China
Shanghai’s shame
China’s lockdown protestors cannot be silenced
Portrait of the week
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the House of Commons that it did not occur to him that the…
Sri Lanka’s descent into chaos
Colombo, Sri Lanka Some 13 years after the end of a civil war that saw 100,000 deaths, Sri Lanka is…
China’s pact with the Solomons is a direct threat to Australia
Tulagi, a 1.5 square mile island in the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands, is perhaps the most remote place on the…
Sound made visible
What particularly excites Silvia Ferrara, the author of The Greatest Invention, is not language per se but writing – that…
‘Putin still has a lot left to lose’
Niall Ferguson and David Petraeus on Russia’s mistakes, Xi’s plans and the lessons of Iraq
The battle for zero-Covid is being fought in Shanghai
Confusion infected Shanghai on Tuesday, as the authorities dithered over a promised easing of severe lockdown rules and Covid-19 continued…
The beast in the east
China appears not to have defeated Covid after all
Is China beginning to distance itself from Russia?
The read-outs from Friday’s two-hour call between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping were so different, that you have to wonder…
Is China’s zero Covid game up?
Omicron has broken through China’s Covid wall. On Tuesday, the country saw a record-high of more than 5,000 cases, the…
China’s zero Covid strategy is a threat to the global economy
Aside from deterring a few tourists, and people filming fantasy epics, closing down New Zealand during the Covid pandemic didn’t…
Monkey business
How to make money as a token westerner in Japan
Strait talk
What the Ukraine war means for China — and Taiwan
China is tying itself in knots over Ukraine
A few hours after Vladimir Putin sent his tanks into Ukraine, Beijing announced that Russian wheat, previously barred because of…
Unmasking ‘panda diplomacy’
The star of the Beijing Winter Olympics wasn’t an athlete: it was Bing Dwen Dwen, the spacesuit-clad panda mascot. It…
Is an anti-Xi resistance emerging?
From the 1980s to 2017, at least every five years, China’s National Party Congress would be a moment of intriguing…
Alliance of disruptors
The growing bond between Moscow and Beijing
Is Germany finally standing up to Russia and China?
When German chancellor Olaf Scholz met Russian president Vladimir Putin yesterday, the visuals said it all. As he had done…
What really happens if Russia invades Ukraine?
Russia will pay an enormous price if it invades Ukraine, whether it goes for the whole country or only the…
The Spectator’s Notes
In a lecture I recently gave to mark the approaching 40th anniversary of the Falklands War, one of the questions…
Barometer
No snow The pistes are covered with artificial snow and the hillsides are bare. Are the Winter Olympics a victim…
High life
Gstaad OK sport fans, have you been enjoying the concentration camp Olympics? I’m sure the Uighurs in the Chinese gulag…
China breaks new records in the Surveillance Olympics
Never before have the participants in a major sporting event been so closely monitored as in this Winter Olympics in…
Putin and Xi’s Potemkin alliance
Vladimir Putin very rarely travels abroad these days – and Xi Jinping has not met a foreign leader in person…
Centre of attention
The cosy links between Cambridge and the CCP
