A worker in a pharmaceutical plant in China, one of the only sectors in China experiencing a rise rather than fall in foreign investment. Source: fdiIntelligence

For the last five months, few news stories have dominated the headlines like Trump's trade war. Awkward White House audiences with foreign dignitaries, surprise tariff announcements, and European leaders lining up to kiss the ring have become a news staple in the new American Twilight Zone. The latest twist from Judge Rudolph Contreras has proven no less dramatic.

China fits uncomfortably in this new media reality. It's unique place as America's greatest rival and deepest dependency gives it many faces it schizophrenically cycles through in the American imagination. At times, it's a rising rival that must be contained. At others, a patient and shrewd operator waiting to pick up the pieces of the Liberal International Order (or, whatever's left after Palestine anyways). And, sometimes, an abusive partner and dependency with no clear exit.

The U.S. and China's rapidly souring trade relationship is, supposedly, meant to show the beginning of a 'Great Divorce'; a tectonic, globally-transformative event where the world's two largest economies mutually split ways and on-shore their respective economic dependencies. China starts manufacturing chips, medical instruments, and other advanced technology. America starts producing in Trump's grand vision, hopefully, toys. And, lending credence to this, is the apocalyptic fall in Chinese direct exports to the U.S. in the last few months.

This picture, however common in the financial press, is inaccurate in two ways. The first is that, if looking at U.S. imports of goods with substantial Chinese contribution rather than strictly goods marked as “Made in China”, it’s unclear if the 'Great Divorce' is actually happening. U.S. - Chinese mutual trade dependency has, if anything, only demonstrated its utmost resilience. The second is that Trump's April tariff war is only one part of a much greater and more comprehensive bipartisan decoupling drive dating back to 2018, which encompasses aspects of the U.S. - China relationship beyond just trade. As China's steadily climbing post-Liberation Day export numbers have shocked the commentariat, it only takes one quick look at foreign investment flows into China to see where the change is really happening.

In short, if you want to see where the 'Great Divorce' is happening, you need to look exactly where the press is not.

The Paradox of Trade

The broad consensus for the current moment is deceptively simple. High, punitive tariffs have made Chinese imports uncompetitive, and so we're going to struggle through inflation and empty shelves for a while until we can find someone else to buy everything from. Just take a look at the graph of U.S. imports of Chinese goods I put earlier, see the big line going down after April, and shrug. Seems right to me!

Before going in the direction many readers are expecting this section to take and discuss Chinese goods routed via intermediary states, a much more basic reframing needs to be made. Right now, ask yourself: do you think any country that is America's fourth biggest source of imports is just a small, unimportant trade partner? No?

Well, that's Vietnam. As of June 2025, China is still the U.S.' third largest source of imports behind Canada and Mexico.

In June alone, America still imported $18.9 billion in goods directly from China. Even months into the trade war, the U.S. is likely to import over $200 billion in goods from China by year end. Forgetting transshipment or shifted supply chains through intermediary states like Vietnam for a second, the U.S. and China still trade bilaterally in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

But, for this trade-centric decoupling narrative to fall apart further, one only has to look at Southeast Asia. As noted by the better parts of the financial press, Chinese exports to Southeast Asian states, and their respective exports to the U.S., have exploded. While these supply chains date back to the first trade war in 2018, China's exports to Southeast Asia since April have grown almost lock-step with the decline of U.S. - China bilateral trade. As I outlined in earlier reporting, much of this can be attributed to gray market transshipment as well.

I didn't say Vietnam was the U.S.' fourth largest source of imports for nothing, earlier, did I? Whether China-centric supply chains, where Chinese firms capture most of the value-chain before exporting the products to be finished in Southeast Asia, or pure illegal transshipment - 'Made in China' doesn't mean anything. Wherever it's 'Made', the mutually dependent, deeply interconnected U.S. - China relationship remains.

But, many relationships that end in divorce still have their good parts. There's just one, or more, absolutely intolerable parts that bring things to their end. For that, we just have to look at a different kind of international flow: foreign direct investment.

A Stalled Decoupling

While the U.S. - Chinese trade relationship has been defined by a surprising resilience, the fall in foreign direct investment (FDI) into China in 2023-2025 cannot be described as anything but epochal. From all sources and on all fronts.

A notable difference from trade, and why it's important to consider the U.S. - China relationship beyond Trump, is that the collapse in Chinese inward FDI predates Trump's inauguration by two years. What we're looking at is not just a five month tariff slapfight, but the latest development in a multi-front, multi-year economic war. 'Liberation Day' tariffs are unique not because of their willingness to try and sever American dependence on China, which is a characteristic they share with many older Trump or Biden era policies, but because of their severity and aggressiveness. The Second Tariff War is a difficult beast to grasp because it shares many continuities with the last 7 years of bipartisan China policy while being fundamentally different in just as many ways. As I reported before, Biden tried to give coherence and strategy to the similarly erratic tariff war he inherited from the first Trump term, to decidedly mixed and dissapointing results.

Trump has, once again, decided to act first and ask questions later.

It's true that the fall in inward FDI from all nations into China cannot solely by attributed to the vicissitudes of U.S. - China relations. Tariff barriers have risen all across the globe in response to China's climbing exports and China's high-tech indigenization effort has pushed global multinationals out of many domestic markets. But, the potentially catastrophic consequences of Chimerica's latest drama is clearly setting the pace for global multinationals, and they are listening. A look at trends in American FDI in Asia over the past couple years at least sheds light on the behavior of American multinationals: U.S FDI into China is frozen, while investments into the rest of Asia are not.

Teasing out the distinctions between the tariff war, the greater decoupling drive, China's increasing frostiness to foreign firms, and their - in my opinion - fundamental interrelation, is a topic that requires its own article that I will write sometime soon. But for now, what I will say is that these are not issues that should be considered separately. U.S. decoupling and China's push for high-tech autarky are two parts in a rapidly spiraling negative feedback loop, where each escalation in the weaponization of America's dominance in high-tech sectors via export or investment restrictions leads to an intensification of China's determination to end its dependencies on the U.S.

On the bright side for China's surely exhausted trade negotiators, it seems Trump has put down China and moved on to shinier toys. Newly announced 50% tariffs on India and punitive tariffs on many Southeast Asian states for permitting Chinese transshipment has now made China, strangely enough, a cheaper place to export from than many of America's friends. Like everything else in the Trump regime, how long this calm will last is anyone’s guess.

(Since drafting that paragraph one week ago, it’s come out that Trump has just pushed the EU to impose 100% tariffs on China and India. Hopefully, the negotiators enjoyed their break)

This is the first of a new series focusing on all things China through the lens of charts, data, and my ramblings. Subscribe for more ChinaCharts!

This is part two of “Live from the Trade War”, a series following the fallout of Liberation Day from on-the-ground in China. Expect more interviews with Chinese suppliers, logisticians, and scholars. Image source: The Australian

Liberation Day shocked the world. Since that day, international media has rightfully been preoccupied with reporting on world history’s most expensive drama. Every Truth Social post, every internecine advisor squabble, and every subtle easing of tone.

What’s been surprisingly under-examined in the Liberation Day fallout is none other than the primary target, China. Quietly, a nation-wide effort has rapidly coalesced to withstand the U.S in what has quickly become a cross-Pacific economic total war.

China’s central government, alongside provincial and local governments, are pairing up with U.S – exposed exporters in a truly immense range of state and public-private programs to re-route billions of dollars in trade and muster even greater sums for short-term funding and assistance.

Chen is one of those exporters. His factory this year was projected to gross nearly $10 million dollars from U.S clients, which is only his second biggest market behind Indonesia. Since Trump fired the first shots of war on April 2^nd, Chen has been busy.

