China
What Xi wants in Europe
On a quiet street in Belgrade, a bronze statue of Confucius stands in front of a perforated white block, the…
The traditional British hedge is fast vanishing
The best hedges teem with the biodiversity that plays such a vital part in our future. Yet, since the 1950s, farmers and developers have been destroying them at an alarming rate
Are all great civilisations doomed?
If plague, war or natural disasters don’t destroy our own, then ‘a cascading systems failure’ seems likely, on past evidence, says Paul Cooper
Why was Blinken’s China visit so underwhelming?
It had been billed as an electrifying encounter – the US Secretary of State preparing to confront Beijing with a…
The Xi files: how China spies
Most states spy. In principle there’s nothing to stop them. But China’s demand for intelligence on the rest of the…
After TikTok, there’s another app we should ban
The American House of Representatives has passed a bill ordering Bytedance, a Chinese company, to divest from TikTok or stop…
The greed and hypocrisy of the opium trade continue to shock
Amitav Ghosh admits he found writing his history difficult because of the obscene profiteering and suffering he had to cover
Henry Kissinger saw his world fall apart
The leading advocate of world order died at a time when it all appeared to be coming undone. Henry Kissinger…
From the Odyssey to The Wizard of Oz: Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright, reviewed
Everything blends into everything else as an Aboriginal knight errant sets out on a quest to save his scorched native bushlands
China is spying on us, so what?
That China is spying on us is hardly the revelation of the century. The Sunday Times broke the story that police have…
The FBI has a problem with Catholics
On board Aello She was built in 1921, a beautiful wooden ketch that is as graceful to look at…
Where has Xi Jinping’s foreign minister gone?
Where has Xi’s foreign minister gone?
Portrait of the week
Home Ben Wallace said he would cease to be the Defence Secretary at the next cabinet reshuffle and would not…
Tory floundering over China is a gift to Labour
The government’s floundering over China is a gift to Labour
The secret life of China’s Banksy
The secretive life of China’s most controversial cartoonist
What have we been missing?
Ge’s short stories set in China are her most adventurous, ranging from politics in the time of Confucius to sex in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
Wuhan clan: we finally know the identity of the scientists in the lab linked to Covid
We finally know the identity of the scientists in the lab linked to Covid
