China

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

My Tory leadership race fantasy game

From our UK edition

‘Black swan’ theory, developed by the writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb, refers to unexpected events that have extreme consequences but are rationalised afterwards by pundits who say ‘That was always going to happen.’ Covid was a big one; Putin’s war on Ukraine another. It’s in the nature of global events that there’s always a dark-feathered disruptor lurking somewhere, waiting to make its presence felt. Right now, it just might be hidden in reports of protestors in Zhengzhou, capital of China’s Henan province, demanding their money back from four local banks that suspended withdrawals in April. Runs on small banks are not unknown in China; nor is embezzlement by corrupt managers.

Sunday

Nicholas Sheppard

Jacinda Ardern’s tricky China policy

From our UK edition

New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has had a busy week on the international circuit. On Friday she appeared in front of a packed audience at London’s Chatham House to discuss New Zealand’s international outlook and to laud what she described as a ‘gold standard free trade agreement’ signed with the UK. And though New Zealand is not a member of Nato, Ardern was also invited to attend its leaders’ summit in Madrid on Wednesday, along with other leaders of the Asia Pacific. Arguably it was Ardern’s tempered warnings about China that stood out. In a speech to the summit, Ardern said: ‘China has in recent times… become more assertive and more willing to challenge international rules.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Tim Ryan wants to be China on abortion

While on Bret Baier's Fox News show Special Report, Ohio Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan said there should be no abortion restrictions at all, establishing himself as radical even by pro-choice standards. After the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, Ohio passed a heartbeat bill that restricted abortion after six weeks. Yet Congressman Ryan believes this is too strict. In fact, he believes any kind of restriction is too strict. Ryan said, "Look, you got to leave it up to the woman, because you and I sitting here can’t account for all of the different scenarios that a woman, dealing with the complexities of a pregnancy, are going through. How can you and I figure that out?

Wednesday

Daniel DePetris

Russia is sidestepping American oil sanctions

When the European Union finally made the decision to ban 90 percent of Russia’s crude oil imports by the end of the year, the bureaucrats in Brussels were jubilant. The EU’s adoption of oil sanctions was thought be a big blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who depends on the revenue generated by his country's oil exports to fund his war in Ukraine. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why European officials were so thrilled. The EU imported 2.2 million barrels per day of Russian crude last year, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in profits for the Kremlin every month.

Tuesday

Ian Williams

China’s increasingly authoritarian Covid pass

From our UK edition

A Chinese health app, developed to enforce the Communist party’s draconian Covid-19 restrictions, is being repurposed to tighten political control on dissidents and others deemed to be troublemakers. Only the very young and very old are exempt from the compulsory National Health Code System. The ‘traffic light app’, as it has been dubbed, assigns Chinese citizens a colour code: green, yellow or red to signify Covid infection risk. Those with green are free to move around; red can mean instant quarantine. The app requires users to submit information about their health status and other personal details, while at the same time harvesting online behavioural and location data.

Wednesday

Ashley Rindsberg

EXCLUSIVE: Rubio questions Harvard on Fauci-China cover-up

Senator Marco Rubio today sent a strongly worded letter to Harvard president Lawrence Bacow expressing concerns prompted by a Spectator magazine investigation by this reporter that Harvard may be “actively supporting [America’s] principal adversary,” the Chinese Communist Party. “Throughout the pandemic, we were told to trust the experts," Rubio told The Spectator exclusively. "But what we increasingly see is so-called trusted experts and institutions engaged in highly questionable behavior. This looks really bad, and if it turns out to be true, any last shred of faith that the American people had in these ‘experts’ will be deservedly stamped out.

Sunday

Francis Pike

How long will Xi Jinping rule China?

