China

Saturday

Harriet Sergeant

The lady from Shanghai

By the middle of the second world war, May-ling Soong was the world’s most powerful woman, at the centre of events in China’s history and its relationship with the USA. By the middle of the second world war, May-ling Soong was the world’s most powerful woman, at the centre of events in China’s history and its relationship with the USA. Hers is an engrossing life which spanned the 20th century and included a cast of extraordinary admirers, from Chinese warlords to Churchill. ‘I think your bark is worse than your bite,’ she cooed at him during the Cairo conference. Born in 1897, she was one of three sisters whose lives

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Much to do if Britain is to manufacture its way out of trouble

The City had hoped that Britain would export its way out of trouble. Dream on City Boys: Britain’s trade deficit is £7.3bn. It is perverse that the Thatcher government is blamed for manufacturing’s decline. Certainly, deficits were a feature of the Thatcher years but Labour came to power with a £1.8bn trade surplus and the gap has widened every year thereafter; Britain was £56bn in the red by 2006. With a possible inflation crisis louring in the distance, precipitated in part by weak sterling and a dependency on imports, British manufacturing needs to be stimulated. John Redwood has a typically incisive post:       ‘It is quite possible to make things

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

The rebirth of history

We have Francis Fukuyama writing a cover piece for us this week, revisiting his ‘End of History’ thesis. When he first published it, in 1989, he anticipated what was to become a consensus shared by many, including myself: that autocracy was on the way out. Communism had failed, and was being supplanted by the free society (aka the free market). Capitalism was creating wealth and liberty, and from Minsk to Gdansk people wanted it. Eastern Europe was managing a transition brilliantly. Fukuyama¹s thesis seemed to sum up an incredible spirit of optimism. Perhaps this optimism turned to hubris. After 9/11 Tony Blair and George Bush wanted to accelerate history, and

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Not yet a post-American Europe

I’m in Brussels where the only news is Obama’s cancellation of a trip to Madrid to join an annual EU-US confab.  The FT’s Gideon Rachman explains the anxiety caused by the decision: ‘There is no doubt that the Spanish government, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU (You thought it had been abolished? Fooled you!), will treat this as a bitter blow. The Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero was royally snubbed by George W. Bush and so it was really important to him to underline that he has a great relationship with the sainted Obama. (…) The Spanish are not the only Europeans feeling snubbed by Obama.

Thursday

John Stokes

Google poses Obama a problem

Google’s decision to publicly confront the Chinese government over cyber attacks that have been hitting Google customers for the past year or so poses a difficult challenge for the Obama administration. The threat by Google to shut down its operations in China over the attacks is the first public acknowledgement by a major US corporation of the attacks which the US intelligence community has known about for almost a decade. The facts are that China has been waging a cyber war against the US government and companies that involve literally millions of attacks each day. Every major US corporation operating in China has been targeted, as have universities, research laboratories

Friday

Daniel Korski

Dealing with China in 2010

The execution of Akmal Shaikh has brought China to our frontpages, and to the forefront of diplomatic thinking, as the New Year begins. The question is not just how to respond to this single and, in many regards, sad event – but how to deal with growing Chinese power more generally. How will we shape our relations with China for this decade and beyond? It would obviously be wrong to end all UK-China links over Akmal Shaikh’s execution. The Labour government’s use of pique as a guiding principle of foreign policy had little effect on Russia and will not move China. Nor should anger over the excecution – however righteous

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Can you be pro-British and pro-European?

Last night in a speech at the IISS, David Milliband laid out the case against the Tories’ Europe policy. As he started off saying: “It is very strongly in the British national interest for the EU to develop a strong foreign policy; that to be frightened of European foreign policy is blinkered, fatalistic and wrong; that Britain should embrace it, shape it and lead it.” In that one sentence lies the case for Britain’s role in shaping a liberal, open and outward-focused EU. It is probably also the line of attack that the Foreign Secretary will use against the Tories until election day and possibly beyond, if Miliband eventually assumes

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

A new world order – don’t be silly

Go to any international think-tank conference and you will hear one complaint repeated ad nauseam: the intenational system, built after World War II – and incorporating the UN, NATO, the IMF, WHO etc. – is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to change to accomodate new threats, like climate change, and new powers like India and Brazil. The last point is particularly oft-heard. If India provides the majority of UN peacekeepers, should Delhi not have a permanent say on the UN Security Council? Now that China has become a pillar of the global economy, should the Beijing government not have more votes on the IMF board? The limited representation

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Fallows vs Brooks

And it’s no contest: James Fallows dismantles David Brooks’ column on China. His advice: Take a little time and look around, David. The parts that don’t fit what you theorized before arriving are actually the most stimulating. That’s in response to Brook’s beloved pseudo-scientific hucksterism: If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim. These sorts of experiments have been done over and over again, and the results reveal

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Quote for the Day | 12 August 2008

Yes, I mentioned this post earlier. But… But the very most obvious thing about today’s XXXX is how internally varied and contradictory it is, how many opposite things various of its people want, how likely-to-be-false any generalization is… XXXX here is China but it could just as usefully be the United States of America. That’s something foreign correspondents and, just as importantly, foreign editors need to bear in mind at all times. And not necessarily only with regard to America and China either…

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Aung Sang Suu Kyi, a victim of the post-American world

