China

After a landslide victory in January’s election, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen was re-inaugurated on Wednesday at a scaled-down ceremony in Taipei. As ever, Taiwan’s relationship with China was the central issue of the election. This year, though, a greater sense of urgency surrounded the vote, primarily because of the instability in Hong Kong.  Now, polling day feels like it belongs to a distant past, taking place amid rumblings of a new virus infecting residents of Wuhan across the Taiwan Strait. Although Taiwan has rightly received much praise for its response to coronavirus, the past few months have not been without significant difficulties. Above all, coronavirus has reinvigorated discussion of Taiwan’s position on the

The UK doesn’t have a China strategy. We have not had one since George Osborne declared a ‘golden era’ of Sino-British relations on a trip to Beijing in 2015. In hindsight, Osborne’s ‘era’ looks more like an ‘error’. Yet, Covid-19 makes clear that the UK needs to adopt one. The death and destruction caused by the coronavirus are partly a result of the bullying and lies that characterised the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to cover up the initial outbreak. Not only has China sought to dodge the blame for the pandemic, but it has also sought to take credit for dealing with it. Throughout Western capitals, long overdue assessments are

Like nearly everything named a ‘scandal’, ‘affair’ or given the suffix ‘gate’, almost nobody now remembers the Dalai Lama affair. But back in 2012, flush with recently acquired power and optimism, David Cameron and a man called Nick Clegg went to see the Dalai Lama while he was on a trip to London. Whether Cameron and Clegg knew what they were getting into wasn’t clear. The pair had a short meeting with the Lama at St Paul’s Cathedral — or at least in one of those bland conference ante-rooms English cathedrals constructed in the last century to atone for the splendours next door. Looking like a couple of travelling salesmen

If you have been troubled by the government’s failure to get tough on the country responsible for our present malaise, never fear. The Foreign Office has issued a joint statement with ten EU members warning this regime of ‘grave consequences’ for its ‘standing in the international arena’. That’ll put Beijing in its place. Well, not quite. The statement wasn’t directed at China and the deadly pandemic it has unleashed upon the world. It was another scolding for the Israelis, this time over plans to apply sovereignty to West Bank settlements in line with the Trump peace plan. With 250,000 fatalities and the world economy on a ventilator, it’s about time

As countries around the world try to work out a way to live with coronavirus, there’s a growing hostility towards China. In order to remedy any such thoughts, this week Beijing sent the Chinese embassy’s second in command to face something unheard of in her homeland – public scrutiny. Chen Wen, a London-based diplomat for the totalitarian state, took the BBC’s World at One programme on Friday to defend the Chinese Communist record on Covid-19. During the extensive interview, she declared that when it come to the global pandemic, which originated from China, the world should ‘appreciate’ the efforts of the Chinese state rather than criticising its failings. However, some gentle probing from the BBC’s Chris Mason

As Britain struggles through the eye of the coronavirus storm, it is difficult not to cast our eyes across the world and compare our fate with that of our friends and allies. One nation in particular stands out – Australia – seemingly on course yet again to assume its role as ‘The Lucky Country’. It’s tasteless to say, but Australia has had ‘a good crisis’ – it’s one of the few nations to emerge relatively unscathed from the pandemic’s deadly grip and has recorded just 75 deaths so far. Now Sydney’s famous beaches are re-opening this week, and visitor restrictions on care homes are being relaxed. Australia’s performance is especially intriguing

Could China have done more to prevent the coronavirus pandemic? One tabloid editor in Germany certainly thinks so and an extraordinary bust-up has broken out between the Chinese government and his newspaper as a result. The row kicked off last week when Bild – the best-selling paper in Germany – published an editorial entitled ‘What China owes us’, calling for China to pay reparations of £130 billion for the damage done by the outbreak of the virus.  Later that day, the Chinese embassy in Berlin then responded with an open letter saying ‘we regard the style in which you ‘campaign’ against China in your current report on page two as infamous… Those

When it comes to China, Dominic Raab says: ‘We can’t have business as usual after this crisis’. Business as usual is China masking the beginnings a deadly pandemic that has infected more than two million and killed 150,000 worldwide. Business as usual is Beijing covering up the existence of a new coronavirus for six crucial days and intentionally under-reporting infection and casualty rates. Business as usual is police harassment of doctors and the disappearance and presumed detention of Dr Ai Fen, who tried to alert colleagues to a new coronavirus in Wuhan. Business as usual is China restricting research into the origins of the virus and, in the estimation of international law