China
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
Target practice
Britain is still too complacent about Chinese influence
Two reasons not to let Sir Tony rest on his Garter laurels
I’m picturing Sir Tony Blair enjoying a fitting of his Garter robes after watching Boris Johnson stagger through PMQs. ‘I’m…
An Olympic task
How China got stuck in a zero-Covid trap
China’s ‘useful idiots’ keep their honours
Ministers like to talk a good game on China. But, as the Commons witnessed just two weeks ago, all too…
The dangerous alliance between Russia and China
The growing alliance between Russia and China is something we shouldn’t lose sleep over, their long history of mutual suspicion…
No one should celebrate the decline of America
Where is America? Like an old friend who hasn’t been in touch for years, you wonder if its silence is…
Portrait of the week
Home Sue Gray, Second Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, having been asked by Boris Johnson to look into accusations…
The Spectator’s Notes
In May 2020, in the wake of the Barnard Castle story, Emily Maitlis delivered her famous Newsnight address to the…
China’s zero-Covid policy is becoming unsustainable
With just three weeks until the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Covid-19 is creeping ever closer to the…