His experience over the past month shows the dizzying array of mitigation strategies – state and private – that have been mobilized in just the span of a couple weeks. Programs marshaling billions of dollars have materialized that didn’t even exist before April.

Any analysis you’ve read from two weeks ago is already outdated. Any analysis you’ve read from a week ago probably already is too. It cannot be stressed how quickly things are changing on the ground. That being said, let’s take a peek into Chen’s company over the past month and see what we can learn.

April in Guangzhou

The first thing that stands out in Chen’s busy month is the fast-acting support of the local, not central, government in Guangzhou. “Our government is helping. Right now, I’m applying for a loan to [pay] my workers. The local [Guangzhou] government is helping lower taxes and cover some expenses this month.” Low-interest rate loans to “ensure cashflow to purchase raw materials and pay salaries” are helping firms in China’s biggest manufacturing cluster bear the short-term impact as they wait for a trade deal.

That’s also been matched by a strong government push to help Chinese exporters find buyers in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and South America. “Three weeks ago, I attended a lot of [local government-led] seminars, which gave me the opportunity to connect with purchasers in other countries. Mostly European countries, like Italy and England. [Also] Africa, Southeast Asia, and Russia. England is a huge, huge opportunity for us.”

This interesting mix of public-private coordination is turned truly into a Chimaera when Chen’s main source of new buyers from these seminars is revealed: TikTok shops. Yet less than a month ago, TikTok Shop didn’t even exist in Germany, France, or Italy. Major global flows are going through pathways that are barely older than Liberation Day itself.

TikTok has become central to China’s public-private mass-mobilization, as local governments all across China try to come up with ways to shield local consumer goods manufacturers from the trade war. This has no doubt also been a national priority, evidenced by TikTok’s recently unveiled plans to enter Japan’s online shopping market. Expect TikTok, especially in relation to its presence in the U.S, to only grow in controversy as the U.S and China’s geopolitical rivalry escalates.

For Chen, it’s provided a crucial source of orders to replace the loss of his second biggest market, “I’m still busy because I have a lot of new Latin American and European companies putting in orders. A lot of TikTok brands come to our factory to order new products, and this will be a big opportunity for us to enter [these] markets.”

But, even with the TikTok-fueled export-push, pain is still on the menu. Chen reported that many Guangzhou exporters have put their employees on unpaid leave until mid-May. He himself will likely have to layoff some employees, “My first priority is to make fast moves to find new clients, and my second priority is to cut down our workforce. We are now evaluating people in every department, and will pay some severance [for them] to leave and save labour costs.” According to Trivium, Chinese Premier Li Qiang stated that the central government is prepared to help businesses keep workers on payroll, signaling that the costs of this trade war on employment are not lost to China’s economic planners.

April in the United States

Now that we’ve tallied the fast-shifting situation on the ground in Guangzhou, let’s jump to the U.S. What are major U.S importers doing now that they weren’t doing a week or two ago? And what about re-industrialization, is international investment really flocking to U.S shores?

Well, it’s a mixed picture. And it will only get clear once we have some real, hard numbers. Contradictory trends are appearing and it’s not clear which trends are the strongest.

For instance, take “empty shelves”, the media’s new favourite catch-phrase. The data that we do have access to seems undeniable – empty shelves are coming. Trucking volumes out of LA are at a near-COVID low and bookings out of China fell 60% in one week as the Port of Los Angeles’ total import volume dropped 35%. Container volumes across New York’s ports are expected to be down 40% YoY by Friday. Companies are also in the middle of planning purchases for holiday seasons, meaning the fallout of this highly disruptive environment will likely impact economic activity through the end of the year.

However, according to Chen, there are green shoots. “This is very, very uncommon but some U.S companies have called factories back to renew production and they don’t care about tariffs[…] Walmart, Costco, Target. They said they don’t care about the taxes and will just pay it because there’s a shortage right now. Some stores cannot change their supply chain because they’re finding suppliers in other countries aren’t able to provide the same quality for the same price as Chinese factories.” This was also independently reported by a Singaporean news site.

If shipping data is anything to go by, the scale of these orders is small, but ramping production back up will also take time to bear out in container data. I would guess that big box retailers, staring down the prospects of empty shelves, are mitigating them to the extent possible by continuing orders of high-margin products and selling them near-cost. However, almost everything else is likely on hold indefinitely. That means empty shelves.

Now, what about re-industrialization? Has foreign investment materialized yet?

First Movers or Crazy Cowboys?

On Sunday, the South China Morning Post published an eye-catching article.

Seductively titled “Chinese firms race to open US factories to avoid sky-high tariffs”, it lays out the stories of a few different Chinese exporters, working in fields as diverse as novelty gifts, petrochemicals, printed mugs, electronics, and t-shirts, on a mad dash to build factories in the U.S and get on the other side of the tariff wall. Something like this makes one think that the tariffs might actually be working…

Here, in the absence of clear data, we can learn some things from Chen.

Chen was ahead of the curve. He started construction on a new, U.S-based factory months ago after the first tariff jitters spread through the market. “We began at the start of 2025. Other companies told me they will establish factories in Vietnam, Malaysia, or Latin America to avoid tariffs; but I think American customs can identify it’s still a Chinese company and will [soon] have some sort of other policy to stop Chinese companies.”

Construction on his plant has continued apace throughout the tariff war, but some problems have become immediately apparent. Supply chains cannot be simply split into “importer – consumer” and “exporter – manufacturer” boxes, the process of manufacturing requires a wide array of imported inputs such as machinery, raw materials, and intermediary goods. Manufacturers are simultaneously importers and exporters - and many aren’t even exporters!

In Chen’s own words, “When we establish the factory in the U.S, we will get all the raw materials from China. We cannot purchase them in the U.S[…] But if you import them, it’s very competitive.” When asked what he’ll do if tariffs stay high, he was still insistent on the unsuitability of domestic production. “We’ll import the raw material from Europe or some other high-standards overseas company, so we’ll find a way. But maybe very high costs.”

Chen’s experience is matched by other Chinese firms looking to re-shore production to the U.S, many of whom are now getting cold feet as plant construction costs have doubled in some instances due to tariffs on Chinese machinery that cannot be sourced in the U.S. There’s nothing unique here about these Chinese firms, American companies gauging the viability of building plants in the U.S face the same issues importing machinery and costing out inputs.

Just like the earlier story of big box retailers resuming some orders, contradictory trends amid a low-information environment leave us with little to say besides guesses. In the short term, uncertainty over long-term tariff rates and a worsening macroeconomic environment are likely to dramatically decrease foreign and domestic investment in U.S manufacturing. Paired with high tariff rates on necessary inputs and machinery to start up production, re-shoring stories like Chen’s are likely to animate online discourse but be lost in a sea of negative data. As I reported previously, U.S – Chinese business relationships are stubborn and hoping to wait out a crisis they perceive will resolve shortly – and will end disastrously if not.

None of this points to anything good.

Final Note

While writing this article, I’ve been shocked by the paucity of high-quality data available. Twitter chatter from logisticians and reporters is just that – chatter. Whispers, rumors, and disconnected stories that are impossible to piece together into any real account of the stakes of the current moment without solid data.

Are Chen and the SCMP exporters part of a greater trend? Is TikTok really helping reroute billions in trade? We don’t know, and we likely won’t know for months.

At a critical moment when the world’s two largest economies are flirting with a catastrophic decoupling, nobody knows what the hell is going on. In the words of a Texas Manufacturing Outlook respondent, “The risk we face is now is larger and less understood than what we saw during the COVID shutdown.” That’s not something you want to hear.

This is part two of “Live from the Trade War”. Click here for part one and subscribe to notified of future installments. Thank you.

