China

Thursday

Yuan Ren

China’s quiet Christians

 Beijing A strong coffee always perks me up on a smoggy day, especially when I can drink it somewhere clandestine — like an ‘illegal’ church. Seek, and you shall find — but when it comes to Christianity in China, you’re likely to get a bit lost. Without being told where it was, I could have spent a lifetime walking past the anonymous, seemingly empty office block, never knowing that inside it was abuzz with religious activity. A discreet sign in the lobby is the only indication that a Sunday service is in progress. In other parts of the world, a church announces itself to the faithful with a cross on

Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Magnetic north | 10 November 2016

Years ago, when I met a famous concert pianist, I was surprised when he greeted me in a northern accent. A soft one, mind you, but completely intact. I’d assumed that, by the time a conductor or soloist reached a certain level of fame, the northern vowels would have been erased by Received Pronunciation or some painful mid-Atlantic hybrid. I was such a little snob in those days, affecting a languid drawl that had my old schoolfriends in Reading rolling their eyes. But my social climbing had at least given me a good ear for other people’s doctored accents. London was crawling with northern choirmasters and music critics whose self-taught

Thursday

Yuan Ren

Importing the gentleman

 Beijing Gerard Manley Hopkins said that if the English had done nothing but ‘left the world the notion of a gentleman, they would have done a great service to mankind’. He was right. Yet in Britain today, you’re so very embarrassed by what we regard as your greatest single industry — turning out polished young people. Here in China, we look at the education statistics you view with horror — the ones that show how independent schools teach just 7 per cent of the population and yet their alumni account for 51 per cent of solicitors, 61 per cent of senior doctors, 67 per cent of Oscar winners and 74 per cent

Thursday

Daisy Dunn

On the money | 8 September 2016

Kublai Khan, said Marco Polo, had ‘a more extensive command of treasure than any other sovereign in the universe’. There were no jangling pockets of coins in Kanbalu. Bark had been stripped from the mulberry trees and beaten into paper notes. The notes carried delicate little pictures of earlier currency — long, frayed ropes weighed down with coins. It was as though they were mocking the old ways. Paper money had been produced in China from as early as the 7th century, but that did not stop Marco Polo from gushing that the Great Khan had discovered ‘the secret of the alchemists’. Back home, there was much curiosity but apparently

Taki

High life | 8 September 2016

I have a question for you, dear readers: is it me, or is there no newspaper or network in America that tells it like it is any more? Take, for example, the Anthony Weiner case. He is the pervert who keeps sending pictures of his penis to women over the internet, more often than not while in the company of his four-year-old son. If a man like that were married to Donald Trump’s closest assistant, The Donald would have been forced out of the race by now — no ifs or buts about it. But over on the other side, Hillary confirmed her trust in Huma Abedin, a Saudi-raised Muslim

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Mrs May the ‘Student Killer’ should count the cost of her visa crackdown

In the post-Brexit landscape whose shape was barely glimpsed in G20 discussions at Hangzhou, one thing is clear: soon we’ll have to stop waffling about trade deals and start pushing British products the world wants to buy. One such is education, at our universities, independent schools and English-language colleges — an export sector calculated in 2011 by the now defunct Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to be worth £17.5 billion. Not only does this sector attract foreign exchange, plug funding gaps for cash-strapped universities and support thousands of jobs, it also lays the ground for future relationships with students who return home to embark on business careers. And as

Tuesday

Samuel Coates

Does Justin Trudeau realise how desperate his China love-in looks?

Whatever the reason behind Obama not getting the red carpet treatment in Hangzhou, there’s one leader who was guaranteed it: ‘Little Potato’. Or, as you might know him, Justin Trudeau. The pronunciation of Trudeau sounds similar to the Mandarin word for potato, and Chinese media’s primary frame of reference for him is through his father Pierre (Big Potato was friendly with China’s communist leadership years before the rest of the West felt ready to engage). Their other reference point is that he is the handsome ‘APEC hottie’, so perhaps Hot Little Potato is more accurate. His predecessor Stephen Harper, who stepped down as an MP last week, would never have

Sunday

Ross Clark

How can we trust China with our nuclear power when we can’t trust it not to spy on our government?

