended honeymoon leave for civil servants.
“The main reasons people don’t marry or have children are financial strain and work stress,” said Chen Xiaoshan, an academic from Shanghai, who married last year. “Raising kids requires endless competition — you can’t afford to lose your job, and most people lack a secure financial safety net. It’s exhausting.”
——————————–
EXTRACT #2
METALS WEEKLY
“During his first year, President Donald Trump has been globetrotting attempting to ink trade deals, repair tattered relationships and attract manufacturing back to America.
However, no mission has been more crucial than his recent trip to South Korea. Behind the bluster of new “reciprocal” tariffs was the simple fact that China is not only a manufacturing, trading and military challenge, but it is our primary supplier of strategic metals.
“However, we lack a strong domestic supply chain, making the country heavily dependent on imports for most of its mineral needs,” the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), a Congressional bipartisan group, reported.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS
No apology for returning to Rare Earths. It appears as an economic issue but this is a political issue that lies at the heart of U.S.-China relations. It is the Geo-Political issue of our time.
In 2024, the U.S. imported all of 12 critical minerals and more than half of another 28. China dominates global supply chains, being the top producer of 60% of U.S.-designated critical minerals and is also the leading source for nine of 13 minerals for which the United States is most import reliant.
Metals are vital to economic growth. and their demand has never been higher. The world’s growing population (the current 8.2 billion) is expected to increase 25% over the next 30 years, Materials Today reported.
Yet America, which once looked to the Pacific Northwest as the primary supplier of critical metals, no longer does. Five primary copper and silver smelters in Montana, Northern Idaho and Washington have been closed. Today, copper ore concentrates are sent overseas, mostly to Japan, for smelting.
By the end of World War II, America produced 40% of global aluminum. However, by 2021, the U.S. had less than 2% market share, Light Metal Age, an industry magazine reported.
The decline of U.S. aluminium coincides with the speedy rise in Chinese production. By 2000, China’s capacity skyrocketed by over 2,000% and now accounts for 57% of global capacity.
Rare-earth elements are necessary components of more than 200 products across a wide range of applications, especially high-tech consumer products, such as cell-phones, computer hard drives, electric and hybrid vehicles, and flat screen monitors and televisions. Significant defence applications include electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, and radar and sonar systems.
I conclude on Rare Ore. The United States is discovering new deposits of rare ore. Unfortunately for the U.S. they are mined and shipped to China for refining. The Chinese have 90% of the processing technology.
—————————
EXTRACT #3
STILL NO TRUMP/XI COMMUNIQUE
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
From rare earths to soybeans three weeks after Chinese President Xi Jinping and his American counterpart, Donald Trump, were photographed smiling and shaking hands after a meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, there is still no joint document, no shared press release and no text that either side has jointly signed or acknowledged publicly.
In their unilateral statements, Washington has been unusually specific, insisting that rare earth “general licences” are imminent and touting large figures for future soybean purchases. Beijing, by contrast, has stayed far more restrained, offering only broad and carefully worded statements. In private, Chinese officials have been hesitant to talk about specific details in the US announcements.
Experts say the gap between Washington and Beijing reflects deep differences in how each side interprets and presents summit discussions.
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
The SCMP observes that “Analysts note that the lack of formal documentation and the US delegation’s limited attendance and apparent absence of detailed note-taking has only magnified the divergence, making a concrete deal before Thursday especially challenging.”
Wendy Cutler, a former US trade negotiator said “it would not be the first time that two negotiating partners have different takes on what was actually agreed upon, but this time around the stakes are unusually high. The one-year truce is fragile enough without these emerging gaps”.
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific programme at the German Marshall Fund, said the imbalance in documentation may have begun at the summit itself.
“I was told that Trump didn’t permit anyone on the US side to take notes – usually an NSC [National Security Council] senior director or State AS [assistant secretary] – but neither were allowed to attend,” she said, noting that “not taking copious notes is unusual”.
