Tiananmen -- day before the Victory Day military parade in Beijing. Authorities will seal off this street completely from traffic in the evening today.

Not Geneva. The Black Hills of South Dakota was an early candidate for UN headquarters. FDR was an advocate, mentioning there were already two good diners and a river for trout fishing. United Nations Travel South Dakota

As a sort of economic and educational refugee from South Dakota who fled at 18 and never looked back, this has completely melted my brain. The trout fishing is, however, superb.

A systemic crisis unfolding in the #Russian #grain industry over the last three years has reached its climax, as farmers massively abandon #wheat production, and #exports exhibit an unusual negative dynamic. world-grain.com/articles/21828…

For the first time since at least the 1990s, China hasn’t bought any US soybeans at the start of the export season, a sign that Beijing is again using agriculture as leverage in its trade fight with Washington bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Huge respect to Pak Yiu for making the trek out to North Dakota to talk to the people that will be hit hardest by this aspect of the trade war. Was a pleasure talking with him about Beijing's calculus here.

I also chatted with Katrina Northrop about how Beijing is leveraging soybeans - and ag trade more broadly - to put pressure on Trump in rural red states. That's why beans could feature in the impending Trump Xi call along side TikTok and high tech: washingtonpost.com/world/2025/09/…

A months-long AFP News Agency investigation by Isabel Joy Kua (柯惠琦） and me finally got published this week — digging into the Chinese families brutalised by Myanmar’s vast fraud factories, some of which are seemingly using Elon Musk’s Starlink internet. Read it here: japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/10/1…

"It’s as likely as you being a foreign businessperson working in a small town outside Liverpool & being promised by the worker of a local business that they could set you up with Keir Starmer & then coming down to London and waiting outside a Wimpy for him."

The White House has shared photos of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping’s first face-to-face meeting in more than six years, including this intriguing sequence. h/t Chun Han Wong 王春翰 whitehouse.gov/gallery/presid…

Stop writing about the US-China soybean deal as if it was some kind of win. The sum total of what American farmers got was a screwed up market in 2025 and a deal that returns them to their pre-Trump business as usual in 2026.

Zohran Mamdani is the first NYC mayoral candidate to win 1 million votes since 1969. And 12% of the vote is still out.

China is a manufacturing powerhouse, yet it has low productivity per traditional analysis. But when you look at actual physical output per worker, China’s labor productivity is far higher than traditional estimates. Outstanding piece by Weijian Shan: research.gavekal.com/article/unrave…

China's soybean glut could defeat US export hopes after trade thaw reut.rs/3LzupWs reut.rs/3LzupWs

In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has distributed meat from about 20 of its buffalo. It now has a processing plant that can handle 25-30 animals a week. apnews.com/article/shutdo…

NEW: The New York Times got a State Dept. cable in which Rubio orders diplomats in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to press for immigration limits and cite crime. They’re also told to report on governments that are pro-immigration. w/ @haleaziz. Our story: nytimes.com/2025/11/26/us/…

Can Western media be a bit more responsible and retract their rash claims about bamboo scaffolding being the problem in #HongKongFire? As the fire subsides it’s now clear that most of the bamboos are intact and not even burnt, and the issue was more substandard outer netting.

"CNN has stuck a partnership with Kalshi, the world's largest global prediction market company," Sara Fischer reports. That means the cable news network is now in business with the president's son, Donald Trump Jr., a senior adviser to the company. axios.com/newsletters/ax…

Multiple researchers and startups are making serious progress on producing ammonia, without using fossil fuels. One group is even pulling fertilizer out of thin air! New from Katie Watkins: ambrook.com/offrange/susta…

Great read from the indispensable The China-Global South Project . For those that prefer it, the original CN language piece this analysis is drawn from is here: mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Oo1yp6_Q1Qx-…