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Dear reader,

Quite a day: two apparent acts of protest near the U.S. Embassy, allegations of sexual harassment by a high-profile television host, and the end of Qualcomm’s $44 billion merger deal with NXP that required China’s approval. And the trade war drags on, with no end in sight.

We’ve summarized all that and more in seven pieces at the top. The usual load of links follows beneath.

—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief

1. A bomb, and a self-immolation in Beijing

An improvised bomb exploded near the U.S. embassy in Beijing several hours after a woman tried to self-immolate in the same area. It appears from eyewitness accounts in the media that both incidents were acts of protest, but were not connected.

• The police detained a 26-year-old man surnamed Jiang from Inner Mongolia, according to a message posted (in Chinese) by Ping’an Beijing 平安北京, the official Sina Weibo account of Beijing’s Public Security Bureau. The note says he had exploded a “firecracker device,” injuring his hand. No one else was hurt.
• “Police took away a woman spraying gasoline on herself in suspected attempt at self-immolation outside US embassy in Beijing around 11 am Thursday,” according to a tweet from the Global Times. In another tweet, the nationalist rag said “it is not proved yet the incident is related to an alleged explosion around the US embassy in Beijing later” — there was a two-hour time difference between the events.
• Plainclothes agents dragged away a woman who had tried to share photos and videos of the explosion with journalists — Becky Davis of Agence France-Presse tweeted video and photos of the incident.
• Censors quickly deleted photos of smoke wafting around the U.S. Embassy and eye-witness reports that had spread on social media after the blast. China Media Project captured some of the deleted postings.
• For more on the explosion and attempted self-immolation, see SupChina or Reuters.

—Anthony Tao and Jeremy Goldkorn

2. TV host Zhu Jun accused of sexual harassment

Zhu Jun 朱军, a 54-year-old high-profile television host working for China Central Television (CCTV), is facing allegations of sexual harassment filed by a former intern. This is the latest in a remarkable series of #MeToo moments in China that have recently spread to the nonprofit and media worlds.

• On Wednesday, the anonymous alleged victim described the encounter in a post (in Chinese) shared on Weibo, saying she met Zhu when she was an intern on CCTV’s celebrity interview show Artistic Life 艺术人生, where Zhu, as its host, “had tremendous power ... and enjoyed flattery from plenty of colleagues.”
• The woman says that she was inspired by the wave of women who came forward this week with their stories of sexual assault in the media industry. “In the absence of adequate laws to protect victims of sexual harassment, I know that I lack the power to stop Zhu from appearing on Spring Festival Gala and disgusting my family,” the woman wrote. “But I think it’s absolutely unjust for him to get away with what he did.”

Click through to SupChina for details.

—Jiayun Feng

3. Trade war, day 21: ‘A problem with China that’s going to go on for years’

It’s been three weeks since the start of the trade war, and Beijing has today again confirmed that contact with the Americans is frozen.

• "As far as I know, the two sides don’t have contact to renew talks," Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng said, Bloomberg reports (paywall). He added, "We have said many times that the premise for negotiations is to be faithful and honor one’s own words.”
• Flashback: On June 16, the Chinese Communist Party’s house newspaper, the People’s Daily, published a scathing editorial (in Chinese) calling the Trump White House “rude and unreasonable, selfish and headstrong.”
• This followed the humiliation of economic envoy Liu He 刘鹤, who thought he had a deal to end trade tensions by offering to purchase $70 billion extra in American exports, right before Trump escalated tariffs to the $50 billion level, citing the “unfair economic practices” of the Made in China 2025 initiative.
• Liu He is now focusing on domestic issues, having been newly assigned to oversee the reform of China’s state-owned enterprises, the South China Morning Post reports. Though it is not clear whether he retains his importance as the point person on trade, this probably does “reflect a desire in Beijing to focus more on domestic structural problems in the absence of any immediate prospect” for trade war resolution, the SCMP says.
• “We’re going to have a problem with China that’s going to go on for years,” Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative, told the U.S. senate in testimony today, Bloomberg reports (paywall).
• The U.S. and China also traded barbs at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Bloomberg reports (paywall), with the Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Dennis Shea calling China “the most protectionist, mercantilist economy in the world,” and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Xiangchen responding, “Extortion, distortion or demonization does no good to resolve the issues.”
• China continues to steal American intellectual property, according to a new joint report from U.S. intelligence agencies, though “at lower volumes” since former President Obama and Xi Jinping reached an agreement to “curb the practice,” according to the Washington Post.

