A nation's rise or fall hinges on the choices of its leaders. At critical junctures, a turn left or right can determine the entire fate of a country.
Twenty years ago, I had dinner with a pan-democratic Legislative Council member. He complained bitterly that Hong Kong's opposition had no chance to govern. In Eastern Europe, he noted, after the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1990, politicians of his own generation had already taken power — in places like the Czech Republic and Hungary, some had even completed their terms and stepped down.
His words left me in deep thinking. I wondered at the time whether Eastern Europe's wholesale embrace of Westernization was right or wrong — a question that could only be answered decades later.
The most dramatic figure in this story is Hungary's Viktor Orbán. He and that Hong Kong opposition politician were both born in 1963. Orbán graduated from the Faculty of Law at Eötvös Loránd University in 1987. On the eve of the Iron Curtain's collapse, during that era of great upheaval, he went to Pembroke College, Oxford, from 1989 to 1990 to study politics. He then returned home to enter politics.
Hungary ended one-party rule in 1990. Shortly after returning, Orbán was elected to parliament. The Alliance of Young Democrats (Fidesz), which he founded, quickly rose to prominence. In the 1998 election, Fidesz became the largest party, and at 35, Orbán became Prime Minister for the first time.
After losing the 2002 election, Orbán stepped down. His party alternated between opposition and power in the years that followed. In 2018, Orbán was elected Prime Minister for the fourth time. This year, he lost the election and stepped down again.
The most striking shift in Orbán's political career is his transformation from a left-leaning liberal democrat — the same pro-American political persuasion as Hong Kong's opposition — into a right-wing nationalist. Today, the West labels him a "far-right politician."
That transformation laid bare the full extent of American and Western intervention in Eastern European politics. It can even be argued that U.S. forces drove color revolutions across the region, directly contributing to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
It turns out that Orbán's political godfather was Hungarian-born American financier George Soros. Early in Orbán's career, Soros funded his political studies at Oxford — an arrangement that can just as readily be seen as political grooming by Western forces.
After Orbán returned to Hungary in 1990, his political rise was smooth, backed by Soros-linked Western networks. But when Orbán concluded that liberal democracy could not save Hungary and began shifting toward the center-right, his rift with Soros became impossible to ignore.
By 2017, Orbán's government moved to expel the Soros-backed Central European University from Budapest, arguing it was a hub for color revolutions in Hungary and across Eastern Europe. Soros escalated the fight to the European Parliament, triggering a fierce confrontation with Orbán.
Only then did many begin to grasp the depth of American influence behind Eastern Europe's revolutions — with financier George Soros as the most visible public face of that operation.
Politico even framed the episode as "Orbán's rebellion against paternal authority." Orbán, the report noted, had been strictly disciplined and even physically abused by his father in childhood, leaving him deeply resistant to any form of patriarchal control. Soros, as his political godfather, became precisely that kind of figure — and Orbán chose to oppose him just as fiercely, insisting instead on forging Hungary's own path.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, it fractured into 14 countries. Yugoslavia broke into seven, and Czechoslovakia split into two. Hungary, by contrast, remained unified under Orbán's right-wing nationalism and achieved relatively stable development.
The 1989 Tiananmen incident in China was, in this view, a derivative of the American-orchestrated wave of color revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe. Zhao Ziyang was China's Gorbachev.
Had that movement succeeded and Zhao consolidated power, China might have followed the Soviet path — fragmenting into many small, weak states. The United States could then have dominated the world without a rival. Fortunately, China had Deng Xiaoping at the helm, steering the country onto a path different from the Soviet Union's.
Lo Wing-hung
Bastille Commentary
** 博客文章文責自負,不代表本公司立場 **
China's strategy is simple: throw one punch to avoid a hundred.
On Wednesday, August 5, China fired back with five consecutive moves to counter a string of recent US measures that Beijing sees as hostile. A spokesperson for China's Ministry of Commerce called the countermeasures "generally restrained." The message was clear: since the China-US presidential meeting in Busan, the US Federal Communications Commission has ignored China's strong opposition and industry appeals. It keeps stretching the concept of national security to roll out restrictions on China.
Meanwhile, the US has added over 40 Chinese entities to the so-called Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act entity list. China demands the US immediately revoke these measures. And if Washington insists on new restrictions, "China will further retaliate."
China's moves are a direct answer to a series of petty US actions that fall into two main areas.
First, the FCC. Before the government took action, the People's Daily fired a warning shot. Under the byline "Zhong Sheng," it blasted the FCC for hiding behind banners like "non-discrimination" and "national security" to discriminate against and suppress Chinese companies.
The FCC recently added foreign-made power inverters and advanced robotic equipment to its so-called "Covered List." That means new models can't get certification and are locked out of the US market. The paper called the tactic typical unilateral bullying.
This isn't new. Back in 2021, the FCC put telecom and video surveillance gear from five Chinese companies on the list. Since then, it has steadily widened the net. In April, it proposed revoking the qualifications of testing and certification bodies from countries that haven't signed a "Mutual Recognition Agreement" with the US. That artificially raises the compliance bar for Chinese products.
