Today’s Essential Eight

1. Meituan’s mess

2. Universities targeted in new round of CCDI inspections

3. US pushing back on cold-chain hypothesis for Covid

4. Vaccine disinformation

5. Zhao Lijian working his Twitter magic with Japan

6. New plan to fight human trafficking

7. Ideological and systems contest

8. Disgraced actor Zheng Shuang now in tax trouble

Thanks for reading.

Correction: I had a bad typo in section 7 on the People’s Daily article by Li Jie. What I meant to write was “This is another reminder that Xi and his CCP see themselves in a systemic and ideological competition with the West” not “This is another reminder that Xi and his CCP do not see themselves in a systemic and ideological competition with the West.”

Apologies, I hate when a typo really changes the meaning, and once the email is sent I can only change it on the web version.