China

How big a deal is it that Australia has chosen a British design for its nuclear submarines rather than the US one that it could have chosen? Does it really justify Rishi Sunak ‘bouncing on the balls of his feet’, as described by one minister? True, the machines aren’t actually going to be built in Britain, but in Adelaide. But it isn’t going to do the UK defence industry any harm to be supplying the know-how. For once, the government can celebrate selling arms to a country which can be trusted not to abuse its military kit, and which is not stringing up dissidents by the dozen. Aukus is a

Why does our government have so much trouble criticising China? It doesn’t seem to have had a problem calling out Vladimir Putin. But Downing Street – along with the rest of Whitehall – seems determined to do Xi Jinping’s regime’s dirty work. Over the past ten days we have become used to seeing Matt Hancock as a mad, authoritarian figure determined to lock Britain down during Covid, even when scientific advice did not call for it. Yet it does seem that he was able to consider the prospect that Covid originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. The evidence is not conclusive or overwhelming, not least because the Chinese have used every tactic to

China’s relationship with America is getting worse and worse. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, warned yesterday that ‘containment and suppression will not make America great. It will not stop the rejuvenation of China’. The Biden administration, meanwhile, recently accused China of readying to send weapons to Russia, and Americans are still fuming about the Chinese balloon that entered their airspace. China thinks they’re being hysterical. Britain will soon be forced to decide whether it will decouple from China. The Americans no doubt want Britain to join them in cutting ties to Beijing, but it is not clear that British policymakers are ready to do this yet. In 2020, China accounted for

China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang has come out growling, using his first media appearance to accuse the US of ‘all-out containment and suppression’. He said his country’s friendship with Russia was a beacon of strength and stability which ‘set an example for foreign relations’ and asked: ‘Why should the US demand that China refrain from supplying arms to Russia when it sells arms to Taiwan?’ He said that China and the US were heading for inevitable conflict if Washington does not mend its ways. It was a fiery performance, even by the standards of Beijing’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats. The tirade took place on the sidelines of the annual meeting

What has Alexander Lukashenko been up to in China? The purpose of the Belarusian President’s three-day visit, according to state media outlet BelTA, was to continue ‘the long-term course of building friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation’ between the two countries. But the truth is somewhat murkier. Lukashenko is Vladimir Putin’s closest ally. He allowed Russian troops to launch the northern flank of the invasion from Belarus back in February last year. Since then, he has given Russia free rein to consistently transport troops, weapons and supplies through the country. So, could he have travelled to China as a de facto Russian emissary? Lukashenko was full of praise for Xi Jinping’s leadership, congratulating him

The Telegraph has a hell of a scoop with its lockdown files, aka Matt Hancock’s WhatsApps. It’s a major public interest story. We see with increasing clarity now how our government flapped and flailed and obfuscated as ministers and senior officials desperately tried to figure out the deadliness of Covid and what to do about it. There’ll be more recriminations in the coming days and rightly so. But if we really want to be angry at something, and we do, shouldn’t we also direct our indignation at another government? One which, US intelligent agencies believe, probably let the Covid-19 virus escape from one of its laboratories, covered the crisis up

Until a few years ago, Hollywood dominated Chinese cinemas. In the People’s Republic, Marvel’s superhero romps were the people’s favourite. In 2019, Avengers: Endgame took more than 4 billion RMB (£510 million) at Chinese box offices. That success might partly explain why the Chinese Communist party went on to effectively ban Marvel films for the next three years. Real heroes should be Chinese.  Other Hollywood smash-hits such as Top Gun: Maverick and Spider-Man: No Way Home have also beendenied entry into the Chinese market. A new Film Administration Bureau, created in 2018 and headed by a Xi loyalist, brought film distribution closer to the party line. Last year, only 29 American-made films were released in China; compared to 73 in 2018. One estimate put the China-shaped gap for Hollywood at $2 billion. American filmmakers were about to lose hope. But that’s all