Glaser noted, that Bessent publicly claimed Beijing had agreed to specific soybean purchase volumes without China confirming those amounts.
The truth? Tension persists in the U.S.-China relationship. Trump’s “12 out of 10” was a wish not a fact. He was under pressure to report good news on rare earths and soybeans in particular but only the most general comments have emerged. Again, Trump met his match in Seoul. He may regard himself as the Master of the Deal but the accumulated experience of Chinese leaders in dealing with the KMT, the Japanese and with their own development (including high level talks and agreement with their own Billionaires) would have prepared them for the wayward and unsettling experience of direct negotiations with Trump.
Seoul marked the coming of age of the Chinese leadership on the international stage. They are experienced, informed, tactical and very capable. Trump will have been unnerved. It was not 12 out of 10 or even 10 out of 12. More likely a 4 out of 10. Trump may view himself as Master of the Deal but the Chinese are Masters of the Negotiation.
———————————
EXTRACT 4
TRUMP URGES JAPANESE PREMIER – RE CHINA – “COOL IT”
NIKKEI ASIA
“U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi have discussed Takaichi’s recent comments on Taiwan, people familiar with the matter said.
Sources close to the prime minister said Thursday that she and Trump had agreed to “cooperate to calm” China’s anger over Takaichi’s remark this month that an invasion of Taiwan could escalate into a situation that requires Japan to mobilize its defense forces.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the U.S. leader had advised against provoking Beijing regarding Taiwan, though he did not ask her to retract her comments.
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Takaichi is trying to calm the turbulence stirred up by her remarks. “It’s my responsibility to build comprehensive, positive relationships through dialogue and maximize our national interest,” she said. It looks as if the new Japanese Prime Minister realises that she made a mistake.
Significantly, Trump avoided raising the Taiwan issue during his in-person meeting with Xi in October, instead focusing on practical matters such as persuading China to import more American soybeans and push back its export restrictions on rare-earth metals. But something significant is underway. This past week Xi initiated contact with Trump – quite unusual in itself. His approach was wrapped in words that were a throwback to 1945 when at the end of World War II China and the U.S. were on the same side – against Japan. But Xi’s approach is not triggered by the Japanese PM’s provocative comments about Taiwan. It is much bigger that that. It is Xi saying to the U.S. – “Now is the time to reset China-U.S. relations. Rare Earths has changed the balance of power. China has leverage. China wants to use it to resolve the Taiwan question by getting Trump to enable Taiwan to reunite with China” Remember Taiwan is China’s #1 international issue and China is in a position where it can apply pressure – using Rare Earths – to get Trump and the U.S. to change.
——————————
CHINA AND JACK PERRY PART 23
PART 22 ENDED AS FOLLOWS;-
“I do not want to overplay the significance of the Jewish common ground but Ji, when in the U.S. spent time with Philip Jaffe, the brother of his wife Harriet. Ji also spent time with Jack who, despite being an atheist, was a very knowledgeable and informed Jew who had excelled in Jewish studies at school and at synagogue in his youth.” Jack and Ji both had wives who were Jewish.
In this Part 23 I will return to the career of Dr Ji and his remarkable work – notwithstanding his secret membership of the China Communist Party – as Secretary and Adviser to H.H. Kung, the Finance Minister of the KMT.
The narrative is important because it conveys to the Western reader the geo-political thrust in 1951 of the New China. China was widely referred to as “The Sick Man of Asia”. It was poor, impoverished and war-ravaged. But it was turning a page. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, China had stood up. It had repulsed the Japanese invasion of 1937 and by 1945 had chased its marauding forces out of China. It had defeated Chiang Kaishek and the Kuomintang (KMT) who had fled to Taiwan. It was ready to build a New China and it needed new commercial partners to play its part on the world stage. The narrative will focus on the manner in which Dr Ji positioned himself – leading to his approach to Jack in 1952 to set up a trading company to facilitate long term commercial relations between China and the UK.
