A neoliberal approach to the CCP regime in China...

Guideposts:

- Put people who actually know things about China in charge of executing China policy.
- Focus on information over commerce.
- Work asymmetrically to CCP's strengths.

We should end the trade war and restrict future commercial jousting to things that are directly related to defense priorities, not soybeans or "AI". The Chinese business community is a potential future friend. Either way we'll have to work with these folks in the future.

Instead, put the pressure where it really hurts the CCP, namely Sinosphere politics. Make it clear we're willing to work with their liberals and not willing to work with their conservatives. Publicly laud the good guys in the CCP apparatus. At the same time sanction bad actors.

Fund a few hagiographic Mandarin-language documentaries about great Chinese liberal reformers that the CCP can't denounce without losing face, e.g. Sun Yat Sen or Hu Yaobeng. Spread said docs widely. Hand out medals and other awards to prominent Chinese liberal intellectuals.

Start interacting directly with regional CCP leadership, bypassing Beijing wherever possible. Identify sympathetic mid-level figures and do everything possible to tee up big wins for them. Focus on the PRD region and make it clear to local cadres that we consider them "special".

At some point down the road, ideally with zero warning and assuming the ROK leaders are okay with it, put an embassy in Taipei. Justify this by saying "two systems means two embassies, China has a rich history of multi-polar leadership.".

Pair this with some sort of enormous goodwill gesture like publicly declaring that we want them to join us in some form of Pacific security partnership. While we're at it start referring to both ROK and PRC as "China" with as much ambiguity as possible.

Throw substantial money at and clear the regulatory path for American satellite broadband internet over Chinese airspace. Make sure there's no shortage of high quality content for all the Sinosphere language groups. Radio Free ____ was is a great model.

All of the above is intended to sow discord inside the CCP while empowering the good actors that do exist in that organization and in the broader Chinese commercial world. Predictable, slow, measured stuff is not going to get us anywhere. Drunken boxing plus dirty tricks might.

Here's another good one: start referring to China rhetorically as though it were the EU. "Disagreements among member states", "The Peoples and Republics of China", and so on. If called out on this sort of thing or any of the above just play dumb, act friendly, and move on.

Since they already incorrectly assume that we involve ourselves in things like the HK protests, we don't have much to lose by actually involving ourselves in Chinese internal politics. We should stay out of direct espionage action in Hong Kong though. Save that for the mainland.

Coming back to the language minorities point: the Chinese diaspora in the West could easily become the Sinosphere's media behemoth given the appropriate resources. Make sure every Turkic language has its own stream of TV shows. Invest heavily in promoting Cantonese and Hokkien.

We have a choice between the same stupid "deep concern" handwringing as always and actually having some fun with this. Let's choose the latter path and make life better for people in China.

Important thing to note about the CCP regime is that they are very much invested in the idea of "the one true narrative". This makes them deliciously susceptible to exactly the sort of poly-modal, ever-shifting influence techniques the Russians use. We should adopt that strategy.

Dirty political tricks, propaganda, and obnoxious screwing around are just about the least bad things we could borrow from the 19th century London hegemony's toolkit. We should ditch the half-assed post-Vietnam State Department gravitas and get back to playing unfairly.

Since this is getting attention again, a correction to the above: "ROK" is my mistype of "ROC", aka Republic of China, aka Taiwan. Apologies.