Over the past year, I have published 14 opinion articles in The Diplomat, The Hill, and South China Morning Post.
Across these pieces, I return to a central argument that is often avoided but increasingly difficult to ignore:
China’s global competitive advantage is not primarily the result of efficiency, innovation, or industrial upgrading, but of a system that systematically suppresses labor rights, social costs, and accountability.
Building on this premise, my writing examines how China’s low-rights model underpins its manufacturing strength, how “America First” policies unintentionally created strategic openings for Chinese industry, and how Beijing’s currency strategy challenges the international position of the U.S. dollar. These are not isolated economic issues, but interlocking elements of a broader institutional logic.
More critically, China has not confronted the Western alliance head-on. Instead, it has used trade and investment to systematically fragment what was already a loose but essential Western strategic alignment—shifting competition away from rules, values, and institutions toward narrow, country-by-country economic calculations. The result has been a proliferation of tariffs, sanctions, and “de-risking” rhetoric, without a coherent or sustainable collective response.
At the same time, hesitation and retreat in U.S. and European industrial policy, trade negotiations, monetary strategy, and public narrative have reduced many policy tools to symbolic gestures, leaving the underlying structural problem largely untouched.
If institutional differences are not confronted directly—if labor rights, rule enforcement, and public responsibility are not restored to the core of the international economic order—Western economies will continue to lose ground in a competition they have not fully acknowledged, let alone prepared for.
How Western Companies Helped Create Their Chinese Competitors – Like Labubu (January 17, 2026)
Labubu’s success draws on capabilities derived from Western branding and advertising practices over the past two decades – combined with China’s extremely low-cost labor model.
Why China’s Exploitative Labor System Gives It a Strategic Edge (January 8, 2026)
China’s decisive source of global competitive advantage lies in its weak labor protections. And it’s driving a race to the bottom for labor rights.
China’s Low Rights Model Goes Global (November 26, 2025)
China achieved manufacturing dominance thanks to its weaker protections for workers, communities, and the environment. Now it’s exporting that model.
If Workers Can’t Speak, CSR is Just PR (November 21, 2025)
Corporate social responsibility has failed because it has sidelined the people it claims to protect: the workers
International Labor Standards: The Missing Link in China-US Trade Negotiations (July 25, 2025)
The low-cost advantage of labor exploitation remains China’s unshakable core – and also underpins Beijing’s ambitious vision of technological dominance and leadership.
Before the US Realizes the Cost, China Is Rapidly Gaining Soft Power Ground (June 25, 2025)
Washington realized the value of VOA Persian Service too late. Can it change course on other areas of soft power influence?
Europe Must Beware of Potential Risks in the China-US Strategic Competition (June 6, 2025)
The EU must confront a hard truth: the evolving policies of both Washington and Beijing raise questions about their reliability as enduring strategic partners.
Don’t Be Fooled: The China-US Trade War Is Here to Stay (May 13, 2025)
The tariffs may be lower, but the structural tensions at the heart of the trade conflict remain unchanged.
US tariffs a wake-up call for China to improve labour standards (May 2, 2025)
If China’s export competitiveness remains reliant on lowering its labour standards, the US and others will continue their trade-restrictive policies.
The Real Threat Behind Trump’s Trade War: China’s Currency Offensive (April 23, 2025)
China has been steadily working to elevate the international profile of the RMB. Though progress has been gradual, it carries real risks to the U.S. dollar’s dominance.
China Doesn’t Fear Tariffs. It Fears a Credible US Industrial Strategy. (April 12, 2025)
Tariffs alone cannot undo decades of offshoring. Without a complementary labor strategy and industrial policy in the United States, China’s manufacturing advantage will remain intact.
How ‘America First’ created a strategic opening for Beijing (April 1, 2025)
The “America First” doctrine has damaged the global appeal of U.S. brands and inadvertently helped China expand its influence.
The Disappearance of Voice of America Is a Failure of American Values (March 21, 2025)
For decades, VOA has not only brought accurate information to China, but has served as a rare conduit for Chinese activists to speak to the world.
