China
The 19th century Chinese craze for all things European
By the 1800s, the mechanical clock had become a status symbol for wealthy Chinese. The first arrived with Jesuit missionaries…
Gag order: China’s stand-up comedy crackdown
The crackdown on China’s stand-up comics
Why Britain is falling behind in the global universities race
Our country still excels when it comes to higher education. Britain has seven of the world’s top 50 universities. In…
The root of the problem
The novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo is attracted by the freedom a New York job promises, but misses the young daughter she has left behind in London
Why China might attack Taiwan
China may well attack Taiwan. According to the CIA, President Xi Jinping has instructed his armed forces to be able…
Shame on those who abandoned Peng Shuai
No one really expects much in the way of principles or morality from those charged with running international sport. The…
It’s time for a reckoning with Chinese big tech
It has been a bumpy week for China’s beleaguered technology giants. They are under increasing scrutiny overseas, and the communist…
After his trip to Moscow, Xi Jinping still holds all the cards
After his arrival in Moscow on Monday, President Xi Jinping said that China is ready, along with Russia, ‘to stand…
Why is Whitehall intent on burying the Covid lab leak theory?
Why does our government have so much trouble criticising China? It doesn’t seem to have had a problem calling out Vladimir…
China is playing the long game over peace in Ukraine
At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi announced that his country was currently in…
Would Liz Truss’s ‘economic Nato’ work against China?
It was only a few weeks ago that Liz Truss started commenting on domestic policy again, speaking to The Spectator…
Portrait of the week: Sunak in No. 10, pasta gets pricier and Russia hits Ukraine’s energy grid
Home Rishi Sunak, aged 42, became Prime Minister. At the weekend Boris Johnson had flown back from a holiday in…
The US knows the main threat is China
China’s President Xi Jinping opened the CCP’s 20th party congress by doubling down on four key issues: no let up…
Portrait of the week: Truss says sorry, Hunt reverses mini-Budget and Kanye West buys Parler
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…
An outcast in Xinjiang: The Backstreets, by Perhat Tursun, reviewed
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…
China vs the US: who will win the chip war?
Semiconductors are the latest battleground for China and the US
Letters: Lockdown saved lives
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…
