Visitors talk to staff members at a Google stand during the Global Mobile Internet Conference, Beijing, April 28, 2017 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, managing editor, Frederick Deknatel, and associate editor, Omar H. Rahman, discuss the sharpening debate over immigration in the United States and around the world and the Trump administration’s immigration policies. For the Report, Zach Montague talks with Peter Dörrie about the challenges facing foreign tech companies trying to operate in China, without compromising their ethics—or their trade secrets. If you like what you hear on Trend Lines and what you’ve read on WPR, you can sign up for our free newsletter to get a taste of our uncompromising analysis before […]

Attendees take a selfie before a press conference announcing the return of the Motorola brand to China, Beijing, Jan. 26, 2015 (AP photo by Ng Han Guan).

Editor's Note: This article was updated in December 2018. Foreign tech companies have been forced into difficult compromises and today find themselves asking whether the financial rewards and access to a massive market justify the work required to stay in Beijing’s good graces—especially given that the risk of failure is rising, illustrated by the recent blocking of WhatsApp in China. When users of WhatsApp in China started noticing technical problems with the mobile messaging application in September 2017, nothing seemed unusual at first. The slow sending speeds and inability to deliver video and audio files could have easily been due […]