The last time China’s population contracted, its citizens were lucky if they could find grass to eat. It was the early Sixties, and Mao’s disastrous and ridiculously named Great Leap Forward had left millions in abject poverty. China is infinitely …
Xi’s plan to take back control
For a country that prides itself on 5,000 years of unbroken history, it is remarkable how often China has reinvented itself. Since Mao established the People’s Republic in 1949, there has been war, famine, isolation, brutality, communism and state capitalism. …
How we appeased China’s Zero-Covid regime
In the streets of China, people are rising up to reassert their human dignity in the face of the most dehumanising machine of social control in the world today: the Chinese Communist Party’s Zero-Covid terror-state.
For three years, the Chinese …
The battle for Taiwan’s constitution
At the Taipei headquarters of the Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP), a wall of shame has been erected in dishonour of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) patsies. Towards the bottom of the TSP shit-list sits Elon Musk, whose recent “solution” to the …
Can China let go of Zero Covid?
The 11th of the 11th is known as “Singles’ Day” in China. Originally an ironic student celebration of singledom (the digits 1111 resemble sticks, a slang term for bachelors), it has matured into a festival of e-commerce. Online sales are …
China’s broken promise of prosperity
At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Congress this week, Xi Jinping will be nominated for a precedent-defying third term of office. But his grasp on power has not gone unchallenged. Days before the Congress began, a rare protest took place …
China has given up on the West
Xi Jinping’s great moment is nearly upon us. This weekend, if the Pekingologists are correct, the Communist Party’s Congress will pave the way for him to become the longest-serving Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.
The Party has weathered the Covid …
Is China about to turn on Russia?
After managing a strained smile and handshake for the cameras, President Xi Jinping walked away from Vladimir Putin with a face like stone. By most accounts, the recent meeting in Uzbekistan between the two leaders, who once spoke of each …
China can’t afford to invade Taiwan
Should Nancy Pelosi have gone to Taiwan? The question might preoccupy America for months ahead of the November mid-term elections. But the truth is her visit did nothing to alter China’s stance towards Taiwan. The Speaker of the House was …
How Chinese is Taiwan?
The government in Beijing likes to portray its attitude towards Taiwan as the final resolution of its anti-colonial struggle; the end of its self-described “century of humiliation” at the hands of foreign powers. But the opposite is true. Today, as …
Chinese Zero Covid was always a lie
For the past two years, the Western media has taken that pernicious little term, “Zero Covid”, at face value. While the rest of the world saw rocketing caseloads and death rates, during a key 18-month period China reported two (yes, …
Zero Covid has radicalised Shanghai
Shanghai is finally opening up after three months of coercive detention, although China has effectively been in a state of lockdown for two years. Horror stories abound: of employees who found their office doors chained shut during the working day, …
The British weapons expert cosying up to China
His audience hung on his every word. Here was one of Britain’s foremost weapons experts chairing a prestigious, two-day conference devoted to exploring new ways of making arms more deadly. But the packed conference hall, its walls lined with oak …
Inside China’s fiction factories
“I want to influence the world with China’s intellectual property.” This is the great ambition of Tang Jia San Shao, 41, who wants to build the “Disney World of China” — a gigantic theme park inspired by his stories. But …
The myth of Chinese supremacy
When I first arrived in China in 1976, four years had passed since Nixon and Kissinger had gone to Beijing to meet Mao, kicking off what Nixon would label “the week that changed the world”. But that interval was not …
