1) On what Trump might do to China during his lame duck period: my question is about the mood of corporate board rooms, obviously they're more anti-China now behind the scenes since most of them are tired of the tech theft and lack of market opening, but they still have a lot of business in China and supply chains, so absent like tens or hundreds of billions in subsidies to relocate, it would seem like any move Trump makes would be hurting those corporations. Wouldn't he be sensitive to that? It's sort of another issue with us not really having a comprehensive strategy, just more hostility.

2) It's hard to imagine Ma doing this without some kind of high-level support--I mean, he knows all the elite political circles, he knows how things work, so what on earth was he doing?

3) As usual, the government's extralegal, arbitrary decisions undermine it's attempt to create the rule of law. If the gov't maintains its current form (which it will), then their proclamations about the rule of law or regulation or whatever are by definition extra legal (since the government can just do whatever it wants and change the law whenever it wants and not be bound by it and the judiciary is independent). The real question is what impact will this have on foreign companies, especially Wall Street which it seems like China is trying to dangle fruit in front of to get it to lobby the US so it can buy a few more years to catch up in semiconductors and take the lead in AI.

4) Ideally we should absolutely stop our funds from buying too much in China as it makes us dependent on them and Xi is so hostile to us now, realistically I'm not sure we will. As a practical matter, I would tend to agree with the analyses that say it's perfectly safe for foreign investors to invest, AS LONG AS THEY REMAIN A RELATIVELY SMALL PIECE OF THE MARKET. As soon as they get too big, the gov't will see risk in capital flight and you might not be able to get your money out.

5) On Australia: you have to wonder how well-thought out this strategy is, it strikes me as the typically shrill and strident CCP foreign behavior where they can't totally control foreign countries the way they totally control their own population so they do these imperious things almost in a fit of pique it seems. But if you did want to apply a strategy to it, I guess warning other countries would be the way to go... but right now it's almost as if they're warning the entire world/taking on the entire world economically, so it doesn't seem like a balanced economic strategy but much more driven by the political/ideological imperatives of the central party leadership.

6) Supply Chain: This is the big kahuna, we need to start subsidizing our companies to pull our supply chains out (it took a generation to go in and will take a generation to get out), and have a comprehensive gov't strategy in case for example Being starts making example of one corporations which is pulling out, the US will fight back and protect that company. Our companies can't fight the CCP alone without government support.