Today the Burmese junta convicted pro-democracy campaigner Aung Sang Suu Kyi to a further 18 months under house arrest after a U.S. man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May and stayed there for two days, breaching the terms of her house arrest. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have led the world’s outrage, urging the UN Security Council and European Union to impose tougher sanctions on the regime.   Unfortunately, not much is likely to happen to the Burmese generals. They remain protected not only by their neighbors, but by China and India who have both economic and strategic interests in keeping the regime intact. Like China, power-hungry India

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Lessons for 2012 from 1992

John Huntsman’s decision to accept Obama’s invitation to serve as the US Ambassador to Beijing is, as James suggested, interesting given the recent rise in Huntsman stock. The advantages for Obama are several: firstly, and most obviously (if also most grubbily) he removes a potential 2012 opponent from the fray. Secondly, picking someone like Huntsman who not only has diplomatic experience (as ambassador to Singapore and, more importantly, as Deputy US Trade Representative) but also speaks Mandarin tells the Chinese that Obama appreciates their importance and is determined to take their relationship seriously. How could he not, you might ask, and there’d be something in that. But consider that such

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Smoking To Recovery

Good and bad news from China: A Chinese county has rescinded a rule urging its government workers to smoke more in order to boost tax income. The authorities in Gong’an county had told civil servants and teachers to smoke 230,000 packs of the locally-made Hubei brand each year. Those who did not smoke enough or used brands from other provinces or overseas faced being fined or even fired. The Good news is that the Chinese recognise the contribution smokers make to the public finances; the Bad news is that they seem to be encouraging a rather stern form of protectionism. Still, you can’t have everything – though it’s a sad

Wednesday

Martin Bright

Humbling Free Expression Awards

I am always blown away by the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. But for some reason, last night’s event seemd to throw up an even more astonishing roster of award winners than usual. It was also good that so many were there in person. (In a surreal touch, Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, was also there in person at a table he had bought for the occasion). The Sri Lankan paper, The Sunday Leader, won the journalism award, which was collected by Lal Wickrematunge. Lal explained he and his brother Lasantha had started the magazine 15 years ago on a shoestring budget and distributed it from the back of

Wednesday

Alberto Manguel

No longer at home

The Writer as Migrant, by Ha Jin Three quest-ions, labelled as ‘Aristot- elian’ by the author, begin the Rice University Campbell Lectures delivered by Ha Jin in 2007: to whom, as whom, and in whose interest does a writer write? To which the reader might respond: can any writer truthfully answer any of these questions? The identity of a writer and of his readers is a matter debated long before Aristotle and well into the groves of post-modernist academe. From Homer blindly taking dictation from his muse to Joyce sweating away in the smithy of his soul, the writer has been perceived by himself and by his audience as innumerable

Tuesday

Alex Massie

Quote for the Day

Chris Dillow – always worth your time – casts a weary eye over a number of government policies and concludes: What this shows, I think, is that New Labour’s claim to believe in technocratic, evidence-based policy is a sham. They are not technocrats at all, but either priggish moralists or cowardly panderers to mob prejudice. Quite so. And as he says, we may need a revolution. Lord knows, however, where that might come from.

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Quote for the Day | 1 October 2008

Comes from that wise bird, Tyler Cowen: 11. If someone is pushing conclusions and not identifying the potential weak points in his or her arguments, be suspicious.  Also beware of anyone pretending to offer you simple answers. He’s referring to the current finanical crisis, but of course this is broadly true of any public policy question.

Thursday

Alex Massie

Chinaphobia

Good god. Did you know that the United States should be prepared to fight against Russia and China? It may not surprise you that the Weekly Standard fears that the supposedly pusillanimous response to the Russo-Georgian stramash can only encourage China to invade Taiwan. The underlying tensions in the Taiwan Strait bear important similarities to those in the Caucasus. Just as authoritarian Russia objects to a democratic, pro-American Georgia, so too authoritarian China sees a democratic, pro-American Taiwan as a gaping wound on its periphery. The main cause of tensions is domestic politics. An authoritarian China, like authoritarian Russia, needs fervent nationalism to retain its shaky legitimacy. The “sacred goal”

Saturday

Alex Massie

Opening Proceedings

James Hamilton is quite right to suggest that there’s no way London can compete with Beijing’s spectacular and often beautiful (if also, as he says, “frenziedly gauche”) opening ceremony. And he’s correct to argue that we shouldn’t try to. In any case, opening ceremonies tend towards the vulgar. When they are not bafflingly abstract they’re unnecessarily, if revealingly, boastful. Hey, look at us! Hosting the games should be enough in and of itself, without any need for this rather naff sort of preening. Now admittedly an absence of preening is itself a form of preening. But there you have it. My suggestion for the London 2012 games would be for

Friday

Alex Massie

The Eeyore Olympics

Well, the Olympics have finally arrived. James Fallows has been my go-to China blogger for some time. I heartily recommend his blog to you and suggest it will be well worth reading over the next couple of weeks. Not for its coverage of the games as such, but because he has a sympathetic humanist’s appreciation of what the games mean to China and the Chinese people. I also think he is right when he argues, as has done repeatedly, that it is in everyone’s interests that these are successful games. Of course, London is next. One of the remarkable things about modern Britain is the joyously jaundiced view many Britons