So today there is more about Dr Ji’s dual role as a secret member of the Communist Party and as a financial adviser to senior members of the Kuomintang before the focus of the narrative reverts to Jack and his early visits to China which are recorded in his contemporary letters to Doris and we children.
Dr Ji had returned to China in 1929 intending to travel to the wartime capital of the Communist Party in Yan’an but Zhou Enlai intervened and directed him to return to the U.S. Ji mixed with Kuomintang leadership (the opponents of the Communist Party of China) in the U.S. He became a close associate of the KMT supporting Shanghai banker, Mr K.P. Chen, and was appointed Secretary-General of the Sino-American British Currency Stabilisation Board. A senior KMT official, Chen Lifu, later complained that the intelligence agencies knew of Ji’s communist connections but that the KMT Finance Minister, H.H. Kung trusted him and his successor, T.V. Soong also backed Ji.
Ji’s half-brother, Ji Chaozhu, later to become China’s Ambassador to the UK in the mid 1990’s. said that Finance Minister H.H. Kung had once demanded of Ji Chaoding “”Are you a Communist?”. He replied “Uncle, I have followed you these many years. Do I look like a Communist to you.” Ji Chaoding won the day and his double life was never revealed – until the establishment of the PRC in 1949.
One well known story about Ji Chaoding. In 1948 he travelled to Australia as an advisor to the KMT at the United Nations Economic Council and on his return to China he was made financial adviser to KMT General – Fu Zuoyu. Ji was instrumental in persuading Fu to surrender his army to the CPC in Beijing during discussions held in Fu’s Beijing home. At those negotiations for the surrender neither side – not the KMT nor the CPC – were aware that Dr Ji who was advising the KMT general was a secret member of the CPC reporting to Zhou Enlai.
When the war ended Ji, his wife Harriet and their two sons – Emil and Karl – returned to China. The couple divorced as Ji wanted to stay in China and Harriet wanted to return to the U.S.
On the eve of the inauguration of the PRC on 1 October 1949, Ji became the Assistant General Manager of the Bank of China and a member of the CPCCC – the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He married for a second time to Luo Jingyi, a student activist who had joined the Communist Party whilst in the U.S. in the 1920’s.
Ji was one of the leaders of two significant Chinese delegations – first to the Moscow Economic Conference of 1952 and in December 1957 to the Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference together with Guo Morou, later to become Vice-Premier. Ji died suddenly in 1963 of a cerebral haemorrhage. Professor Joseph Needham organised a memorial service in Cambridge and asked Owen Lattimore and other prominent leaders to speak including Jack Perry. Lattimore said Ji was “humane to the marrow of his bones”. In Beijing Premier Zhou Enlai delivered the funeral address at a service attended by state leaders and by the former KMT general – Fu Zuoyu.
After his death it became known that Dr Ji had lived in the same boarding house as John S. Service, the American Foreign Service Officer who leaked key U.S. documents to Ji’s brother in law (Harriet’s brother) – Phillip Jaffe. Chen Lifu told historian Stephen MacKinnon that it was “Chen Hansheng and Ji Chaoding who were responsible for the loss of the mainland”.
Ji wrote his doctoral dissertation at Columbia University entitled Key Economic Areas in Chinese History. It was only 136 pages long but it had wide influence. A review of the 1964 reprint noted “three decades after completion and initial publication, this study still offers data and insights on the economic history of China not readily available elsewhere”. Ji used the geographical distribution of water control to explain the territorial form of China’s political and economic development.
Ji’s career is covered at length for two reasons;- first, it is an important part of modern China’s history and, second, for its significance in the reach-out to Jack and the formation of London Export Corporation. Part 24 will return to Jack’s transformation from manufacturer of ladies’s clothing to trader in international commodities and behind the change in business focus lay Jack’s opportunity to see view the development of China from the earliest days of the People’s Republic of China. What were the mechanics of trade? How was business conducted? And how did the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution affect the development of trade and business between China and the UK?
GRAHAM PERRY