And now, Reuters reports the FCC is drafting a ban on imports of new Chinese-made optical communication transceivers for data centers.
Second, the Xinjiang sanctions. On July 30, the US Department of Homeland Security added over 40 Chinese entities to the entity list under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. The move, effective August 3, swells the list from 144 to 187, the biggest expansion since it was created. The new targets span food, clothing, and cotton. They include snack maker Qia Qia melon seeds, frozen food producer Zhengzhou Synear dumplings, and apparel brand Fujian Septwolves.
When the news hit the Chinese internet, netizens erupted in mockery. The joke going around teasing that "eating melon seeds can easily damage US soldiers' teeth."
China didn't waste a second. It fired back with five countermeasures, and the first one hits where it hurts: drones. Beijing is tightening export controls on drones and related technologies to the US. From now on, every shipment of drones, key components, and controlled technologies will face a strict case-by-case review.
And forget about any 'licensing facilitation' exemptions—those are off the table. Think about it: China is the world's drone superpower. The US wanted to block Chinese drones from coming in. Now China is flipping the script—it's restricting what goes out. The message is blunt: just because you want to buy doesn't mean we'll sell. Especially not advanced drones and components with military uses.
The second measure is a highly targeted strike: China has added six US entities to its Countermeasures List, all of which it says assisted US sanctions on Xinjiang-related companies.
Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. is believed to provide DNA-based traceability and verification services for relevant products.
Stratum Reservoir, LLC is believed to conduct stable-isotope testing and related analysis to determine the origin of Xinjiang-linked materials.
Altana Technologies, Inc., which operates a global supply-chain mapping and management platform, is believed to help the US government trace supply chains involving Xinjiang-linked products.
The Responsible Business Alliance, which promotes responsible business conduct in global supply chains and operates assessment programmes for member companies, is believed to help companies exclude Xinjiang-linked products from their supply chains.
Verité Group, Inc., a nonprofit focused on labour rights and human rights, examines alleged forced labour in global supply chains.
Human Rights in China, a New York-based human-rights organization, advocates sanctions related to Xinjiang.
China’s countermeasures against these six entities are therefore highly targeted.
The third measure targets a US compliance testing company that helped the FCC impose China-related sanctions. That company will now be locked out of the compliance testing business in the Chinese market. The ripple effect: it could drive up compliance costs for US products trying to enter China.
The fourth measure hits at the heart of product certification. China is suspending the entrustment of US agencies to conduct factory follow-up inspections for CCC certification. Remember, CCC certification is a must-have for US products to enter the Chinese market. By pulling the plug on US inspectors, China shifts the review work to its own agencies. That spells more time and more uncertainty for American exporters.
The fifth measure, a national security investigation into imported US printing and copying office equipment. On the surface, this one looks like a light tap.
China imported about $2.08 billion worth of such equipment in 2025, mostly from Japan ($1.72 billion). The US slice was small. But this is just the opening move.
The US has banned Chinese software and hardware from connected and autonomous vehicles on American roads—and until now, China held its fire.
Now Beijing is investigating US printers and copiers on national security grounds. The message is unmistakable: if Washington plays the national security card at every turn, Beijing can just as easily slap an 'unsafe' label on American phones and EVs running US software.
But that's not the main battlefield. Artificial intelligence is the real arena. Over the past month, Chinese companies have rolled out one high-performance, low-cost AI model after another, sending US AI giants reeling. When Anthropic released a new model in June, the US government demanded it be kept out of non-American hands. The clash forced Anthropic to pull the model. Trump signed an executive order in June setting up an AI safety framework, including a voluntary program for companies to submit cutting-edge models for government review.
Then Chinese developers like Moonshot AI and DeepSeek unleashed open-source systems that rival top-tier US models, fueling a fierce debate in Washington over how to regulate open-weight models. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed for mandatory government safety reviews for both open and proprietary models, taking direct aim at Chinese open-source systems. He won backing from Treasury Secretary Bessent and others, but ran into a wall of opposition from US tech giants, including Nvidia.
On August 4, the Trump administration delivered its verdict. In a meeting led by the Office of the National Cyber Director, top US AI companies were told that under the new AI safety framework, open-source models from Chinese rivals would not face US government safety testing.
For Anthropic, it was a crushing defeat. US National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross later spelled out the thinking at a cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas: the US government wants to back the American open-source AI ecosystem. He called such models 'tremendously valuable' and insisted the regulatory framework must stay 'flexible.'
Otherwise, he warned, 'it would not only stifle growth, development, and innovation, but the regulatory regime would become obsolete within 48 hours of completing its process.'
The bottom line: Washington keeps chipping away at China with petty moves. But when the pile gets high enough, Beijing punches back hard—and signals it has heavier blows ready.
President Xi is due to visit the US in September, and Trump will be in Shenzhen in mid-November for the APEC summit. Trump doesn't want things to spiral out of control; at crunch time, he'll yank the leash on his officials.
The real battlefield is artificial intelligence. It was almost certain that the White House's decision to leave Chinese open-source models alone came after fierce pushback from China.
Lo Wing-hung