This is part one of a new series , “Live from the Trade War”, following the fallout of Liberation Day from on-the-ground in China. Expect more interviews with Chinese suppliers, logisticians, and scholars. Image source: Youtube

In 2020, the world’s supply chains were crippled by an Act of God from the deadliest disease since the Spanish Flu. Today, 5 years later, those same supply chains sit breathlessly waiting on the arbitrary dictats of a man who could, and usually does, change his mind on a dime.

Unlike a typical cyclical recession with an irreversible crash, this could theoretically end at any moment with one executive order (probably not, though). This simple fact is driving strange, erratic stock market behavior and colors the strategic decision making of hundreds of thousands of businesses navigating Liberation Day.

Nobody wants to make an extreme or radical investment decision based on a situation that could change overnight. A commitment for a $10 million domestic plant could turn worthless before the ink is dry if tariffs are cut as quickly as they were raised. More than anything else, this is the mindset shared by Chinese suppliers and American importers caught in the line of fire: ‘Today there are tariffs, tomorrow there could be none, and the day after there could be even more. Just wait and see.’

So, what is everyone doing? What’s everyone’s plan to weather the storm until Trump, hopefully, blinks? Is everyone really going to stop shipping Chinese goods to the U.S?

Well, through interviews with several Chinese suppliers and freight forwarders as well as scouring candid online conversations between frustrated employees, here’s what I’ve found. On both sides of the Pacific, hundreds of thousands of people in a flurry of WeChat messages and emails are constructing new strategies, legal and illegal, to mitigate, outlast, or out-smart America’s tariffs in the hopes they are temporary. Through countless micro-interactions, the plumbing of global trade is limping, bit by bit, to the finish line.

The Base Case: Frontload and Pray

So, you have a multi-million-dollar business sourcing widgets from China and selling them on Amazon. What do you do the day after 145% tariffs?

If you’re smart, you’ve been frontloading inventory for at least a month now. A Chinese supplier told me that they’ve been prioritizing and fast-tracking orders from U.S clients since Trump announced the first round of 20% tariffs on China. Imports at major container ports have been running hot since at least February and the National Retail Federation confirmed retailers have been pro-actively stocking up on inventory for months. The takeaway here is that the short-term inflationary impacts of tariffs, which are still going to be high, are likely to run even higher as inventory stockpiles draw down.

But let’s say you didn’t stock up, what’s next? First, you take a look at your profit margins. As loads of young TikTokers are finding out, some products – usually from small and medium sized brands – are sold at outrageous markups that can take the hit and keep going. Two Chinese firms servicing different niches informed me a very small portion of their American customers have been able to eat the cost and keep ordering.

However, the vast majority of companies, especially big box retailers, don’t have these margins. So, they have to make a judgement call: keep ordering at a loss to maintain the supplier relationship and keep your shelves stocked, or pause and risk shortages on 50-100% of your inventory?

According to a Chinese freight forwarder, upwards of 70% of his clients have opted to completely pause shipments from China. Five and Below is the most public example of this trend, completely halting orders from China even though Chinese products make up 60% of their total cost of goods. This isn’t the only major retailer to take this route; a factory owner in Guangzhou told me Dollar Tree completely cancelled their contract. Corners of Little Red Note where exporters gather to commiserate (#外货) are a bloodbath of private conversations with panicked American importers.

But, that’s not the whole story. Previously stable, profitable business relationships are sticky, nobody wants to kill the golden goose. American importers, from my conversations with Chinese suppliers and the private conversations I’ve seen posted online, are stubbornly refusing to let go. Everybody thinks (or naively hopes…) this will, eventually, go away.

This hesitancy to bail and commitment to the relationship is shared by Chinese suppliers who’ve based large portions of their income on products made for American tastes. Not every good is globally fungible, retooling your production lines to swap from custom-made goods for American buyers to new styles for new customers in new countries costs time and money. “Some factories have stopped production for U.S-ordered product lines, but not most,” a representative at a Shenzhen supply chain firm told me. After asking if any of their Chinese clients are preparing to start shifting production abroad, a different logistics firm emphasized their clients are in a “wait and see state” and “have no such plans yet.”

So, if you think the only thing stopping your multi-million dollar business relationship from resuming is temporary, what do you do? Everything you can. At 145% tariff rates, essentially embargo-levels, legitimate bilateral trade is going to crater. But here is where the murky, grey, and sometimes illegal world of logistics comes in for companies willing to take the risk.

You hear from your buddy that his widget company just got a month’s worth of stock in at only a 10% tariff rate – how? Your number one competitor on Amazon hasn’t moved their prices up even one bit – what’s going on? Well, if they haven’t already, your freight forwarder will probably tell you.

The Gray Zone

The first mitigation strategy is, at this point, already endemic in the industry. A well-connected Chinese importer stated publicly that the average declared cost of goods on a typical container from China to the U.S is $5,000 - $10,000. This is implausibly low, to say the least. If you’ve ever tried to order in bulk off Alibaba, you already know why – your supplier will always ask if you want to lower the declared cost of goods at customs to reduce your tariff burden. Thousands of companies are having these secretive conversations right now, hoping Customs and Border Control isn’t looking over their shoulder.

Now, while this is illegal, that’s never stopped anybody. But what if your products are obviously way too expensive for a customs agent to think its worth $10 instead of $1000? More likely than not, your Chinese supplier has been absolutely inundated with solicitors from third-country transshipment agents, but first let’s go over why transshipment is even possible.

After the first round of tariffs on China in 2018, a tidal wave of investment flowed into Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam, from Chinese firms looking to mitigate tariffs by shifting their supply chains to neighboring low-tariff states. The effect was immediate, In 2019 alone, Vietnamese exports to the U.S increased by 35%. Chinese factories linked to these supply chains shifted into exporting raw or intermediary goods for final assembly in Vietnam, earning these products Vietnamese tariff rates rather than the much-higher Chinese rates.

Not only do most serious discussions of the U.S – China Trade War mention this, many expect a new wave of trade and investment to start getting rerouted instantly. However, this perspective is missing one thing: uncertainty, in the short term, is an investment killer. The LA Times is reporting that a half-way completed factory park in Vietnam has essentially been halted since Liberation Day, with 40 firms in talks to join now pausing deliberations. This matches the perspective of a freight forwarder who told me they expect Chinese investment in Southeast Asia to decline for now, not rise.

Forget investing in Vietnam, why don’t Chinese factories facing high tariffs just switch to exporting to already existing Vietnamese assembly plants given that Trump has temporarily cut Vietnam’s rate to 10%? As I said earlier, factory goods aren’t necessarily fungible. A large home goods factory representative explained to me that, while they were able to switch to production of intermediary goods for factories in Vietnam after Liberation Day, this was only possible because they already produced goods at every level of the value chain – raw, intermediary, and finished – and were interlinked with Vietnamese assembly plants. If you’re not already in this game, it’s a bit too late to join in. This is where transshipment comes in.

The services transshipment agents offer is simple. They ship a container of your products from China to a third country with lower tariff rates, such as Vietnam, swap out your products to a different container, change the country of origin to whatever the third country is (“Vietnam”), ship it to the U.S, and then get slapped with 10% tariffs instead of 145%. The recent rise of Chinese-led manufacturing in Southeast Asia is important here because it provides a plausible cover for transshipped items; it’s way easier to ship goods with doctored paperwork under the radar if it’s from a country with an existing network of Chinese factories.

Advertisements for these are everywhere.

And American importers are more than aware these options exist.

