China

The World Health Organisation has lost all credibility

Let’s be honest: is there anyone out there who has faith in the ability of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to tackle a future pandemic? Any lingering hope that the WHO might be an organisation fit to be trusted with global heath concerns has pretty well evaporated with the election, by acclamation, of China as one of the 12 members of its executive board on Friday.  It is true, of course, that an international body must have representation from all over the world if it is going to win the near-universal cooperation it needs in order to operate. It can’t be led entirely by western democracies and wealthy South Asian

Ian Williams

Xi Jinping and the Chinese rumour mill

The Beijing political rumour mill has gone into overdrive in recent weeks, seizing upon every nuance and reading between every line for signs of the impending downfall of ‘Xi dada’ (Big Daddy Xi). All kinds of stories are being circulated about President Xi Jinping’s health, with reports over squabbling over his likely successor. Chinese premier Li Keqiang is being tipped. The predicted replacement of Xi by Li has its roots in differences on the economy and Covid-19, so the rumours go – and there does appear to be a split of sorts. In his public pronouncements Xi has doubled down on zero-Covid above all else. He has made little mention

Inside Taiwan’s plan to thwart Beijing

Taipei   Nowhere is watching Russia’s faltering attempt to crush its democratic neighbour more closely than Taiwan. The Ukraine war is seen in Taipei as a demonstration of how determined resistance and the ability to rally a global alliance of supporters can frustrate a much larger and heavily armed rival. Taiwan has spent the past few years planning how it would cope if China attacked. It is developing a doctrine of defence warfare right out of the Ukrainian playbook. China was carrying out military exercises off the east coast of the island last week when I met Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister. ‘They keep circling in that area,’ Wu says.

No, monkeypox didn’t leak from Wuhan

It’s a familiar story. Close contacts of individuals infected by a dangerous illness are being asked by UK officials to isolate as government concern about the outbreak grows. Just 57 cases have been reported in Britain so far – 168 globally – but already questions are being asked about the virus’s origins. One theory involves the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab, which is considered by a growing number of scientists to be the origin of the original Covid pandemic, specialises in so-called ‘gain of function experiments’. These experiments aim to genetically enhance viruses (like Covid) so they are more likely to jump species to humans. Reports emerged last year that

Pope Francis has betrayed Cardinal Zen

When Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 90-year-old former Bishop of Hong Kong, was arrested by Chinese authorities on Wednesday and charged with ‘collusion with foreign forces’, the White House called for his immediate release. Lord Patten of Barnes, the last British governor of Hong Kong, said the arrest was ‘yet another outrageous example of how the Chinese Communist Party is hell-bent on turning Hong Kong into a police state.’ Human rights activists lined up to defend the cardinal, who although released on bail faces the prospect of spending his last years in a Chinese jail cell. You might expect the loudest protest of all to come from the Vatican. Not so.

New Aussie rules: Conservative values have fallen out of fashion

The election campaign is under way in Australia, barbs are being exchanged, candidates denigrated and abused, and promises – many of which are just fantastic in the literal sense of the word – are being made. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who is the leader of the Liberal party, is being challenged by the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese. Although Morrison has the edge over Albanese as preferred prime minister, neither is much loved. The leaders are unlikely to be a decisive issue in the election. What is the deeper mood of the country? That needs to be put into its historical context. Ever since the mid-1970s, Australians have expected political

China’s zero-Covid horror show is inspiring Taiwan to open up

Taipei Nowhere is watching the zero-Covid horror show unfolding in China more closely than Taiwan, where it is encouraging the island to ease restrictions, even as cases of the infectious Omicron variant spike. Taiwan’s premier Su Tseng-chang has said the extreme measures being imposed on the other side of the Taiwan Strait are ‘cruel’ and his country would not follow suit. From next week, mandatory quarantine for arrivals in Taiwan will be cut to seven days from the current ten, as the island moves gradually towards a policy of trying to live with the virus. Taiwan was in the vanguard of the zero-Covid movement, but now recognises that stamping out

Will the bad luck of the Philippines ever turn?

