China

Thursday

Ross Clark

Why is Whitehall intent on burying the Covid lab leak theory?

From our UK edition

Why does our government have so much trouble criticising China? It doesn’t seem to have had a problem calling out Vladimir Putin. But Downing Street – along with the rest of Whitehall – seems determined to do Xi Jinping’s regime’s dirty work. Over the past ten days we have become used to seeing Matt Hancock as a mad, authoritarian figure determined to lock Britain down during Covid, even when scientific advice did not call for it. Yet it does seem that he was able to consider the prospect that Covid originated in a laboratory in Wuhan. The evidence is not conclusive or overwhelming, not least because the Chinese have used every tactic to prevent scientists finding the truth.

Wednesday

Matthew Foldi

Banning TikTok: a how-to guide

“Whoever controls big data technologies will control the resources for development and have the upper hand,” Xi Jinping declared shortly after assuming control of China. In the years since, the Chinese surveillance state has exploded at home and abroad, thanks to espionage-adjacent apps such as WeChat, but none has raised as much ire as TikTok. Following reams of data showing that your teenager’s favorite app is poisoning their mind and spying on them, the calls to ban TikTok are now coming from inside the House… and Senate. But how would such a ban actually work? What does it mean to ban an app that is supported by the technological infrastructure of the CCP?

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Philip Pilkington

Britain could come to regret moving away from China

From our UK edition

China’s relationship with America is getting worse and worse. The Chinese Foreign Minister, Qin Gang, warned yesterday that ‘containment and suppression will not make America great. It will not stop the rejuvenation of China’. The Biden administration, meanwhile, recently accused China of readying to send weapons to Russia, and Americans are still fuming about the Chinese balloon that entered their airspace. China thinks they’re being hysterical. Britain will soon be forced to decide whether it will decouple from China. The Americans no doubt want Britain to join them in cutting ties to Beijing, but it is not clear that British policymakers are ready to do this yet. In 2020, China accounted for around 7 per cent of British trade.

Tuesday

Peter Van Buren

The coming fight over the government’s surveillance powers

You've been warned: a fight over the government’s ability to spy on its own citizens is coming to Congress. Section 702 is up for renewal again in December. Section 702 grew out of an illegal post-9/11 program called Stellarwind, exposed by NSA whistleblower Tom Drake. It refers to a provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that was enacted in 2008. It authorizes the government to collect the communications of non-Americans located outside of the United States for the purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information. But the program also allows for the incidental collection of information about Americans who may be communicating with the targeted foreigners.

Monday

Cindy Yu

Spy planes and infiltrators: a history of the CIA in China

From our UK edition

47 min listen

The Chinese Communist Party likes to blame its domestic political problems on foreign interference, and it has done so since the days of Chairman Mao. But sometimes, does this paranoia, this narrative, have a point? Or at least during the depths of the Cold War, when the United States, via the CIA, was countering communism across the world through so-called ‘covert operations’. My guest today is Professor John Delury, a historian at the Yonsei University in Seoul, and author of a new book looking at the history of the CIA in China. It’s called Agents of Subversion, and I’d highly recommend it because some of the incredible exploits detailed in there are nothing short of what you'd find in a spy thriller.

Wednesday

Ben Domenech

TikTok may be the real test of the China Select Committee

The primetime launch event for the House China Select Committee shows the bipartisan consensus that has formed in Washington on the threat represented by China. It also illustrates the priorities for members of Congress, and their divisions over the appropriate response to Chinese influence as a military, economic and cultural adversary. Witnesses, including former Trump deputy national security advisor Matthew Pottinger and retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, encouraged members to take Xi's words at face value — and emphasized that for too long Washington has looked the other way while China ate America's lunch.

china select committee

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.

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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.

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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.