Is it illegal? Absolutely. Do people still do it? Well, that goes without saying. However, compared to just adjusting down your cost of goods, there seems to be real resistance this method from Chinese suppliers. Of all the factories and freight forwarders I talked to, none of them offered this service and all of them discouraged doing it. Most seemed to believe that transshipment agents were generally unreliable and the odds of getting caught were high. That being said, I still expect this will be a major conduit for Chinese goods as long Customs and Border Control is unable to properly inspect all imports coming into the U.S.

Conclusion

Technical discussions on tariff avoidance aside now, how do we interpret all of this?

For now, this is the time of limbo. Every boardroom in America is running the numbers on re-shoring, near-shoring, or keeping production in China depending on whether, when this is all over, Trump opts to keep tariffs high for all nations, just China, or no one at all. Not to be out-hustled, Chinese factories are re-evaluating their linkages with Southeast Asia and tapping overseas networks to prep for an export push into Europe and the developing world. Some companies are assuredly already taking action – Apple is moving aggressively to shift iPhone production from China to India – but the floodgates of investment won’t come until clear, final direction comes from the White House.

Until then, U.S buyers and Chinese suppliers are stuck in an awkward space of trying to maintain good relationships that could end tomorrow or roar back in a month. They’re reassuring each other, commiserating, venting, and, if they have the risk appetite, diving into the underbelly of the logistics world.

All that being said, the most striking part of all of these various strategies, whether front-loading orders and praying for a quick war or good old-fashioned smuggling, is how temporary they are. If you think this trade war is nowhere near ending, then the only realistic conclusion is that our economy is currently walking on a knifes-edge based on a collective delusion.

A delusion that he’s not that crazy, that “sanity” will come back (hey, anyone remember CHIPS?), and that somebody will figure this out and put economic expertise back in command. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you think about that, I don’t really care for Trump or sanity and economic expertise.

Source: Reddit

So, you’ve seen the news and read the tea leaves. Let’s get straight to it: how can you learn Chinese for free and what scholarships are available to you?

The answer is, way more than you think. We’ll begin with short term, non-degree programs (<1 year) before moving on to bachelors and masters degrees.

Short term programs

You have probably heard of Confucius Institutes before. What you may not have heard is that they have been expelled from the US and are largely on their way out in Europe - with some exceptions. Further complicating this is that the Confucius Institute scholarship program is focused on training Chinese language teachers from foreign countries and it’s hard to pin down information on whether they still accept westerners or non-language teachers. That being said, its website never says it doesn’t, and the language it does have says they still accept other applicants even though teachers are their focus. So, I say give it a shot and apply. Every scholarship I will mention in this article, including this one, fully cover tuition and dorm costs as well as provide a moderate living stipend.

The application portal and requirements are here, but one thing to note is that the Confucius institute, like many scholarships to study Chinese, requires at least an HSK 3 certificate. The HSK is China’s language proficiency exam and goes from level 1 to 6 (soon to be 9). However, the first 3 HSK levels are notoriously easy, which is partly why they are overhauling the HSK system and making 1-3 significantly more rigorous. In 5-6 months of studying, you should be able to reach HSK 3. I would not let this discourage you.

There’s no other scholarship programs for short-term language study in mainland China, unfortunately, but before discussing Taiwan’s free scholarships I did want to mention the cost of tuition in China. It’s not cheap - nothing in the thousands ever is - but it is cheap relative to most college tuitions. A semester-long program generally costs between $1.2k-$2.5k and the most expensive, single-person dormitories no more than $300 a month. That might fit your budget.

Now, Taiwan’s Huayu Enrichment Scholarship is also a great opportunity with lots of flexibility and no stated minimum Chinese proficiency. The scholarship funds multiple program lengths: 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 12 months. A basic info doc from the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania can be found here.

This government webpage outlines the application process. The application process is handled on a university-by-university basis; each university has their own portal and sets their own application deadlines for applicants using the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. You also need to apply to the Local Republic Overseas Office, who will interview you as part of the application process. Here’s a list of contact details for all of Taiwan’s Representative Offices, use this find yours and apply.

Now, on to long term programs. While I’m sure Taiwan probably has scholarships available for foreign bachelor and masters students, I’ll be focusing on mainland China. That’s just where my experience is.

Long term programs

There are many different, unrelated scholarship programs offered at different levels of society (Central, provincial, and municipal governments; or universities themselves), which can make it confusing and hard to navigate.

This is further complicated by the fact that there are essentially two avenues for long term Mandarin study in China. China has a solid offering of bachelor’s degrees focused on just learning Chinese, but no master’s degrees (as far as I can tell). However, many bachelor’s or master’s programs that are taught in Chinese will provide foreign students a year of full-time study at a Chinese language center before beginning their courses. That means if you opted to study a different subject, whatever your undergraduate background is, you could learn Chinese both from your full-time program and the progress that comes naturally from taking subject courses in Chinese. And you can double dip by pursuing a master’s in Chinese literature, which wouldn’t be too different from just a Chinese language master’s degree. If you just want to learn Chinese intensively for 2 years, I highly suggest a Chinese literature degree.

Finding bachelor’s programs is pretty easy, here are a couple - Donghua, Beijing Language and Culture, Chengdu - but master’s is a bit more complicated. First, when looking at a program you’re interested in, you have to see if they even offer that one year program of full-time Chinese study. As far as I can tell, almost all should. Check their admission requirements, especially any sections on Chinese proficiency. For example, China Pharmaceutical University’s admission page mentions it at the bottom of this page. If not, shoot them an email - lots of stuff in China is just hard to find on their English websites.

Now, those are the types of Chinese language programs, what are the different kinds of scholarships you can get? There’s a lot, but in short: CSC is the standard, university scholarships the next most popular, and provincial / municipal government scholarships are alright. Confucius Institute may still be an option too.

CSC is short for the China Scholarship Council, which administers the Chinese Government Scholarship program. CSC scholarships are available for bachelors, masters, and PhD programs at 274 participating universities. Almost every university that you would actually consider going to is a participating university, so don’t sweat that part. The confusing part, however, is the categories of CSC scholarships: Type A, Type B, and Type C.

Type A scholarships must be applied for via a Chinese embassy; Type B scholarships must be applied for via the university itself. I still don’t know what Type C’s are. Besides the form of application, everything else about Type A and Type B scholarships are identical. This webpage lays out the application process that you need to follow (not a government website).

Now, in addition to having their own portals for Type B CSC scholarships, many universities also have their own scholarship programs that they administer. These scholarships are usually similarly generous to Chinese Government Scholarships and are relatively easy to apply for. The difficulty with these scholarships, just like scholarships from municipal and provincial governments, is in finding them. Luckily, there is one English-language Chinese government portal with a full list of every type of scholarship (including the CSC scholarships) right here. You can also apply for scholarships using this portal. And not only will it help you find scholarships, but it also lists their requirements and application deadlines. Here is the exact page for the CSC scholarships, by the way.

I believe the Confucius Institute also may still run its scholarship program for bachelor’s and master’s degrees, but I’m unsure. You can investigate using the link I attached earlier. If anyone reading this has info on Confucius Institute scholarships, please comment and I can update the post.

So, to wrap it up, if you want to study Mandarin in mainland China or Taiwan you have two main choices: short term non-degree programs or a master’s / bachelor’s degree. From there, you can select from a whole host of scholarships that will fully fund your tuition and day-to-day expenses. Huayu Enrichment Scholarships (ROC) or Confucius Institute scholarships (PRC) for short term programs and CSC, university, provincial, and municipal scholarships for longer-term degree programs in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S President Joe Biden at a bilateral meeting near San Francisco, November 2023. Source: Reuters

The only shared consensus on international relations between Chinese and western associates is pessimism. Pessimism about the U.S - China bilateral relationship, pessimism about western engagement in China, pessimism about the coming Trump Shock. Radical geopolitical shifts and new configurations of trade have led to strange scenes in the fallout. The loudest calls to maintain an ill-defined Bretton Woods system are coming from China, not Washington, and Europe finds itself hanging up the phone. New bipartisan alignment on the so-called “China Threat” has led trade authorities in the U.S to move aggressively in restricting Chinese access to U.S exports in strategic industries – World Trade Organization (WTO) be damned – and a collapse in European exports to China has brought Brussels along for the ride. Where the U.S used to see endless cheap labour and the EU a money-printer for automobile exports, both now see a potentially existential rival.