In her decision as to whether to go ahead with the Chinese-backed Hinkley C nuclear power station – postponed from July apparently because of security concerns – Theresa May will find no better guidance than the advice which has been given to her and her aides while attending the G20 summit in Hangzhou this week. They have reportedly been advised to not to take their mobile phones, and to use temporary replacements while in China. They have also been given temporary email accounts which can be deleted upon return, and to avoid using public charging points for laptops and iPads. Any mobile phones that are taken to China, reports the

Thursday

Lara Prendergast

‘I have become their voice’

When the model and actress Anastasia Lin was crowned Miss World Canada last year, a fairly easy and lucrative career lay in front of her: magazine shoots, sponsorship opportunities and being paid to turn up to parties. She instead decided to use her position to confront the Chinese Communist party and call out its human rights abuses. Her new film The Bleeding Edge is a feature-length dramatisation about the organ trade in China. It might not be in a cinema near you soon, but it does screen in the House of Commons next week, in front of MPs and peers. And this is the audience that 26-year-old Lin is seeking.

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 18 August 2016

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, who was supposed to be on a walking holiday in Switzerland, wrote to Xi Jinping, the Chinese President, saying that she wanted to strengthen Britain’s trading relationship with China despite uncertainty over the construction of the nuclear power station at Hinkley Point. During her absence and that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer from Britain, Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was the ‘senior minister on duty’, Downing Street conceded. Regulated rail fares in England and Wales and regulated peak-time fares in Scotland will rise by 1.9 per cent in January, that being the annual rate of inflation in July, as measured by the Retail Prices

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator

When you vote in Britain, there is a relaxed feeling in the polling stations. This is a long-established part of our culture, the atmosphere seems to say, and you are trusted to follow its rules. But, as Sir Eric Pickles’s review of electoral fraud suggests, the ballot is not nearly as secure as it should be. If that trend continues, the results will be called in doubt, and then democracy really is in trouble. For a long time, I have suspected the process and so, in the recent EU referendum, I tried a couple of experiments, helped by the fact that I am legally registered to vote in London as

Johan Norberg Johan Norberg

Our golden age

‘We have fallen upon evil times, politics is corrupt and the social fabric is fraying.’ Who said that? Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders? Nigel Farage or Marine Le Pen? It’s difficult to keep track. They sound so alike, the populists of the left and the right. Everything is awful, so bring on the scapegoats and the knights on white horses. Pessimism resonates. A YouGov poll found that just 5 per cent of Britons think that the world, all things considered, is getting better. You would think that the chronically cheerful Americans might be more optimistic — well, yes, 6 per cent of them think that the world is improving. More

Michael Tanner

What’s love got to do with it?

Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades is probably his greatest opera, certainly the one in which his characteristic strengths are on display. Pondering on them inevitably leads one to think about what the operas lack, too, and it turns out be quite a lot. Unlike the finest opera composers, of whom there are regrettably few, he can’t create complete characters: what he is interested in is characteristics, especially — or perhaps only — obsessions, even if the obsession, as with Eugene Onegin, is with not being obsessed with anything, until close to the end. In The Queen of Spades the anti-hero Herman is doubly obsessed, though Tchaikovsky and his librettist brother

Thursday

The Spectator

China syndrome

The Chinese government is unlikely to give Theresa May a panda in the near future. This week the country’s ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, left no one in any doubt that President Xi Jinping takes a dim view of Mrs May’s decision to review the deal for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset — a deal through which China General Nuclear, the state nuclear-energy company, would have a one-third share. The Prime Minister was told that Anglo-Chinese relations are at a-‘critical historical juncture’. So she’d better play-nicely and approve that power station — or risk the wrath of Beijing. This is a far cry from the

