What's China Up To?
February 23, 2026
1 hr 38 min
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425
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Episode 425 · February 23, 2026
What's China Up To?
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Josh Szeps Episodes Around February 23, 2026
Episode 427 of 468 — walk the feed in the order it was published.
1:38:19This episodeWhat's China Up To?
Summary
Military purges. DeepSeek AI. Social credit scores. Taiwan.
Why has the Chinese leader purged five of the seven members of the military's top decision-making body (one of the remaining two members being himself)?
Next month, the Chinese Communist Party will enact its fifteenth Five-Year Plan. It's a biggie, because 2027 is the centenary of the People's Liberation Army - a date when China has declared it will be ready for major military combat.
Bill Bishop is the most-read China analyst in the world. A former media guy who wrote the New York Times Dealbook's China Insider column, he became an entrepreneur and was the media's go-to China analyst during Covid. He launched one of the first Substacks ever, a fascinating blog about China called Sinocism, which now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Bill and Josh step back to ask: Will China own the 21st century? Will it eat our lunch, or slowly deflate? Happy lunar new year, humans.
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