China

Friday

Cockburn

Hunter Biden, Substackistador

From our US edition

Hunter Biden has worn many hats in his 56 years on Earth. Scion, serviceman (briefly), attorney, businessman, crack addict, painter and, lately, influencer. The former first son burnished his online credentials by joining Substack this week – and Cockburn welcomes his comrade. Hunter’s first meaningful post on “Where’s Hunter,” his blog on the platform, is called “It’s Dad.” The piece reads like something any other wealthy aspiring artist might shuffle up to read at an open-mic night. The sentences are short, the metaphors heavy. He muses – there is no other word for it – on the voicemail his father Joe left him and how it was heard around the world after the contents of his infamous laptop were published: The late hour. The quiet room.

Wednesday

Andrew Sabisky

Britain will need China to survive the AI revolution

Professional players of Texas hold ’em, the most popular variant of poker, go to great lengths to play a balanced, unexploitable strategy. They mix value bets and bluffs in every single hand. The bluffs are not usually to make money. They are there to stop other players adjusting profitably to the game. If another player over-folds to avoid losing to your value bets, only then do your bluffs go from break-even to hugely profitable. Against strong opponents, a balanced strategy is essential. National strategy likewise should strive for balance, particularly from the perspective of a weaker country.

Friday

Spectator Editorial

America at 250 remains an exceptional country

From our US edition

Who could ever have imagined what was being unleashed on the world when Thomas Gage ordered 700 Redcoats to march out from Boston and seize supplies in the town of Concord? Who could have dreamed, 250 years ago, what would be built by the descendants of those 56 men who put their names to the Declaration of Independence while gathered in the Pennsylvania State House? The United States of America turns 250 having enjoyed a near-uninterrupted run of success unmatched in world history. By her 100th birthday, the US was already master of an entire continent. By her 200th, she had won two world wars, invented the airplane, the atomic bomb and the transistor; created the motion picture and rock ’n’ roll; become the first automobile nation and put a man on the Moon.

Wednesday

Otto Saumarez Smith

The joy of willow-pattern ceramics

My granny used Spode willow-pattern crockery for everyday use. There was another grander service for Sunday lunch, also blue-and-white chinoiserie: Booths dragon, picked out with a gold border. Willow pattern evokes for me the taste of slightly stale ginger biscuits, which I liked very much, and coronation chicken, which I was less keen on. The idea of owning a table service now seems close to antediluvian; too formal and too much washing-up, although this was a ritual that mattered greatly to Granny. People now prefer plates that give a dull clunk when flicked, rather than fine china’s dulcet ping. Such changes of fashion were a factor in the 2008 closure of the Spode factory in Stoke-on-Trent, which had been producing willow-pattern plates since the 1790s.

Tuesday

Jianan Qian

A grandmother’s twisted mind: The Passage of Roses, by Tie Ning, reviewed

At first glance, Tie Ning’s The Passage of Roses appears to be yet another Chinese novel set during the Cultural Revolution in which bourgeois families and pre-1949 intellectuals are purged and banished. But the unnerving characters of Si Yiwen and her granddaughter Mei, whom Si cares for, influences and later harms, soon promise something different. Born into wealth in Old China, Si survives under the new regime as a marginal housewife, insignificant enough to avoid persecution. Yet it is precisely this insignificance that piques her desire for recognition. From an early age, she was denied love with a young revolutionary and was then ignored by her husband and in-laws. Now she finds herself drawn to the political fervour like a moth to a flame.

Friday

Peter Frankopan

The real ‘Thucydides Trap’ Beijing and Washington must avoid

These are good times to be a scholar of the classical world. Last summer, Donald Trump issued an order that all federal architecture needed to be “beautiful,” noting that the Founding Fathers “wanted America’s public buildings to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue.” George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had therefore “consciously modeled the most important buildings in Washington, DC, on the classical architecture of ancient Athens and Rome.” It was time to go back to these principles, said Trump. From now on “classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings” in the District of Columbia.

Thursday

Francis Pike

The President is winning the geopolitical battle with China

From our US edition

Almost all media commentators seem convinced that Donald Trump’s foreign policy in his second term is a disaster. He is bogged down in Iran, snookered in Ukraine, his tariff agenda has failed and he has alienated his NATO allies. But this consensus has been too hastily formed. Looking at the bigger global picture, Trump’s foreign policy has been a spectacular success. Take the western hemisphere. We have the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” the updated version of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine.

