China

Monday

Spectator Editorial

Why aren’t we more focused on cleaning up the pandemic mess?

Unless you work for the White House, where the emergency declaration doesn’t expire until May, the pandemic has long been over. March marks three years since Covid upended Americans’ lives and, for all but a tiny minority, it has ceased being a day-to-day consideration. After long and bruising fights over everything from lockdowns to vaccine mandates, perhaps the only thing Americans can agree on is that the country’s response to the pandemic was a failure. From that starting consensus, arguments about what went wrong soon diverge sharply.

school education american pandemic
Andrew Stuttaford

Germany’s folly: Berlin has miscalculated on Russia and China

The notion that closer trade connections with the West will necessarily set less enlightened nations on a course toward prosperity and liberty is nonsense, but convenient nonsense. Germans have a phrase for it — Wandel durch Handel, change through trade — often given as a justification for their business dealings with Russia and China. Unfortunately, the change they triggered was in Germany. In one case it has been for the worse; in the other it appears to be headed that way. To start with Russia, it’s true that Germany’s ultimately disastrous dependency on natural gas from the east has its origins in the Ostpolitik years: by 1989 the Soviets were supplying West Germany with around a third of its gas.

germany
Cockburn

A short list of people who said the lab leak theory was a conspiracy

With the Energy Department joining the lab-leak party, will the apologies ever roll in to those so thoroughly excoriated for questioning the animal-human theory of Covid's origins? Cockburn has done a little digging and would like you to join him on a trip down memory lane, to revisit the litany of enlightened elites who proclaimed the lab-leak theory a conspiracy. From scientists to media talking heads, the condemnation of the lab-leak hypothesis was pretty universal in the early months of the pandemic, even going so far as to proclaim it racist.

second wave lab leak covid
Jason Morgan

Washington’s yes-men in Japan

It was nighttime in Davos, 8:31 on January 18 to be exact. Japanese journalist Ganaha Masako had been standing out in the cold for three hours near the entrance to a building which, she had heard, was being used as a venue for a World Economic Forum event that evening. Ganaha had picked up on some additional chatter. Klaus Schwab, the head of the WEF, was rumored to be inside. It was a long shot, but Ganaha wanted to ask Schwab some questions about globalism. And then, suddenly, Schwab appeared. Fleshy cheeks jiggling slightly as he shuffled along the snow-dusted sidewalk, he stepped cautiously out of the WEF event forum with a few handlers. Ganaha pointed her camera at Schwab and asked him for an interview. He ignored her and kept shuffling along.

Saturday

Cindy Yu

Biden’s muddle on Chinese arms for Russia

From our UK edition

Will China send arms to support Russia? That was the possibility that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised at the Munich Security Conference, accusing Beijing of considering doing so. China has officially rejected this claim and, as of last night, so has President Biden. ‘I don’t anticipate a major initiative on the part of China providing weaponry to Russia,’ Biden told ABC, seemingly directly contradicting his right-hand man on foreign policy. Is this just another case of Sleepy Joe misspeaking, a comment that will have to be walked back by his team in the hours to come? After all, Biden has form.

xi china virginia
Matthew Foldi

China’s useful idiots in Virginia

A disturbing trend is emerging among Virginia Democrats in Richmond, as the entire state House and Senate chambers are up for reelection in just a few months: by word and deed, they are increasingly serving as useful idiots for the Chinese Communist Party. In recent weeks, Virginia Democrats have warned that so-called “China-bashing” could lead to mass internment of Chinese Americans, and argued against requiring taxpayer-funded universities to disclose grants from the CCP. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Democrats were excited to focus on abortion this year in the hopes of further stymying Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s legislative agenda, much of which the Democratic-controlled State Senate has stopped. Youngkin, however, had other things in mind.