It’s rare to attend an international forum or talk in Beijing that does not, eventually, address the elephant in the room.

At one such instance on December 4^th at the premier Beijing Grand Millenium Hotel, European Union Ambassador Jorge Albiñana took the stage addressing a crowd of anxious diplomats, journalists, and think tankers gathered to hear reassurance on Chinese - EU relations in the coming Trump era. They did not get that. Instead, he ended a particularly combative opening address with a stern warning: “Whatever happens in the White House, we will still have a problem.”

For the next seven hours, to my surprise, the conference went on as if nothing happened. Panels were held, calls for solidarity were given, and appeals for more “understanding” were shared. But it didn’t take much for attendees to notice something was off, and for rumors to fly. The U.S Ambassador, Nicholas Burns, allegedly pulled out just days before because of outrage from Washington lawmakers for his address to the U.S – China Hong Kong Forum. The only Americans the two panels on Trump were able to pull mostly hadn’t lived in the U.S in decades, let alone have an ear in the incoming administration. After watching a Reagan-dinosaur-turned-propagandist quote Sting and Metallica on stage, it was hard to take it all seriously.

But, the purpose of the conference was clear. Wang Huiyao, co-founder of the Beijing-based organization that held the event, called more forcefully to maintain the global status quo than any western participant, “80 years of the Bretton Woods system. We cannot start all over again… China is really willing to add on and to improve, enhance, and enlarge.” In every panel and every speech, Chinese organizers appealed to Europeans and “middle powers” to join them over the coming stormy years. Each call with a “we” to defend Bretton Woods was strategic positioning, hopeful that Europeans still believed they were part of the Bretton Woods “we”.

How did we reach this point? Why are the biggest calls to maintain a U.S born system coming from China? Why do Europeans find themselves not answering the call and joining the “we”?

The New Consensus

In the circuit of conferences, dialogues, and exchanges in Beijing, somehow the same statistics show up everywhere you go. I was surprised the first time hearing that American students in China are down by 93%, but by the fifth or sixth time it was just background noise. Multi-day conferences are regularly interrupted by the latest shots in a rapidly deteriorating U.S - China trade relationship. EU Ambassador Jorge Albiñana’s December 4^th speech was preempted by a third round of U.S export controls on tech and semi-conductors on December 2^nd, quickly followed a day later by Chinese export bans on select rare earth metals to the United States. Pessimism is not an unfounded consensus.

Dwindling channels of communication are the sign of the times. Chinese conferences that used to boast attendance from leading academics and think tanks across the U.S are now increasingly struggling to find scholars. A source familiar with the state of diplomatic channels confirmed to me that previously common dialogue channels are increasingly being seen as inappropriate to participate in by the American side. Dialogue hasn’t disappeared, delegations still come and go and Chinese policymakers still meet with western investors, but it’s certainly at its lowest in decades.

Take, for instance, the two speeches of U.S Ambassador Burns and Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng at the U.S – China Hong Kong Forum. Xie’s speech was deeply accommodative, declaring “China has no plan to overtake or displace the United States”, and calls for the US & China to “set out again” and “find the right way to get along on this planet” just like they had historically “braved wind and rain and forged ahead”. In comparison to Xie’s frictionless speech, however, Burns’ address brought the issues front and center. He stated Biden “rightly raised tariffs on Chinese EVs… and other technologies” to counter a “second China shock”, called out “Chinese aggression” in the South China Sea, and raised concerns on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang.

Burns’ speech (and its aforementioned reception in the states) shows most clearly that the U.S over the past few years has settled on a new, bipartisan approach to China: reduce exposure, press the issues, and discourage engagement.

However, while the Americans may have disappeared, Europeans have not. More white-papers have been published than will ever be read in Brussels on the coming Trump Shock and Chinese policymakers can smell blood in the water. In the words of Wang Huiyao, “China and the EU have lots of similarities. [Both] want to defend [the] multi-lateral system, climate change, [and the] WTO… I think there’s another opportunity now for China and EU to get together.” I overheard a European attendee stress that it was time for Europe to “get its head out of the sand” and start pursuing it’s own foreign policy – like Macron stated in November.

The sentiment is rampant, the urgency is strong, and yet China’s reception in Brussels is tepid. Why?

The Half a Trillion Dollar Problem

On October 29^th, days before the U.S election, the European Union announced strict, across-the-board tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles (EVs). Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, identified the core issue running through the heart of an EU – China partnership: Europe’s industrial base. After two years of lagging Eurozone growth and sky-high energy prices from the Ukraine war, Europe’s struggling industrial base still remains an economic life preserver. After announcing the EU’s investigation into Chinese EVs on September 13^th, Ursula said,” The electric vehicle sector holds huge potential for Europe's future competitiveness and green industrial leadership... Wherever we find evidence that their efforts are being impeded by market distortions and unfair competition, we will act decisively.” In a war for industrial survival, the west’s rich consumer markets are paradoxically Europe’s strongest asset.

China agrees. In the aftermath of global lockdowns and trade disruptions from COVID-19, China roared back with a herculean explosion in its annual global customs trade surplus with a nearly $550 billion increase since 2020. Faced with the impossible task of maintaining economic growth while dealing with a deflating real estate bubble and a structurally toxic municipal debt problem, Chinese policymakers turned to global markets with exports fed by generous supply-side policies as a spatial fix for their domestic demand woes.

Source: Brad Setser

The half a trillion dollar problem has prompted waves of protectionism across the globe and concerns from China’s trading partners. Outside the west, Brazil slapped 10% tariffs on EV imports with plans to hike them to 35% by 2027 in response to concerns from domestic firms over Chinese imports. Here, overtures to Europeans and ‘middle powers’ and nostalgia for Bretton Woods from Chinese multilateralists begin to make sense. Suggestions for strategic alliance against Trump’s coming assault on the world order are veiled hopes for the continuation of an export-based recovery in a world with less and less patience for imports.

For Europe, at least, patience has run out. Albiñana’s opening address was emblematic of the sentiment now found commonplace among European policymakers and think tanks. He bluntly stated EU – Chinese trade “has become unsustainable” and “has to be leveled”, that trade talks have “made no progress… in the last 5 years”, and that “China has grown 40% since 2017… Do you know how much our exports to China have grown? Well, they are down 30%.” Fights over exports and trade surpluses are sabotaging EU – China relations as Beijing attempts to set itself up as a credible alternative for the EU to Trump’s America. Calls for cooperation and understanding are common, but results are weak. The few positive remarks Albiñana had were confined to successful partnerships with China over the “protection of biodiversity… and the environment in general”, while a September U.S - EU Joint Release on the Indo-Pacific laid out far-reaching consensus on substantive geopolitical and economic issues such as: Chinese support for Russia in the Ukraine war, alleged unfair Chinese trading practices, de-risking and reducing economic dependency on China, the human-rights situation in Tibet and Xinjiang, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Myanmar.

It’s unclear where relations between the U.S, EU, and China will stand in 4 years from Inauguration Day. But its clear that right now, the EU does not think that they will be standing any closer with China. As an insider told me, “China will have to come bearing gifts.”

