Bloomberg reports that China said it was "very regrettable" that the U.S. and some American institutions have imposed restrictions on humanities exchanges, after Yale University's president pledged support for international students amid growing tensions between the two countries. Personnel and cultural exchange "should not be politicized and interfered with," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a briefing in Beijing on Monday. "This is inconsistent with the aspirations of the two peoples and has caused widespread concern among the academic circles of China and the United States and all sectors of society." Lu was responding to a question about an open letter Yale president Peter Salovey sent to students and faculty last week affirming the Ivy League school's "steadfast commitment" to its foreign talent. U.S. concerns about technology and intellectual property theft by China have been at the center of the deepening trade war between the two countries.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that as China's economy has grown, and its global reach has expanded, it no longer feels the need to adapt simply to be accepted into a Western-led financial and trade system. Instead, it has developed an alternative to that system—its own kind of authoritarian capitalism—that it believes is at least at viable, and perhaps the better model for others to follow. "China sees itself less as slotting into an existing system and more as a creator and shaper of a new system," says Keyu Jin, a professor at the London School of Economics and an expert on the Chinese economy. "It finds the so-called Western financial wisdom and the liberal democratic model unappealing and unconvincing, and in the process of breaking down."...Chinese officials have had a change of attitude, experts say. They see a Western financial system that led the world to the brink of depression with the 2008 financial crisis, and Western democracies trapped in debilitating paralysis, and aren't sure that is the model for them.