Friday

John Pietro

One year of war in Ukraine: six experts predict what will happen next

As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, today seems as a good time as any to reflect on its first, and see what the future might hold. Six foreign policy experts from across the spectrum of opinion offered their thoughts to The Spectator. As the war in Ukraine enters its second year, how do you foresee the conflict ending? Ted Carpenter: There are several possible outcomes, but the most likely is a ceasefire without a formal peace accord. That move would end the bloodshed, but it would leave the underlying disputes unresolved. Such an outcome would be similar to the armistice that ended the Korean War. It also would create the world’s largest and most dangerous “frozen conflict.

ukraine war nato

Monday

Cindy Yu

Tiananmen and the Tang: the rise of rock in China

From our UK edition

35 min listen

Every protest needs an anthem, and for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, 'Nothing to My Name' by Cui Jian became that emblem. Cui was one of China's earliest rockers, taking inspiration from the peasant music of China's northwest and fusing it with the rock 'n' roll that was beginning to arrive in the country. It put rock music – and the Chinese interpretation of it – under the national spotlight. On this episode I talk to Kaiser Kuo, host of the China Project's Sinica podcast, who also happens to be a founding member of Tang Dynasty, one of China's earliest and greatest rock bands.

Owen Matthews

China is playing the long game over peace in Ukraine

From our UK edition

At the Munich Security Conference over the weekend, China’s foreign minister Wang Yi announced that his country was currently in consultations with ‘our friends in Europe’ over the framework of a peace proposal for Ukraine. It is to be laid out in full by President Xi Jinping on the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion – 24 February. Beijing’s peace initiative would, said Wang, underscore the ‘need to uphold the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the UN Charter’ but at the same time ‘respect [the] legitimate security interests of Russia’. On the face of it, it appears that Beijing is not saying anything new.

Friday

Kate Andrews

Would Liz Truss’s ‘economic Nato’ work against China?

From our UK edition

It was only a few weeks ago that Liz Truss started commenting on domestic policy again, speaking to The Spectator not just about what happened during her time in No. 10, but about what she sees as prescriptions for Britain's stagnant economy. Today she weighs back in on foreign policy. In Tokyo this morning, the former prime minister made her first international speech since leaving office and it combined her favourite topics: economic freedom and taking a tough stance on China. Truss is calling for world leaders to band together and create an ‘economic Nato’ – which would include agreeing to a tough package of economic sanctions on China, were President Xi to make aggressive movements against Taiwan.

Tuesday

John Pietro

The virtues of American ‘nation-building’

Newly minted senator JD Vance of Ohio has wasted no time in extolling the virtues of a soft isolationist foreign policy. In a January 31 op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Vance endorsed Donald Trump for president largely because Trump isn't a hawk. A prominent member of the GOP's national conservative wing, Vance has made skepticism of American leadership abroad a centerpiece of his political identity. The senator attacks the “bipartisan foreign policy consensus that has led the country astray many times.” Never mind that the so-called "consensus" only really exists under extreme circumstances, such as after the 9/11 terror attacks. Think of the deep divide between right and left over how to deal with Cuba and Saudi Arabia, for example.

Monday

John Pietro

Enes Kanter Freedom on LeBron, Erdoğan and the earthquake

Basketball player and human rights activist Enes Kanter Freedom was invited as Leader Kevin McCarthy's guest of honor to the State of the Union last week, an address in which President Biden barely touched on foreign policy. The former Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder center spoke with The Spectator about democracy, autocracies and hypocrisy. John Pietro: How far does China’s influence reach into the NBA, in your estimation? Could you see the NBA ever standing up to China in the way the Women’s Tennis Association did in defense of Peng Shuai? Enes Kanter Freedom: I didn’t know how deep the relationship between the NBA and China was until Daryl Morey tweeted and said "stand with Hong Kong" and after that obviously the NBA lost millions and millions of dollars.

enes kanter freedom

Thursday

John Pietro

China is playing the US for fools over the spy balloon

The Chinese balloon debacle has shone a light on America's security vulnerabilities, but it has also revealed just how audacious and deceptive the Chinese Communist Party is. As with their reaction to Covid-19's origins, they have brazenly lied from the day that the balloon’s presence was made public. It is abundantly clear that the craft was not a weather balloon, not least because of its uncharacteristically massive size. Yet China opted to construct a tall tale about a wandering weather balloon that somehow ended up over America. Oh, and the balloon over Latin America? That was just another errant storm tracker. Sure, China regrets the mishap, but there is no need to overreact. What makes the lie so extraordinary is that it is so easily debunked.

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Oliver Wiseman

Biden’s strategy-free SOTU

Biden delivered a strategy-free State of the Union The loudest line of Tuesday’s State of the Union was ad-libbed. “Name me a world leader who’s change places with Xi Jinping,” he shouted in a departure from his prepared text. “Name me one, name me one.” There may not have been a Chinese spy balloon drifting above the United States as Biden was speaking, but foreign policy hung awkwardly over the president’s address. In the wake of a major spat with America’s most powerful adversary and in the longest speech of his presidency, Biden spent about as much time talking about hotel resort fees as he did discussing the US’s relationship with China.