China Hawks’ New Weapon: Conceptual Slippage

On November 14^th, Paul Krugman published an Op-Ed on the coming U.S – China Trade war with a small but intriguing aside. The Nobel Prize winning economist listed out a straightforward case for tariffs based on economic harm from China’s post-COVID export boom, but also delineated a second, notable reason, ”Furthermore, China is an autocracy that doesn’t share democratic values. Allowing it to dominate strategically crucial industries is an unacceptable risk.” This copies the reasoning provided by the Bureau of Industry & Security (BIS), who’s announcement on its latest round of advanced chip exports excluded any mention of concerns over economic or trade competition in the chips space. The BIS stated they hoped to “impair the PRC’s ability to indigenize the production of advanced technologies that pose a risk to our national security,” and that “advanced-node semiconductors… can be used in the next generation of advanced weapon systems.”

The new bipartisan consensus identifies the issue of Chinese industrial competitiveness as an existential security threat that is only incidentally economic. Calls for “decoupling” and “derisking” from China are not being followed by mass-onshoring but the creation of a new South East Asian-centered supply chain because the issue at stake is not the domestic economic harms of free trade, it’s U.S dependence on a perceived foreign adversary.

While the U.S may see Chinese industry more through the lens of security than economics, the rest of the world does not. And it is here that the conceptual slippage between the two gives China Hawks their greatest asset and Chinese diplomats their greatest liability.

Krugman’s recent article noted the EU’s new tariffs on Chinese EVs, which were motivated by economic concerns, yet D.C-based think-tanks are already theorizing ways to cleave an anti-China bloc using global dissatisfaction with Chinese exports. In an article for the think-tank Council for Foreign Relations last year, Brad Setser decried that “competing approaches to managing the Chinese threat have led to the fracturing of… transatlantic markets” through differing tariff regimes in the U.S and EU over Chinese steel and EVs. U.S security concerns over strategic industries are seamlessly merged with European auto sector woes as, “Europe is also struggling to adapt to a world in which China is a net exporter of autos and auto parts, not a net importer… one of Europe's most important and strategic [emphasis is mine] industries.” The suggested solution is easy to guess: “increased cooperation with the United States”, “a ‘subsidy-sharing’ agreement”, “[an] open and integrated transatlantic market between the U.S. and the EU… [and] Canada, Mexico, the UK.”

As long as China’s globally unpopular post-COVID trade surplus remains, potential partners for aggressive U.S foreign policy on China will be as expansive as there are angry trade partners. But it doesn’t have to be this way. While Chinese industrial competitiveness and its large trade surplus are obviously related, substantial reforms to fix China’s lopsided demand problems and less China-based production are paths forward that undercut U.S China Hawks while maintaining industrial strength. Much was made of Brazil’s tariffs on Chinese EVs by American pundits, but what slipped under the radar was that Brazil was happy to allow Chinese firms to continue to operate in Brazil if they built factories directly within Brazil for domestic production – and that they did. However, under the U.S’ strategic understanding of EVs, any Chinese EV in any form produced in any way is a threat.

It cannot be emphasized enough that it’s not a given these two viewpoints have a common interest. America’s securitization of U.S – China trade as part of a greater turn towards hawkish, zero-sum China policy will create as many contradictions and issues in trade with China’s displeased trade partners as opportunities. Global South states accustomed to trading with China and the west view ‘picking a side’ as a potential death knell, and EU concerns over Chinese EV overproduction do not preclude any cooperation on climate or further trade deliberations. The EU & Global South camp’s disputes over trade under these current terms only exist insofar as these terms do, while the U.S’ anti-China turn can exist in perpetuity.

My speculation is that the world’s governments are waiting. They’re waiting to see if U.S – China relations are going to get that bad, if China’s export tsunami will start to ebb with more demand-side reforms, and if this is just another cycle of premature prophesizing on the death of the international system. The hope is that, in regards to the U.S and China, the world is big enough for the both of them – or at least that Xi and Trump will see it that way. While I personally have little love lost in the event of the Bretton Woods legacy institutions meeting their end, I do see the recent hawkish turn in U.S policy towards China as deeply irresponsible. Not only is panic over competition in strategic industries misplaced nostalgia for a post-WWII U.S dominance that will never come back, it’s also ineffective in the long-term. Previous instances of U.S export controls on China have simply birthed global industry leaders, as domestic industries are forced to become very competitive, very quickly to resolve shortages in key goods.

Back to trade, we will see the interplay between the U.S and the rest of China’s trade partners start to unfold once the first shots are fired towards China by the incoming Trump administration. As the world watches and governments weigh policy choices for an increasingly protectionist world, Chinese industry should hope nations follow the Brazilian way rather than the American. But, for that, the ball is Beijing’s court – not in Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s, but in the thousands of bureaucrats that make up China’s economic planning bureaucracy.

When your pretty flesh is plucked like the petals of a flower,
I watch in silence, for I have no power,
When your precious blood is turned to drizzling rain,
I perform your funeral rites with tears, for I have no power,
O Peshawar! Our love is ancestral
Ramat Shah Sail [1]

On January 30th 2023, nearly four hundred Pakistani policemen crowded in to a mosque in a high-security police and counter-terrorism compound in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Sometime near 1:00 PM, a suspected Jamaat-ul-Ahrar or Tehreek-e-Taliban militant, disguised in a police uniform, rode into the imposing compound on motorbike.  He passed multiple manned barricades, even stopping to ask a constable for directions, before parking his bike and walking to the first row of attendees. No one ever checked him. 

At 1:30, his 12-16 kilogram dynamite suicide vest detonated. The aging, 50-year old mosque collapsed and caved in, taking 84 officers with it. A police official reported seeing a "huge burst of flames" before becoming surrounded by a plume of black dust. [2]

Since this terrorist attack, terrorism-related fatalities have increased by 56% in Pakistan to 1,524 deaths throughout 2023. Khyber Pakhtunkwa, the northwest frontier province victimized by the mosque bombing, was responsible for 41% of fatalities. [3] The victory of the Afghan Taliban has granted new life to the once-powerful Tehreek-e-Taliban (Pakistani Taliban), now backed with Afghan Taliban safehouses across the border and an inflow of American weapons from the Fall of Kabul. The security situation of Pakistan's border region is in chaos.

Deafened by the sounds of suicide bombings and drone strikes, there are widespread concerns in the northwest over a repeat of the Pakistani military's disastrous counter-terrorism campaigns of the 2000s and 2010s. Over a million civilians were forced to flee over two decades and tens of thousands were killed. Monzoor Pashteen, the leader of the popular Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, has been imprisoned since December in retaliation for his criticism.

I spoke with Hamza Khan, a veteran journalist in troubled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, about his difficulties as a journalist during the conflict-ridden 2000s and 2010s, and what the rise in violence since the Fall of Kabul indicates for Pakistan’s future. He is based in Peshawar, the provincial capital.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Some identifying information has been changed in the interest of safety.

…

Q. You were born, raised, and still live in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; in addition to beginning your career as a journalist in the city in 2006. Before the military began anti-terrorist operations, how widespread was the presence of terror groups in the province?

Militancy existed even in the past, but the suicide attacks started soon after the Lal Masjid operation in Islamabad in 2007. I remember I was working for a Lahore-based newspaper when the newsroom in-charge phoned me in the days of the Lal Masjid operation and said: “Hamza Khan, now we will depend much on your Peshawar Bureau for most of the news. The militancy and attacks will now start in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as vengeance for the people killed in the military operation on Lal Masjid. General Musharraf committed this mistake and now all will bear its consequences.”

Q. You were a journalist during some of the most intensive times of fighting and violence in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa between the state and terrorist groups from 2006 to the late 2010s. Were there times where you were put in danger?