The Philippines is the odd man out in Asia, a predominantly Catholic country colonised first by Spain, then the United States. An archipelago with more than 2,000 inhabited islands on the cusp of the Indian and Pacific oceans, its strategic location is obvious. Yet it receives scant coverage in the British media beyond its natural disasters, the flamboyance of its leaders, whether Imelda Marcos or Rodrigo Duterte, and its long-running Marxist and Muslim insurrections. On a more mundane level, our encounter with its people will most likely be through the care they provide within the NHS. Philip Bowring, a former editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, for many years

Joe Biden’s new world disorder

The chaos abroad that has marked Joe Biden’s presidency is accelerating. Russia’s bloody war on Ukraine is rolling from winter into late spring; Iran and its proxies are launching missiles into Iraq and Saudi Arabia; China is menacing Taiwan and other Asian neighbours, and North Korea is preparing to revive its nuclear programme. Meanwhile, long-time US friends like Saudi Arabia and newer partners like India are starting to hedge their bets by cosying up to these regimes. Is the post-Cold War, US-led world order fracturing? It certainly looks like it. America’s enemies no longer fear her — and her friends don’t wholly trust her. Without a sea change in White

Are China’s censors losing control of Shanghai?

For weeks, Shanghai’s 25 million residents were assured that they would not be locked down. Then when the order came, the lockdown was supposed to last only seven days. It is now almost into its fourth week, and the government is struggling to suppress the chaos. Last week, 82-year-old Yu Wenming called his neighbourhood committee to say he had run out of medicine and food. Rather than reassure him, the local official despaired. ‘I am really helpless,’ he admitted. ‘I’m more sad than you are, because you are just one person. I see countless families…’ The elderly Mr Yu ended up comforting the worker. When a recording of their conversation

Portrait of the week: Boris packs his bags, XR blocks bridges and Netflix viewers switch off

Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told the House of Commons that it did not occur to him that the gathering in the Cabinet Room on his birthday (for which he had been issued a fixed-penalty notice) could amount to a breach of the rules on coronavirus. ‘That was my mistake and I apologise for it unreservedly,’ he said. He packed his bags for a visit to India to coincide with a Commons debate on whether he had misled parliament. Priti Patel issued a ministerial direction (the second in the Home Office in 30 years) to implement a scheme whereby people deemed to have entered Britain unlawfully since 1 January

Sri Lanka’s descent into chaos

Colombo, Sri Lanka Some 13 years after the end of a civil war that saw 100,000 deaths, Sri Lanka is once again on the cusp of serious violence. Earlier today, the police opened fire on protesters in the town of Rambukkana. One person has died and at least ten people are said to be in critical condition. It’s the first use of deadly force against demonstrators who seem to have filled the entire island in recent weeks. Grainy footage shows half-conscious bodies being carried into hospital, bullet casings littering the quiet palm-lined streets. This was meant to be a time of celebration. Buddhists are marking the new year while the

China’s pact with the Solomons is a direct threat to Australia

Tulagi, a 1.5 square mile island in the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands, is perhaps the most remote place on the planet to have a repeat role in world history. On 4 May 1942, Emperor Hirohito’s Japanese forces landed on Tulagi – then the capital of the British Solomon Islands Pro­tectorate – to attempt to cut off Australia from American supplies. Worse still, Aus­tralia feared invasion. These goals were ulti­mately thwarted in the naval and land battles of Guadalcanal. Not surprisingly, then, the news today that China has signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands has horrified the Australians. Canberra says the deal could ‘undermine stability in our region’ and

‘Putin still has a lot left to lose’: Niall Ferguson and David Petraeus in conversation

David Petraeus is a former CIA director who, as a four-star general, led US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He speaks to the historian Niall Ferguson about the war in Ukraine. NIALL FERGUSON: General, I wanted to ask you to give your assessments of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If you were grading Russia’s military performance and Ukraine’s, what grades would you give? DAVID PETRAEUS: Clearly Russia has failed. That’s the only way to describe the campaign thus far. And the Ukrainians, gosh, I think you have to give them an A at least and perhaps even more for just the sheer determination. But it’s much more than fighting

Does knotted string constitute ‘writing’?