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

Biden’s State of the Union went quiet on China

Joe Biden's meandering State of the Union left out a great many things, as his voice toggled between insincere whisper and frail bellow. The loudest moment of the night was when, going off-script from his prepared remarks, he insisted that really — c'mon, I really mean it! — China's Xi Jinping is being isolated from the world for some reason. https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1623157950654078977 "Name me a world leader who would change places with Xi Jinping! Name me one! Name me one!" Biden yelled. The comment had an air of frustration given that the humiliating Chinese spy balloon was fresh in the minds of all on Capitol Hill. "I’ve made clear with President Xi that we seek competition, not conflict," Biden said in his prepared remarks.

Tuesday

John Pietro

Trump is wrong that the US should negotiate peace in Ukraine

The GOP’s foreign policy doves and soft isolationists have grown stronger, with 40 percent of “Republican and Republican-leaning independents” saying the US is giving too much aid to Ukraine. Former president Donald Trump has now taken up the mantle of this movement, firmly anchoring himself to the anti-Ukraine aid faction of the party. Trump recently gave an interview to radio host Hugh Hewitt in which he made one thing clear: he’s no fan of aiding Ukraine. Asked about sending F-16s, Trump said, “I think the United States should negotiate peace between these two countries, and I don’t think they should be sending very much.” When Hewitt asked if the former president would cut aid to Kyiv, Trump responded, “we’ve got to make peace.

Monday

Amber Duke

Former defense secretary: yes, Trump would have shot down the Chinese spy balloon

Former acting secretary of defense Christopher Miller challenged several of the major claims being made about the Chinese spy ballon that recently entered US airspace during a podcast interview Monday with The Spectator World.  Miller joined The District podcast to discuss the Chinese spy balloon and his new book, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield and the Pentagon about America's Most Dangerous Enemies. The Biden administration shot down the balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday after it had been floating across the United States for nearly a week. Following its destruction, administration officials claimed that other Chinese spy balloons had entered the US "at least three times" during the Trump administration.

National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller testifies at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing (Photo by Joshua Roberts-Pool/Getty Images)
Cindy Yu

Have Xinjiang’s camps been closed?

From our UK edition

42 min listen

A few months ago, an intriguing article in the Washington Post shed light on the latest situation Xinjiang, the western region of China where the Uighur minority live. The two journalists, Eva Dou and Cate Cadell, saw on their travels around the region last summer that many of the infamous re-education camps had been shut down, or turned into quarantine centres. A new phase of Beijing’s campaign in Xinjiang seems to have started. So what’s really going on there now, and what does this mean for the lives of the Uyghur people? I’m joined by Professor James Millward from Georgetown University, author of Eurasian crossroads: a history of Xinjiang, to find out.

Sunday

Amber Duke

AP stealth edits its Chinese spy balloon report

The Associated Press (AP) appeared to stealth edit a major report on the Chinese spy balloon, which was the origin of the claim that two such balloons also entered US airspace during the Trump administration. The AP first published the article on Saturday. The balloon was then shot down after floating for several days over the US. Deep into the report, the AP cited one unnamed Biden administration official who claimed that two similar incidents "happened twice during the Trump administration but [were] never made public." [caption id="attachment_45048" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Associated Press's first iteration of the Chinese spy balloon story (Screenshot: Internet Archive)[/caption] However, the AP article looked different on Sunday.

spy balloon

Saturday

Rebeccah Heinrichs

The balloon is a Chinese middle finger to the US

Military fighter jets have just shot down the Chinese Communist Party's gigantic spy balloon that had been hovering about 60,000 feet over the United States. The balloon was "taken care of," to quote President Biden, over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of South Carolina. Prior to the maneuver, the balloon drifted, unharmed, over our sensitive military sites and fellow citizens. It lingered there, doing what Chinese President Xi Jinping pleased, while rightfully indignant members of Congress representing those violated states took to press releases and cable TV to demand the federal government secure our sovereign airspace. All of this was no doubt churned back through the CCP's propaganda outlets, smearing America as divided, weak, and foolish.