More trade war reporting:

• Visa restrictions for Chinese students alarm academia / NYT (paywall)
  “President Trump’s confrontation with China is beginning to ripple through American academic and research institutions, as a crackdown on visas for certain Chinese citizens has left the higher education community wondering how it will adapt to the administration’s effort to stop intellectual property theft and slow China’s push for technological supremacy.”
• US House passes defence bill targeting Chinese investments / SCMP
  “The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed a US$716 billion defence appropriations bill that includes language to tighten regulations on Chinese investments in the United States and to prohibit the US government from buying products from major Chinese telecoms firms, including ZTE.”
• US-China trade war: Idaho may be the biggest victim, but not for its potatoes / CNBC
  “Idaho is the state most exposed to fallout from the U.S.-China trade war, even though its most famous product, potatoes, has so far been spared from the wrath of Beijing's retaliatory strikes, according to a new study.”

—Lucas Niewenhuis

4. China kills Qualcomm's $44 billion deal for NXP

A massive cross-border semiconductor company merger, between San Diego-based Qualcomm and Netherlands-based NXP (Next eXPerience), has died after being strung along for over 20 months by Beijing.

• The $44 billion merger required approval by China, in addition to eight other jurisdictions where the two companies conduct significant business, but “Beijing dragged its review out to more than 20 months,” the New York Times reports (paywall).
• Qualcomm scrapped the agreement right as a July 25 deadline for approval approached, because of a “need to end the uncertainty surrounding it,” the Times says.
• “It has nothing to do with Sino-U.S. trade frictions,” Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng insisted, referring reporters to China’s anti monopoly enforcement agency, the State Administration for Market Regulation. However, “the market regulator has not commented on the matter recently.”
• But Qualcomm is an American company, and the Financial Times reports (paywall) that when its team of negotiators visited Beijing in May to work out technical issues in the acquisition paperwork, the Chinese “started to say things along the lines of ‘your president embarrassed Liu He’, ‘he offended the Chinese people’, and all that,” according to a person briefed on the discussions.
• The deal’s failure puts a “big red light on any big M&A in the semiconductor industry in the short term,” Geoff Blaber, an analyst at CCS Insight, told the FT, noting that the semiconductor industry is “a huge strategic priority for China.”

—Lucas Niewenhuis

5. Propaganda shakeup

The South China Morning Post says that “China is shaking up its propaganda and internet leadership as it tries to improve the country’s image abroad and ensure online views toe the Communist Party’s line.”

• “The propaganda work … overhyped China’s rise to becoming a great power, and that image looked pale and unconvincing after the United States started a trade war with China… It’s a strategic mistake or failure. Someone has to be responsible,” one analyst told the SCMP.
• Xu Lin 徐麟 is expected to take charge of the State Council Information Office to coordinate propaganda directed abroad. Xu is currently head of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). Zhuang Rongwen 庄荣文 is said to be Xu’s replacement as Cyberspace chief. Both men are said to be Xi allies. You can find brief biographies of Xu and Zhuang on Chinavitae.

With the trade war animating China’s critics in America, and global awareness growing of intensified repression of Chinese civil society, I don’t envy Xu’s job: the application of massive amounts of lipstick to a very ugly pig.

6. How scholars should respond to Xinjiang concentration camps

A debate has begun about how Sinologists and academics who research China should respond to the enormous repression and social engineering underway in Xinjiang. Scholar Andrew Chubb has summarized the different arguments in a useful Twitter thread.

Andrew was recently a guest on two Sinica Podcasts: Chinese nationalism and its influence on maritime behavior, and Australia’s Beijing problem.

7. One fun read

Laszlo Montgomery, the man behind the China History Podcast, has spent most of his career helping Chinese factories access and sell to the U.S. market. In this essay on China Channel, he recalls his “other life in Chinese manufacturing.”

—Jeremy Goldkorn

Viral on Weibo: An artificial waterfall in southern China

An artificial waterfall in China costs $118 to operate for one hour. The building has decided to operate it for up to 20 minutes at a time, only during special occasions, using recycled water.

Sinica Podcast: Australia’s Beijing problem

Australia has become embroiled in a debate about how serious or coordinated Beijing’s influence operations in the country have become, and what the country should do about it. Two scholars from Australia, David Brophy and Andrew Chubb, give their perspective on the controversy.

Subscribe to the Sinica Podcast via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, or Stitcher, or plug the RSS feed into your favorite podcast app.

When China embraced classical: the Philadelphia Orchestra's historic 1973 tour

When the Philadelphia Orchestra toured China in 1973, they were entering a country in which Western classical music had been verboten just a few years earlier. The musicians endured lukewarm audiences and an over-demanding Madame Mao, but those who went on that trip remember it as a monumental event — one whose lasting impact is evident in China's embrace of Western classical music today.