What particularly excites Silvia Ferrara, the author of The Greatest Invention, is not language per se but writing – that is, the specific tool created for recording and conveying language visually. Sound made visible, tangible. The impulse to communicate might be innate, but writing is cultural, and in no way inevitable. It’s a bit of tech, which needed to be developed, and which needs to be learned. Writing has many obvious benefits – allowing communication to survive across time, thus enabling cultural traditions and posterity – unlike purely synchronous conversation, face-to-face, stuck in the present. Yet as a species (and a species with memory, specifically) we could live perfectly well

The battle for zero-Covid is being fought in Shanghai

Confusion is infecting Shanghai. The authorities are dithering over a promised easing of severe lockdown rules in the face of record cases of Covid-19 and widespread anger over their cack-handed way they have handled the crisis. The city has become a test for China’s faltering zero-Covid strategy, with nervous Communist party leaders sending mixed signals – announcing a change in the rules, while insisting they will stick to what they now characterise as a ‘dynamic’ zero-Covid policy ‘without hesitation or wavering’. At the weekend, vice-mayor Zong Ming announced a reclassification of Shanghai’s districts according to the severity of the outbreak. But the plan is short on detail and residents of

NHS accused of exploiting forced labour

There’s a mutiny underway in Westminster. After years of revelations about the conditions of Uighur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang province, momentum is building behind plans to stop the government buying health goods made in the region. On Wednesday, MPs will vote on an amendment to the health and social care bill, tabled by former Tory chief whip Lord Blencathra. It would ban NHS procurement from regions where the government believes there to be a ‘serious risk of genocide’. Ministers have already tried to buy off the rebels by proposing a review of health supply chains but ringleaders fear these don’t go far enough. And now Mr S has seen evidence

As Shanghai locks down, China is facing its greatest Covid crisis yet

The coronavirus is spreading through Hong Kong, Shenzhen and other cities in China like a bush fire; tens of millions of Chinese have been ordered to stay at home yet again. Shanghai, a city of 26 million souls, has been split in two. Those on the eastern side of the Huangpu River will be locked down until Friday, their west bank neighbours from the start of April.   It won’t work. Like a new Mercedes, the BA.2 model of the omicron variant of the Sars-CoV-2 virus is faster, quieter and 30 per cent more prolific. There is no chance of stopping it with lockdowns, mass testing or social distancing – even in Xi

Is China beginning to distance itself from Russia?

The read-outs from Friday’s two-hour call between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping were so different, that you have to wonder whether the two leaders were on the same line. The White House version had Biden bluntly warning China of the consequences of providing assistance to Russia, while Beijing’s take presented Xi as a peacemaker ‘The Ukraine crisis is something we don’t want to see,’ Xi reportedly said. ‘Conflict and confrontation are not in the interests of anyone.’ The American read-out focussed narrowly on Ukraine, China’s on the broader relationship between the two countries. Global Times, the usually strident Communist party tabloid, described it as a ‘constructive interaction’. This comes amid

Is China’s zero Covid game up?

Omicron has broken through China’s Covid wall. On Tuesday, the country saw a record-high of more than 5,000 cases, the highest number since the original Wuhan outbreak. To Brits (and most people around the world), that might sound like a laughably small number – but, as you might expect, China’s zero Covid machine has jumped into action, leading to a disproportionate, severe response. In the most afflicted areas like Shenzhen and Changchun, public transport has been suspended, non-essential businesses closed, residential compounds locked down. People can leave their homes to take part in compulsory city-wide mass testing (social media is flooded with videos of lengthy unsocially-distanced queues at test sites)