I remember how I miraculously escaped a suicide attack at the Peshawar Press Club. I was going to the press club. However, as I was a few meters from it, there was a deafening blast. As I reached the gate, I found body parts of a suicide bomber lying scattered while some injured persons were also there. Similarly, I remember the suicide attack that claimed the life of Sifwat Ghayun, a Deputy Inspector General. Sifwat was known for his successful operations against the Taliban. And one day when he left office and pulled up at a traffic signal, a clean-shaved bomber detonated close to his vehicle, leaving Sigwat and a few others dead. I once published a story against the problems created for people as a result of the protocols of a senior officer, for whom roads would be blocked each day; later the officer sent his men to threaten me.

Q. Were any of your colleagues ever victims of violent retaliation for their reporting?

A journalist friend was phoned by an intelligence agency officer and threatened on why he had published a story regarding the Taliban, which otherwise was a secret story. Another journalist was also threatened by the Taliban. Once, Daily Times, where I worked previously, published an editorial, using the word “thief” for Mangal Bagh, a leader of the banned outfit Lashkar Islam. The Lashkar men came to our office with Kalashnikovs. However, they were informed that editorials are written in head offices and we had no connection with that.

Q. After 2003, and especially in 2014’s Operation Zarb-e-Azb, the military initiated anti-terror campaigns in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that displaced a million civilians from rural areas. In Peshawar, how did the arrival of the displaced affect life in the city? Did you ever have the opportunity to talk to any displaced or learn their stories?

It was a big problem. Many people left their homes, entire villages, and towns as a military operation started there and they moved to Peshawar and other areas. Facilities were overcrowded in these areas where the displaced families settled temporarily. Our home also received a displaced family hailing from Lower Dir district. Our local communities had to serve the guests in those trying times.

The displaced families were traumatized and they would often tell us how frightened they were about their homes. They told us how difficult it is to leave one’s home. In some cases, each family had left behind one member in the native village as they were afraid of robberies at their homes. Some of them even reported that their house roof got damaged by firing from helicopter gunships and how much they got frightened by such incidents.

[In rural Khyber Pakhunkhwa, especially the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas” that were independent from Khyber Pakhunkhwa before 2018, the military imposed martial law and security measures on the civilian population. Checkpoints, home raids, and land-mines were a flashpoint that kicked off the wildly popular Pashtun Tahafuz Movement in 2018]

Q. Outside of the displaced, how much did the anti-terror campaigns affect city residents? Were you also subjected to the checkpoints, home raids, and military presence that those in rural areas were?

Even in cities, particularly in Peshawar, checkpoints were established for strict checking. Even today, such military checkpoints exist in all big cities, particularly near areas where military officers reside. Many people are even perturbed by questioning at such checkpoints.

Q. Since the victory of the Afghan Taliban in 2021, the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban) have experienced a major resurgence and terrorist attacks have tripled. For an audience outside of Pakistan to understand, how dire is the situation on the ground?

Situation is serious now. With the emergence of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban has grown stronger. After the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, tons of modern weapons have fallen into the hands of the Pakistani Taliban, who are staying in Afghanistan and stage attacks in Pakistan from time to time. They also have networks in Pakistan. Recently they killed many Pakistani personnel using night vision guns - which even most of Pakistani security personnel lack. Pakistan also faces a financial crisis, which may make the fight against militants more difficult.

Q. How has the re-emergence of the Pakistani Taliban affected your journalistic freedom? Have they sent threats or engaged in violence?

We are afraid of attacks. No one knows where the Taliban may stage an attack. They also warn media not to use word “terrorist” for them. Hence, journalists face a mental agony.

Q. Previously, you spent some time working with the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees). Since September of last year, Pakistan has begun expelling hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees displaced from the conflict in Afghanistan. What do you think about this?

I have covered this issue. It was an unfair decision to deport Afghan refugees all of a sudden, I believe. I interviewed some refugees, who told me that they were born and raised in Pakistan and that they do not even know where they will live in Afghanistan and what they will do. Several Afghans are afraid for their lives even today as they used to work for American NGOs and governments led by Karzai and others, who were opposed to the Taliban in the past. This is why they are afraid of incumbent Taliban government.

[1] Translated by Riaz A. Hakeem in the Boston Review.

[2] The first two paragraphs are described in these Dawn and CNN articles.

[3] Report on terrorist attacks in 2023.

Shahab Ud Din is an ethnic Pashtun activist and member of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). After this (short) introduction of Pashtuns in Pakistan to provide context, I interviewed him on his political activity and thoughts about the future of Pashtun rights.

In April 2018, Monzoor Pashteen led a thousands-strong rally of disaffected Pashtuns in open defiance of the military against state injustice and ethnic oppression in the heart of Lahore. For years, state violence in the largely Pashtun province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had subjected millions to a regime of arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, and murder without trial in the name of the “War on Terror”. Since 2003, the Pakistani military had displaced nearly a million Pashtuns to camps and cities throughout Pakistan while killing tens of thousands of civilians.

The Pashtun Tahafuz (Protection) Movement was originally formed by Monzoor and other student activists to protest military landmines killing civilians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; but the arbitrary police kidnapping and murder of Pashtun youth Naqibullah Mehsud birthed PTM into national politics. “Long Marches” from city to city and mass-rallies in government strongholds like Islamabad grew government ire and suppression. Hundreds of activists were “disappeared” and, in many cases, killed. Hours before the 2018 Lahore Rally, the state flooded the rally square with sewage and mass-arrested organizers in a failed bid to sabotage the growing popularity of PTM.

The Pashtun picture is complicated even further by the experience of dual-oppression by Taliban terror groups in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa alongside state violence. A longstanding state policy of supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan through direct funding and recruits from state-backed radical Islamic madrassas (colleges) ceded de-facto state control in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to terrorist groups during the 2000s. The contradictory state notion of backing the '“good Taliban” in Afghanistan while applying indiscriminate and unrelenting violence on all Pashtuns to fight the “bad Taliban” created one of the largest and largely unknown humanitarian disasters in South Asia. The Pashtun rights movement is forced to struggle in the constricted, lethal space between the intertwined activities of the Pakistani military and local terrorists.

The state of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement, 6 years on from its famous rally in Lahore, is dim. Monzoor Pashteen has been under arrest since December 2023 on trumped up charges, PTM co-founder and parliamentarian Mohsin Dawar recently narrowly survived a Taliban assassination, and the Pakistani Taliban (Tehreek-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan) has grown to its highest peak in years from the victory of the Afghan Taliban. The possibility of a new state military campaign to clear the Pakistani Taliban from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa presents Pashtuns only the choice between two terrors.

I spoke to Shahab Ud Din, a long-time PTM activist, to hear his thoughts on what the movement represents, what issues its facing, and the Pashtun experience in Pakistan.

…

Q. In your own words, what is the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement and why do you support it?

There was a time when severe oppression was going on in the territory of Pakhtunkhwa. On the one hand, we were robbed of our resources, on the other hand, our leaders were beheaded. Bombs were dropped on our children and houses. We were killed by the Taliban on one hand, while on the other, the Pakistan Army had been brutally oppressing us. Also, there was a lack of awareness among our people and [we] were deprived of education. So, the Pashtuns did not recognize their enemy and no one could raise their voice against the oppression.

There was a young man named Manzoor Ahmed Pashteen. [He] was already fighting against oppression and wanted to free the Pashtuns from tyranny. The incident involving Naqibullah Mehsud occurred in 2018, as a police officer brutally murdered him. In response, we marched to Islamabad to demand justice for him. There were many other students who wanted to establish a platform for Pashtuns where they could raise their voices to demand their rights and prevent the ongoing dollar wars. There were many students, professors, doctors, engineers and other people from every walk of life. With their guidance and collective efforts, the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement was launched.