Wednesday

Peter Frankopan

The real ‘Thucydides Trap’ Beijing and Washington must avoid

These are good times to be a scholar of the classical world. Last summer, Donald Trump issued an order that all federal architecture needed to be ‘beautiful’, noting that the Founding Fathers ‘wanted America’s public buildings to inspire the American people and encourage civic virtue’. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had therefore ‘consciously modelled the most important buildings in Washington, D.C., on the classical architecture of ancient Athens and Rome’. It was time to go back to these principles, said Trump. From now on ‘classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings’ in the District of Columbia.

Tuesday

Patrick West

The humiliating truth about the way we think

Over the long span of human existence, different cultures have held varying notions as to how responsible we are for our own thoughts and beliefs. Before the dawn of the Abrahamic religions, and in places untouched by these faiths, it tended to be the rule that individual members of the group could only be understood as parts of the whole, or in the grander cosmic scheme of things. The ascendence of Christianity in Europe, with its idea of the indivisible soul, tilted matters more towards a belief in individual agency and accountability. This concept, secularised by Descartes, who gave us the commanding rational ego, has proved resilient ever since, despite the best efforts of Freud, neuroscience and gene selection theory to dethrone it.

Saturday

David Whitehouse

Will the New Glenn explosion put America behind China in the Moon race?

From our US edition

Last Thursday's explosion of the New Glenn rocket, on its launch pad during a test, could hardly be worse news for America’s return to the Moon. Just two days earlier, NASA had unveiled its plans for a Moon Base, which relied heavily on Jeff Bezos’s rocket and his Blue Origin series of lunar landers. As investigators, safety and clean-up crews inspect the wreckage, NASA will be contemplating a major rethink. The options aren’t good. Explosions on the pad are among the worst things that can happen because of how long repairs can take. If a rocket is to explode, engineers pray that it takes place in the air.

new glenn

Wednesday

Margaret Mitchell

The rise of the Orienfluencers

From our US edition

The term “Orientalism” has always implied some kind of caricature of the eastern world. It was originally coined as a way of describing how the West imagines the East as its negative to shore up self-confidence and justify conquest: “The Oriental is irrational, depraved (fallen), childlike, ‘different’; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, “normal,’” Edward Said wrote in Orientalism. Now, reverse “the Oriental” and “the European” and you have an idea of the new Orientalism, where the enlightened East becomes the foil to a decadent, violent, barbaric West. The new Orientalists aren’t academics, policymakers or Wall Street Journal opinion columnists.

Andrew Tate

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Streeting resigns, HS2 stalls and ebola spreads to Uganda

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, found his position challenged after Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary. At the same time Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, announced that her tax troubles had been resolved after a payment of £40,000 in stamp duty that she owed. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was given permission by the National Executive Committee of the Labour party to stand for parliament in the Makerfield by-election, brought about by the resignation of its MP Josh Simons. Reform chose as its candidate Robert Kenyon, a self-employed plumber, who had stood in 2024. Mr Streeting caused trouble for Mr Burnham by saying that ‘leaving the European Union was a catastrophic mistake’.

Saturday

Drew Horn

No, I’m not a CIA spy in Greenland

From our US edition

The Danish media has accused me of being a US spy. They say I'm involved in a covert influence operation in Greenland to push the territory towards becoming part of the US. I want to be clear that I have never worked as a covert operative. Instead, my work involves getting investment for sectors like mining and infrastructure. I am very public about my travels in Greenland and business there. I routinely appear on daytime television and bring my family on these trips. That would be a strange thing for Jason Bourne or James Bond to do. I often go for dinner with Greenlandic officials at very public restaurants, with their respective wives and children too. Despite this, I’ve been told by numerous insiders that I’m being monitored.

Greenland

Wednesday

Geoffrey Cain

Will Trump and Xi get what they want?