Wednesday

Tom Goodenough

Lord Mandelson issues stark warning to Theresa May over Hinkley Point

Yesterday, it was the Chinese ambassador threatening Theresa May over Hinkley point. Today, it’s Lord Mandelson’s turn. The Labour grandee said that for the Prime Minister to ‘stretch out’ the Hinkley hold-up any further than the end of September ‘would be a mistake’. What was remarkable about Mandelson’s warning on Today just now was its similarity to that issued by China’s ambassador Liu Xiaoming. Xiamong didn’t mention the ‘B’ word – Brexit – but it was the elephant in his piece in the FT yesterday when he suggested that at such a ‘historical juncture’ Britain needed China. Mandelson went somewhat further to say the referendum was an important factor in

Tuesday

Tom Goodenough

China threatens Theresa May over Hinkley Point delay

It was already clear that Theresa May’s decision to review the Hinkley Point power plant had not gone down well in China. The nuclear plant upgrade is backed by billions of pounds of Chinese money and is also intended by Beijing as a key opportunity to showcase the country’s nuclear technology. So when the delay to giving the go-ahead was announced in July, China responded to suggestions its technology could not be trusted with a veiled threat saying its government would not ‘tolerate’ such accusations. Today, that veil has been lifted even more as the country steps up its pressure on Theresa May to give the £18bn project the green light. China’s

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Top tips for UK-China trade: grab the cheque and sup with a long spoon

There are reasons why Theresa May might harbour doubts about the Hinkley Point nuclear project — chiefly its unproven French technology and the high probability of time and cost overruns — but the fear expressed by her aide Nick Timothy that ‘the Chinese could use their role to build weaknesses into computer systems which will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will’ sounds — even to a Sino-cynic like me — far-fetched. As I wrote here during President Xi Jinping’s visit last year, ‘The least sinister thing about the Chinese is their money. A ten-digit cheque… even from China National Nuclear Corporation… does not carry a ‘backdoor’ listening

Thursday

Simon Barnes

What wasps do for us

Dom Perignon, Pimms, Carling Black Label, Coca-Cola — one’s as good as the other, so far as they’re concerned. Even if they don’t manage to drown in the stuff, they spoil the taste for drinkers by creating panic out of all proportion to their size. They destroy the ardour of al-fresco lovers in an instant. They are the joy-killers: the destroyers of summer, determined to prove that the wild world is a plot against humanity. Is there anything good about wasps? Is their sole purpose in life to harass humans seeking the fleeting joys of summer? Does this black-and-yellow air force exist only to ruin the few fine days reluctantly

Thursday

Harry Mount

Worlds apart

Classics is a boastful subject. Even the name — classics — has an inner boast; as does the classics course at Oxford, Literae Humaniores (‘more humane letters’), and the course’s second half, Greats. Michael Scott, a classics professor at Warwick University and a telegenic media don, tries to put an end to the boastfulness in this book. It has always understandably annoyed him that, in the field of Greek and Roman studies, book titles often include the words ‘Ancient World’ — as if there were only one ancient world, and it only included Greece and Rome. And so he attempts an ambitious reordering of ancient worlds — thus the book’s

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

We are where we are, clinging to the life raft of cliché

My column calling Brexit campaigners ‘hooligans’ and ending ‘Reader, I voted Remain’, caused quite a stir — coinciding as it did with The Spectator’s eloquent call for Leave. ‘Pathetic,’ spat a famous columnist encountered in the street. ‘Your words and Farage’s poster resonated so much that I (reluctantly) voted Remain,’ emailed a broadcaster who had previously given me a talking-to on the virtues of freedom. ‘I quite like being a hooligan,’ declared a Leaver on Facebook, alongside a selfie with the Boris-bus emblazoned ‘We send the EU £50 million a day.’ ‘Did someone else write your last paragraph?’ growled a veteran politico a day before the poll. ‘We thought you