China

Most people who think themselves well informed know little or nothing about China. They – or I should say ‘we’ for I am just as ignorant – understand what the CIA and FSB are, and what they want. But what is the CPAFFC, and, if it arrives in your neighbourhood, should you worry? How about the United Front, the ‘magic weapon for strengthening the party’s ruling position,’ in the words of Xi Jinping? What does it do and why does China’s dictator praise it so? I am back from the last place I expected to learn about the Chinese Communist Party: the Budapest Forum, a conference of progressive European mayors

Zhou Xiaoxuan was in tears when she emerged from the Beijing court around midnight on Tuesday. ‘I’m really sorry there wasn’t a better result,’ she said in a video clip shared by supporters after the court threw out a sexual harassment case against one of the country’s most famous television hosts. Zhou claimed she had been forcibly groped and kissed while working as an intern at state broadcaster CCTV in 2014. The case was seen as a test of China’s proclaimed determination to clamp down on abuse, and it galvanized the country’s fledgling #MeToo movement. A court statement said Zhou had provided insufficient evidence, though she told supporters outside the

The revelations this week of the alarming influence of Huawei within the Cambridge Centre for Chinese Management provide the latest evidence of the tightening grip of China on Britain’s leading university. The Times reports that three out of four directors of the centre — part of the university’s Judge Business School — have ties to the telecoms giant, which has close links to the Chinese Communist party. The centre’s ‘chief representative’ is a former vice-president of the company who has been paid by the Chinese government. An honorary fellow of the centre wrote a book praising Huawei’s ‘ability to transform the intellectual elite into a band of soldiers with the

A rectification notice from China’s state censor earlier this month included a peculiar admonition to ‘resolutely oppose’ effeminate men on television. The note stood out in the otherwise dry document. Its other targets — people with ‘poor morals’ or ‘lacking solidarity with the party and nation’ — make sense within Beijing’s authoritarian logic. But it’s hard to conceive of pretty boys in eyeliner joining the party’s long lists of revolutionary enemies. The term used for effeminate men in the notice — niangpao — is vague, but the National Radio and Television Administration is counting on its broadcast partners to know what it means. An example of the sort of effeminate

Did Chinese-manufactured fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, kill Michael Kenneth Williams, the man who played ‘Omar’ in The Wire? Within minutes of his death being announced yesterday, speculation was circulating on Twitter. New York Police Department sources have told the Daily Mail they suspect fentanyl was involved. The world only seems to notice when a celebrity overdoses. In 2016, Prince’s death from a cocktail of fentanyl and other substances was an important milestone in awakening America to the horrific opioid drug epidemic that had crept up on the country since the 1990s. But lots of non-famous people are dying all the time because of fentanyl from China, which has flooded the

Two weeks ago, CIA director William Burns – who has rather a lot on his plate just now – had a quiet word in the Israeli prime minister’s ear about Chinese investment in the Jewish state. It was the latest and most urgent of America’s attempts to prevent Israel from slipping further towards the Beijing dragon’s maw, an issue which has increasingly threatened to drive a wedge between the two allies. It’s no secret that in recent years, Uncle Sam has found himself asleep at the wheel while China has been pushing ahead in the global race. Four decades of pursuing a policy of friendship towards Beijing had simply opened

Mao Zedong once said that the game of mahjong should not be underestimated, because: ‘If you know how to play it, you’ll have a better understanding of the relationship between chance and necessity. There’s philosophy in mahjong. It’s also dialectical… even if you have the worst hand, as long as you are strategic and methodical, the inferior will become superior; weakness will become strength.’ He even claimed the tile-based game was one of China’s three ‘great contributions’ to the world. Ironically, mahjong was outlawed under his rule. The early communists viewed it as an unnecessary distraction for the masses, and disliked its links to gambling and capitalism. It was not

When a British security guard was killed in an Iranian drone attack last month, the response from the government was robust. Boris Johnson warned that Iran will have to ‘face up to the consequences’. But has the West fully grasped the reality of what Iran and its ‘Ghost Armada’ is really up to at sea? And how can Britain deal with Iran’s silent partnership on the waves with China? Back in March, the two countries signed a 25-year, £300 billion trade and military partnership which included Chinese investment in exchange for regular, heavily discounted oil and a strengthened cooperation between the military, security and defence departments. China is investing in Iran for the long haul because

The lead figure in the World Health Organisation’s work on the origins of Covid-19 has given a remarkable interview to Danish TV. Peter Ben Embarek has revealed just how much political pressure the investigation came under and made clear that he thinks the lab leak hypothesis should not, pace the official report, be dismissed as extremely unlikely. Embarek told TV2 ‘Until 48 hours before we finished the whole mission, we still had no agreement that we would talk about the laboratory part in the report, so there was a discussion right up to the end about whether to include it or not.’ He said that, ‘initially, they [the Chinese] didn’t

Tear gas and rubber bullets hold off the protestors marching to Government House in Bangkok. They’re looking for Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, who they blame for Thailand’s Covid plight. As Covid cases continue to rise in Thailand, the protestors have three demands: the resignation of Prayut, more funding for the country’s Covid response, and for the country to stop using the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine. Back when Sinovac first landed in the country in February the shipment was welcomed by Prayut, who proclaimed it ‘a historic day’. But six months down the line hundreds of healthcare workers are still being infected with coronavirus despite having received two shots of Sinovac. A