China is moving to consolidate and exploit its position as world leader in solar power technologies, by restricting the export of key components. The move could deliver a severe blow to the European and American solar industries and is a stark warning about the dangers of over-dependence on Beijing for critical technologies of the future. It also illustrates the impact of China’s industrial-scale cyber theft.  Beijing is reportedly looking to add raw materials and other vital items used in the manufacture of solar panels to a list of items that could be restricted in order to ‘help safeguard national security’ and require special permission for export. The list does not

At the tail end of last year, Chinese scientists claimed they had achieved something world-changing. In a widely circulated paper, the researchers said they had developed an algorithm run on a quantum computer that is able to break the best encryption that exists today. Modern encryption runs on mathematical problems which take the most powerful computers tens of thousands of years to crack. It has long been theoretically possible that quantum computers could one day be capable of cracking these codes in a practical timescale. If the Chinese claim is correct, then Xi Jinping now possesses a terrifying assault weapon in cyber warfare.  The paper, however, was greeted with derision

There will no doubt be some tense moments in the boardrooms of western technology companies over the coming days after the revelation that the Chinese spy balloon shot down after traversing the United States had western-made components with English-language writing on them. The finding was reportedly contained in intelligence briefings to US lawmakers and will almost certainly lead to still greater scrutiny of the sale to China of advanced ‘dual-use’ technology. China’s continuing claims that the balloon was an innocent weather balloon blown off-course are looking increasingly absurd Investigators are continuing their efforts to recover the wreckage of the balloon and its payload of surveillance kit from shallow waters off

China’s ‘spy’ balloon, (or is it an errant weather balloon?), is currently being tracked across America. Picked up above the Aleutian Islands, it was buzzed by US planes above Montana and is now headed eastwards as it is pushed by the prevailing Jet Stream. The Pentagon has decided not to shoot it down; it does not want debris landing on middle America. China insists the balloon is used for meteorological research and strayed because of bad weather. But the incident has prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China that was scheduled for next week. Was the balloon inspired by Japan’s Emperor Hirohito? Starting in

As the world’s attention focused last month on whether to send tanks to Ukraine, Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, was on a whistle-stop tour of the West. He held various meetings with G7 leaders, including Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden. His objective was clear: to create a new alliance that can counter China. Japan has been forming a ‘Quad’ with Australia, India and the US on naval manoeuvres  Japan adopted a ‘peace constitution’ in 1947 when it was occupied by the US, pledging that the country would never again wage war. For the past half a century, the military budget was capped at 1 per cent of GDP, and Japan

China usually shuts down for the Lunar New Year, but Communist party leaders have marked the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit with a burst of activity worthy of that skittish animal. They have followed their colossal U-turn on zero-Covid with a charm offensive to convince the outside world that China is open for business. In many ways it is as abrupt an about-turn as scrapping Covid controls in the first place. Xi Jinping despatched his trusted vice-premier and economic tsar Liu He to Davos to schmooze with western business leaders. In his speech to the World Economic Forum two weeks ago, he mentioned ‘strengthening international cooperation’ no less

A few days ago, an email arrived from someone I know in China: my book The Great Sea had been spotted on the bookshelves of president Xi when he delivered his beginning of the year address to China and the world. China watchers were expending plenty of energy identifying the other books on his shelves, and came up with 62 titles. The great majority were by Chinese authors, including famous classics: the history of ancient China by Sima Qian and the Full Collection of Tang Poems, not to mention works by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Admittedly there is a scattering of translations, including Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy

Why did China end its zero Covid policy so abruptly? This question has confounded China-watchers and even the Chinese people over the last month. For the last three years, the Chinese government dictated its people’s lives to an extent unseen since the Cultural Revolution. Zero Covid had become part of Xi Jinping’s political legacy. It was touted as proof of socialism’s concern for human life, compared to capitalist indifference. And yet, almost inexplicably, zero Covid ended pretty much overnight at the beginning of December. For the first time ever, the Chinese government appears to have admitted the real reason – zero Covid was failing to control the Omicron variant. In