After its inception, the movement initiated the struggle, instigating notable changes among the Pashtuns. They identified their enemies, recognized their resources, and acknowledged their rights to lead fulfilling lives. Breaking the chains of fear, they discovered the courage to demand their rights from the people. These accomplishments are the subject of an entire book.

I support the movement because it raises its voice for the oppressed. The movement wants to give them their rights and stop the fighting on Pashtun soil.

Q. What type of government or Taliban coercion and repression have you experienced so far in your PTM activities?

Once, the Pakistani army entered a house in a village in North Waziristan and took away a young man from the house. The young man's mother was an old woman. She protested that her son was innocent, asking why he should be taken to jail. In response, the soldier beat her with a gun and broke her arm. In reaction to this incident, we organized a sit-in near "Khar Kamar" in North Waziristan. When the two leaders of PTM, Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar, came to join us the next day, both were stopped at the nearby checkpost and not allowed to join. We protested peacefully against this, but the Army started firing bullets, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of many elders, children, and young people.

They also killed many young people in the name of unknown persons. A young professor, Arman Loni, was arrested by the police during the protest and tortured so violently that he lost his life. My friend, Hanif Pashteen, has been imprisoned for four years. Even now, many friends are imprisoned, subjected to severe cruelty and inhuman treatment, and held in private prisons. There are many other such incidents.

Q. Were you expecting state suppression, or did it come as a surprise?

Yes, we were aware of all their atrocities. We couldn't raise our voice. We were waiting for the opportunity. This opportunity was PTM to give us a voice, and now we look into the eyes of the oppressor and demand our rights.

Q. What tools did the state employ to suppress the movement?

They made every possible effort of propaganda against us, claiming that we are traitors to the country and that we are funded by foreign countries, but they failed because they have no evidence. Now they are resorting to mischief, imprisoning us, treating us inhumanely, but we are not taking a step back, and we are fighting to reach our destination.

Q. Where do you think this repression mostly emanates from: civilian institutions or directly military?

The primary force behind this is the army, but all the others are complicit in this oppression.

Q. What is your experience with checkpoints, house-searches, and arrests? Have you experienced any?

Initially, we were treated very badly at the checkposts. We would stand for hours. They would abuse us, humiliate us, and make people suddenly disappear for years. No legal action would be taken, and justice was not served. However, now, because of PTM, they have stopped mistreating people at the checkposts. So, when someone is arrested, we, PTM activists, and the general public resist until the arrestees are presented in court. Presently, arrests of common people have decreased a bit, but PTM members are being arrested every day and serving sentences in private prisons.

[FATA, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, was previously a Pashtun tribal region in Pakistan directly governed by the state / military until it was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018. FATA is/was a hotbed for Taliban militancy and bore the brunt of civilian death and displacement by state anti-terror campaigns in the 2000s and 2010s]

Q. As a resident of an ex-FATA territory, what was your experience like?

There are many stories that could fill hundreds of books, but I will share a few brief ones.

One night, the Taliban came and murdered my uncle, who was the tribal leader (Malik) of the village. The reason was nothing else; he was only against unjust arrests and not receiving his rights. The soldiers were also sitting there half a kilometer away, but they did not take any action because they were friends with each other. We thought that the Taliban and the army were different, but they were not. They were one, active at different times – one at night, the other during the day.

At night, the Taliban would come to our houses, asking to open the door and provide them with food. If we didn't comply, they threatened to bomb our house, forcing us to give food out of fear. The next morning, the soldiers were standing there, asking why we had given them food at night and would take us to jail. They witnessed everything but did not disturb each other; instead, they harassed the common people.

One day, as the soldiers were moving along the road, a seven-year-old child came out of his house. They fired at the child's face and head and killed him.

The Taliban carried out all actions on the orders of the army. They unjustly beheaded elders and youth, making them sit on bombs and detonating them, tearing them into pieces. People were harassed and not allowed to pursue education. They would forcibly extort money from people. The terrorists would instill extremist thoughts in children and threaten to attack schools.

One day, the mother of a young man fell seriously ill. The young man placed his mother in the car and drove her to the doctor. On the way, the army in a helicopter shot the young man in the head, and his brain, along with half of his forehead, fell on his mother's lap. She has been insane ever since.

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[Operation Zarb-e-Azb from 2014-2017 was the largest and most destructive state military campaign of the “War on Terror”]

Q. Taliban activity has increased all throughout Pakistan since the victory of the Afghan Taliban. What do you think is going to happen? Will the military repeat Operation Zarb-e-Azb?

Yes, there is a strong likelihood of this. The army is facilitating the arrival of the Taliban with the purpose of using it as a pretext for future operations. In doing so, they receive dollars from the world and loot valuable goods here. However, PTM doesn't allow them to proceed with this. A little while ago, the Taliban suddenly came to the Swat region of Pakhtunkhwa. PTM appealed to the people, warning that it would cause a lot of damage. Come and force them out of the region. People resisted and expelled them. So, now PTM has disrupted this plan for them. We will not allow them to proceed with this. The army is attempting to bring back the Taliban and conduct an operation, but we, PTM activists, are resisting, and at any cost, we will not let them succeed.

Q. What is the law-and-order situation in ex-FATA territories now?

There is no law and order or peace. Here, only the force and brutality of the army and ISI [Pakistan’s intelligence agency] prevail. Whatever they want, happens.

[Rao Anwar is the former head of police of Malir District, Karachi. He conducted hundreds of “fake encounters”, staged extra-judicial killings of civilians through planted or faked evidence. His killing of Naqibullah Mehsud in 2018 sparked outrage and demand for his prosecution. Pakistan’s anti-corruption bureau launched an investigation against him in 2021 which concluded with his acquittal in January 2023]

Q. What was the reaction to Rao Anwar’s acquittal? At the time, did people expect him to be acquitted?

Pakistani law is only for poor people and not for generals or police officers. We are aware that justice has not been served to anyone thus far, and Naqibullah Mehsud will likely not receive justice either. As expected, Rao Anwar is now walking free.

[“Afghan” and “Pashtun” refer to the same ethnic group, which are separated into the countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan by the colonial British border called the “Durand Line”. “Lar” Afghans refer to Pashtuns in Pakistan and “Bar” Afghans to Pashtuns in Afghanistan]

Q. Personally, what would be a satisfying political resolution to the problems facing Pashtuns in Pakistan?

There is only one solution: to abolish the Durand Line, allowing ‘Lar’ and ‘Bar’ Afghans to unite, and the Punjabi army to withdraw from Pakhtunkhwa.

Q. What would you like to tell readers about recent events like the arrest of Monzoor Pashteen or the attempted assassination of Mohsin Dawar?

Manzoor Pashteen was arrested while on his way to join the march of the oppressed Baloch. The reason is the state's fear that the Pashtun and Baloch communities will unite against its oppression. The state is concerned that if they join forces against its oppressive rule, it could be removed from the surface of the earth. Therefore, the state is unlikely to release Manzoor Pashteen until the conclusion of the Baloch March. This is my personal opinion.

Mohsin is a parliamentary figure, and as elections approach, such occurrences are frequent. I am unsure about their intentions with this attack.

Q. Is there anything else you would like to say? Feel free to write whatever you would like.

All I am saying is that the army and the Taliban are essentially one. They crave our blood and minerals, and both are influenced by America, Russia, Arab countries, and China. What they desire is carried out here. The brutality and oppression initiated here are guided by America and other countries. Despite their oppression, we will overcome and defeat them in a manner that will surprise the world.