Donald Trump flew to Beijing this week and wants three things when he sits down with China’s President Xi Jinping: a tariff truce that survives his own courts, Chinese pressure on Iran to end the war that never seems to end and a photograph that makes him look victorious. Xi has problems of his own. But he has watched four American presidencies from Zhongnanhai, the walled compound beside the Forbidden City where the Communist party leadership rules, and he knows the value of silence when his counterpart is talking himself into trouble. Trump’s approval rating is the lowest of his second term. What Xi wants from this meeting with Trump is recognition: two great powers, two systems, meeting as equals Trump has obliged Xi noisily.

Tuesday

Michael Sobolik

America’s Trump card in China

From our US edition

The Trump administration has released a list of CEOs who will be accompanying the president to his meeting in China with Xi Jinping. Foremost among the delegation is Elon Musk, traveling in his capacity as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Another notable inclusion is Tim Cook, in what may be his swan song international trip as Apple CEO. All told, 17 executives will accompany President Trump to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Their companies represent sectors ranging from banking and investment to automobiles and AI. Their asks of Xi will likely range from market access (Coherent) and advertising (Meta) to component orders (Boeing) and soybean purchases (Cargill). On paper, President Trump should take business leaders with him to China.

Trump

Sunday

Ian Williams

China’s theft of American AI tech is becoming more brazen

Despite the hype surrounding China’s artificial intelligence capabilities, progress remains heavily dependent on theft and smuggling. The Chinese Communist party (CCP), meanwhile, is determined to maintain tight control. That has become increasingly clear ahead of this week’s Beijing summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The Chinese leader is determined to lead the world in what he terms an "epoch-defining technology." He appears confident that Trump, preoccupied by his war against Iran, has limited options to counter Beijing’s increasingly brazen activities. Last month, the White House accused Beijing of "industrial-scale" theft of know-how from American AI labs.

china

Monday

Francis Pike

The truth about Pakistan’s role in the US-Iran conflict

Pakistan was always an unlikely mediator for peace negotiations between the United States, Iran and sotto voce, China. It would not be an exaggeration to describe Pakistan as a failed state. Having outperformed India economically in the aftermath of partition, Pakistan went into steep decline after the arrival on the political scene of a corrupt chancer, socialist and demagogue, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Today, bankrupt Pakistan is kept afloat by loans from the IMF, China, and the Gulf States. Trump can be in no doubt that, with regards to political power in Pakistan, it is Munir who wears the pants Bhutto’s political dynasty continued under the aegis of his daughter Benazir and later his grandson.

pakistan

Friday

Merlin Marr-Johnson

Why China has the edge in mining

From our US edition

Donald Trump wants to bring back mining and mineral processing to the US – and he needs to do this if he’s to continue fighting wars. “You cannot claim to have a military strategy without a clear idea of your supply chains,” says economic journalist Wolfgang Münchau. “The specific advantage that both Russia and China have over the West is not simply their wealth of metals and minerals – it’s the fact that they can also process them. China’s expertise in processing its raw material is unparalleled.” Trump has exhorted America’s traditional allies to take responsibility for their own mineral supplies as well as their own defense, and to ditch economically ruinous energy policies. But will it work?

mining
Geoffrey Cain

How the West is empowering China’s war machine

From our US edition

The West’s technology brains and universities are arming China. A few of them are potentially breaking the law to do it, but most of them don’t need to. The front door has been open for years, and nobody in London or Washington has thought to close it. According to a federal indictment unsealed in Manhattan last month, on December 18, 2025, in a warehouse somewhere in Southeast Asia, a team of men used a hair dryer to peel serial-number labels off genuine server boxes and press them onto fakes. The real servers, loaded with some of America’s most restricted artificial intelligence hardware, are alleged to have long since been shipped to China. What remained, according to the indictment, were dummies – non-working replicas repackaged to look untouched.

Monday

Peter Pomerantsev

With no coherent strategy, Britain seems perpetually adrift in the world

The British state seems perpetually befuddled. Every international crisis catches it in its sudden glare like so many headlights trained on a nervous rabbit hopping hopelessly around a motorway. One moment Russia is invading Ukraine, then Hamas attacks Israel, Israel flattens Gaza, America knocks out Venezuela, then attacks Iran, while all the time China leers over Taiwan. Each new event leaves us spinning. Whose side are we on? What do we want? How do we get it? We use grand words to navigate our way in the confusion: ‘the special relationship’; ‘the national interest’; ‘the rules-based order’. But if these once signified some grand story we could all relate to they now feel empty and confusing.