Will 2024 be the year of a Third World War? As Russia’s war in Ukraine grinds on, the Middle East threatens to erupt, and China intensifies its military pressure on Taiwan, a global conflict seems all but inevitable.
How strange, …
Is Ko Wen-je China’s man in Taiwan?
Theatre and politics have a long history in Taiwan. During the Japanese colonial era (1895-1945), lookouts were posted outside Taiwanese opera performances to warn of approaching police patrols. These raids were part of a Japanisation policy known as kominka, designed …
How the CCP infiltrated Britain
Nearly four years after reports first emerged from Wuhan of a mystery virus filling hospitals with sick patients, we are told of an “unidentified pneumonia” circulating in China. Unlike last time, however, a healthy number of sceptics have been paying …
China’s super-rich are fleeing to Singapore
Sentosa, a resort island of palm trees and imported sand off the southern coast of Singapore, is a place devoted to pleasure. It has theme parks, golf courses, elegant gardens and casinos. You get the sense that the rules of …
Xi Jinping is not Mao reborn
Ever since he eliminated China’s two-term limit in 2018, Xi Jinping’s rule has produced a proliferation of articles and studies that compare his rule with Mao’s. The comparison is true only at a very superficial level, relating to the cult …
China’s economic plan is bankrupt
Over recent months, the mainstream media has been overtaken by fears of a debt crisis in the developing world. The rapid interest-rate rises implemented by Western central banks have refreshed memories of the Eighties, when a similar tightening cycle precipitated …
Was China behind Sam Altman’s ousting?
The blink-if-you-missed-it four-day drama at the tech firm OpenAI requires deep attention. On the surface it looks like power shenanigans; underneath lies a tale of humanity’s future and geopolitics.
The strange saga began a week ago, when the board of …
What pandas teach us about sex
One of my favourite childhood toys was a fuzzy little panda, with grippy arms that would cling to a curtain or bedpost. What I didn’t realise back then, as I doodled World Wildlife Fund-style pandas on my schoolbooks, was how …
How to escape North Korea
When Kim Seungeun first visited North Korea, he saw a barren land devastated by famine, its trees stripped by people desperate to heat their homes. He can still picture the corpses floating down the Tumen River on its border with …
Some Good Things Happened Today – #NewWorldNextWeek
This week on the New World Next Week: Xi meets Biden at the Dynasty house as San Fran gets cleaned out; the EU unveils its new digital ID; and some good things happened this week, too!
The post Some Good …
America and China should kiss and make up
If Presidents Xi and Biden have one thing in common, it’s that both desperately need a historic win. In the 23 years since Bill Clinton welcomed China into the World Trade Organization, the aura of the two nations’ relationship has …
Will Israel-Hamas cause a world war?
As Israel continues to mourn and Gaza continues to be turned into rubble, many in the Middle East are coming to a grim realisation: that things could soon become much, much worse. Huge tectonic shifts now threaten to rupture the …
The colonial hypocrisy of Japan
Because the first half of the 20th century is thought of in the West as an era of imperial decline, it’s easy to forget that, in these decades, there was one nation whose empire was fast expanding. Japan was on …
The week Hamas reinvented horror
Israel and Gaza are a Pathé newsreel of violence. Atrocity mounts upon atrocity. Blood smeared on gristle. Festivals mottled with corpses. Women dragged off to be raped and killed. And, now, perhaps the ultimate taboo. “This is the most difficult …
The myth of Chinese imperialism
When President Xi Jinping first announced his plan to revive the ancient “silk road” between Europe and China in a speech in Kazakhstan 10 years ago, Western leaders paid little notice. There was no indication that the man on stage …