China’s chip industry is struggling
China is entering the new year with its tech ambitions under a Covid cloud. The enormous cost of the now…
China’s dangerous zero-Covid retreat
China’s scrapping of strict Covid controls represents not so much a shift in gear, as a screeching hand-break turn. It…
The death of Jiang ‘the toad’ – and memories of a more open China
It is a measure of the dark places Xi Jinping is taking China politically and economically that the rule of…
Is Xi Jinping in trouble?
The Chinese people seem to have run out of patience with their country’s draconian Covid policies. After almost three years…
Zero-Covid is the new one-child policy
It has been a remarkable few days for China’s increasingly absurd and at times chilling zero-Covid campaign. There was outrage…
The mystery of the Hu Jintao incident
A steward tries to lift Hu Jintao from his seat, but Hu doesn’t want to move. The former Communist party…
The threat of Chinese headhunters
It is hard to say what is more shocking, dozens of former British military pilots lured by vast salaries to…
Joe Biden has jolted China
The chip war between China and America is heating up, with an increasingly assertive Joe Biden battling with Xi Jinping as…
Is Liz Truss going soft on China?
In her speech to the Conservative party conference, Liz Truss rightly pointed out that we did not stand up to…
China’s lockdown nightmare is far from over
Another Covid-19 lockdown, another angry confrontation. This time it was on the streets of Shenzhen, China’s high-tech hub, where videos…
Even Xi is unimpressed with Putin’s bungling autocracy
To say that Vladimir Putin is giving autocracy a bad name is rather to state the obvious. But it now…
The extreme heatwave wreaking havoc across China
China is struggling to limit the impact of its longest and most widespread heatwave since records began more than 60…
The Chinese spy ship and the dangers of debt-trap diplomacy
A Chinese spy ship that docked in Sri Lanka on Tuesday in defiance of Indian and western protests is the…
China’s Taiwan tantrum is already backfiring
Chinese social media is full of anger and frustration – because the military didn’t shoot down Nancy Pelosi’s plane. As…
Taiwan tells China: we’re not scared
China has launched a new round of military drills near Taiwan, having previously announced they were ending on Sunday. The…
The UK is just waking up to the scale of Chinese espionage
The scene could have come straight out of a spy novel. An ornate Chinese garden with temples and pavilions, built…
HSBC has answered the call of the Chinese Communist Party
HSBC was being more than a little disingenuous when it claimed on Thursday that Communist party cells don’t have much…
China’s economy is grinding to a halt
Economic growth in China is grinding to a halt. The days of soaring double-digit growth are over, and the malaise…
China’s Ponzi banks are teetering
What began as a run on a handful of provincial banks is rapidly morphing into one of China’s worst financial…
China’s increasingly authoritarian Covid pass
A Chinese health app, developed to enforce the Communist party’s draconian Covid-19 restrictions, is being repurposed to tighten political control…
Is Xi Jinping losing his grip on power?
The Beijing political rumour-mill has gone into overdrive in recent weeks, seizing upon every nuance and reading between every line…
The next front line
Taiwan is learning valuable lessons from Ukraine
China’s zero-Covid horror show is inspiring Taiwan to open up
Taipei Nowhere is watching the zero-Covid horror show unfolding in China more closely than Taiwan, where it is encouraging the…
Xi has made his choice: he is sticking with Vladimir Putin
Xi Jinping has made his choice. He is sticking with his ‘best friend’ Vladimir Putin, and no end of Russian…
China’s demographic time-bomb is ticking faster
The latest warning was stark – that China’s population will shrink this year, more than a decade faster than forecast,…
