China
Portrait of the week
Home Liz Truss said in a BBC interview as Prime Minister that she wanted to ‘say sorry for the mistakes…
Why are our universities still cosy with China?
It sounds like something from a spy novel: scientists linked to the Chinese military complex working at UK universities on…
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…
Why did North Korea fire a missile over Japan?
It was a new dawn, a new day, and a new North Korean missile test. The land of the morning…
For the chop
Like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, Perhat Tursun’s unnamed protagonist is an outcast. A young Uighur in an increasingly Han city (Urumchi,…
It’s wrong to ban China from the lying-in-state
Unlike some Americans, China’s communists have no problem getting their heads around hereditary monarchy. Last week, President Xi sent his…
What Xi wants from Central Asia
President Xi Jinping hasn’t stepped outside his country since the pandemic began. For almost three years, China’s elderly leaders have…
Chips with everything
Semiconductors are the latest battleground for China and the US
Letters
Lockdown saved lives Sir: Rishi Sunak presents an alarming picture of what happened during lockdown (‘The lockdown files’, 27 August)…
I’d be the perfect communist shill
Could I be the model communist shill? Consider these facts: I was born and raised in China. I speak and…
Continental drift
When will the West start to deal with Africa on its own terms?
Is Germany afraid of China?
The German air force has taken off for its first deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. It will take part in…
China’s baby bust
The demographic crisis might stall its rise
Nancy Pelosi knows how much Taiwan matters
In the coming hours, Nancy Pelosi is expected to arrive in Taiwan. The plane that is thought to be carrying…
Will China blockade Taiwan?
Xi Jinping has made it very clear over the years that he is determined for China to reunite with Taiwan.…
Chinese checkers
The threat our politicians don’t seem to have noticed
Has the lab leak theory really been disproved?
The BBC carried a story this week with the headline ‘Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market’. Bizarrely…
Is the US thinking straight about Taiwan?
As the Tory leadership candidates tussle over China, it is well worth reading this essay by the US strategist Hal…
The next black swan? Keep your eye on China’s banks
‘Black swan’ theory, developed by the writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb, refers to unexpected events that have extreme consequences but are…
Jacinda Adern’s tricky China policy
New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Adern, has had a busy week on the international circuit. On Friday she appeared in…
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…
How long will Xi Jinping rule China?
For some time now it has been assumed that in November the National Congress will rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s continued…
The plunder of the seas
David Profumo wonders whether newly created marine reserves can really reverse decades of devastation
The closing of the Chinese mind
I was born in Nanjing five years after the Tiananmen Square protests. By then, records of the demonstrations and the…
