Anyone who has lived in New York long enough would eventually notice a truth everyone knows, but few dare to write down: When it comes to China, the New York Times keeps a special back door open — one that only Beijing can walk through. There is no key to this door, only a tacit agreement that as long as the New York Times does not kick it open, Beijing would not weld it shut.
And so, the world’s most self-consciously “free” newspaper has learned to speak in the syntax most palatable to the Chinese state. The “professional neutrality” reserved for authoritarians: The New York Times never openly praises Beijing. It simply sands down its sharpest words, one by one.
On Xinjiang, it avoids the word “genocide,” preferring the softer “mass detention.” For Hong Kong, it would not say “crackdown,” only that the “situation is deteriorating.” Regarding Taiwan Strait issues, its go-to phrasing is always, “Taiwan’s actions, which Beijing views as provocative,” as if an aggressor is merely “annoyed,” not sharpening its knives.
This style of writing has an elegant name: “balanced reporting.” Authoritarian regimes simply call it free polishing services.
The New York Times does not lack reporters who can expose China, it lacks editors willing to pay the price for those exposures.
At every pitch meeting and headline discussion, the question that gets quietly weighed is never “Is this accurate?” It is “Will this get us barred from China forever?”
The paper never needs a call from the liaison office in Beijing. Its reporters never need to “have tea” with state security. Self-censorship is completed quietly and precisely inside that glass tower on West 40th St.
What is deadlier than hostility is this kind of gentleness. The real danger is not the People’s Daily. It is the New York Times, decorated with Pulitzers, yet softening at the critical moment.
It does not lie on Beijing’s behalf. It simply files down the edge of truth until it no longer cuts and then hands it to the world in its most professional tone. Under this gentle packaging, concentration camps become vocational training centers, fighter jets circling Taiwan become routine drills, threats become “warnings” and aggression becomes “unification claims.”
This is not ignorance, it is calculated benevolence. The New York Times remains an influential newspaper, but it is no longer an impartial referee on China — and certainly not a shield Taiwan can rely on.
When the lighthouse of the free world begins to shine using authoritarian grammar, what gets illuminated is no longer the truth, but a widening gray zone.
Taiwan has no retreat. It cannot learn to be silenced nor mistake someone else’s ambiguity for its own safety. In this war — silent, smokeless yet long under way — what we need is not subtler “balance,” but sharper courage.
Hsiao Hsi-huei is a freelance writer.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
RSS