From our UK edition

For some time now it has been assumed that in November the National Congress will rubber stamp Xi Jinping’s continued role as China’s supreme leader for a third five-year term, which would make Xi the first Chinese leader for a generation to serve more than two terms. Just a year ago his position as one of China's three pre-eminent leaders was confirmed when the 400 members of the Central Committee passed the third ‘Historical Resolution’ in the Chinese Communist Party’s 100-year history. The previous two were organised by Mao in 1945 and Deng Xiaoping in 1981. The resolution highlighted the concept of ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ as a historical equivalent to that of his two legendary predecessors.

Thursday

David Profumo

A glimmer of hope for the blue planet

From our UK edition

You might think – with its feeding frenzies, vertiginous seamounts, perilous weather and deep history of the monstrous – that the ocean was a wild enough place as it is; but according to the environmentalist Charles Clover it has systematically been ‘de-wilded’ by decades of commercial overfishing, and our seas are now in urgent need of healing. I believe him. When it comes to conservation, fish hold less appeal than terrestrial fauna: they are perceived as cold-blooded, mostly invisible, lacking in charisma, and often delicious – plus, for centuries, there existed the comfortable delusion that their stocks were inexhaustible (even a proof positive of divine benevolence).

Wednesday

Cindy Yu

The closing of the Chinese mind

From our UK edition

I was born in Nanjing five years after the Tiananmen Square protests. By then, records of the demonstrations and the Communist party’s brutal suppression had been scrubbed clean. So Tiananmen was not part of the national conversation when I was growing up. I only fully grasped what had happened when I visited Hong Kong in my early twenties (that would be harder now under the city’s new national security law). Tiananmen isn’t just absent from history books; the Chinese authorities keep an eye on literature and film, so anything that’s politically subversive is censored or driven underground and abroad. One film that fell victim to this regime is Lan Yu, which I recently saw for the first time at a screening in Soho.

Antony Beevor & Serhii Plokhy

‘Putin may be prepared to go to the limits’: Antony Beevor and Serhii Plokhy in conversation

From our UK edition

The military historian Antony Beevor joins Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard, on Spectator TV this week to talk about the war in Ukraine. This is an edited transcript of their discussion. Putin’s plan ANTONY BEEVOR: I’m alarmed by the latest developments. The encirclement or imminent encirclement of Severodonetsk could cut off a large number of Ukrainian troops, leaving them in an impossible position. It’s a move that suggests Russia’s real attempt at the moment is to seize Severodonetsk and the area around it, and to cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea entirely. This is deeply worrying because it means that Putin could then say, right, we will negotiate on this basis – and Ukraine will be totally vulnerable.

Saturday

Ross Clark

The World Health Organisation has lost all credibility

From our UK edition

Let’s be honest: is there anyone out there who has faith in the ability of the World Health Organisation (WHO) to tackle a future pandemic? Any lingering hope that the WHO might be an organisation fit to be trusted with global heath concerns has pretty well evaporated with the election, by acclamation, of China as one of the 12 members of its executive board on Friday.  It is true, of course, that an international body must have representation from all over the world if it is going to win the near-universal cooperation it needs in order to operate. It can’t be led entirely by western democracies and wealthy South Asian countries even if they might have the best skills available; you need members able to tap into every culture and religion on Earth.

Ian Williams

Xi Jinping and the Chinese rumour mill

From our UK edition

The Beijing political rumour mill has gone into overdrive in recent weeks, seizing upon every nuance and reading between every line for signs of the impending downfall of ‘Xi dada’ (Big Daddy Xi). All kinds of stories are being circulated about President Xi Jinping's health, with reports over squabbling over his likely successor. Chinese premier Li Keqiang is being tipped. The predicted replacement of Xi by Li has its roots in differences on the economy and Covid-19, so the rumours go – and there does appear to be a split of sorts. In his public pronouncements Xi has doubled down on zero-Covid above all else. He has made little mention of China’s economic hardships, urging officials to stick with his Covid elimination strategy as a mark of loyalty.

Thursday

Cockburn

2022 Biden contradicts 2001 Biden over action in Taiwan

Cockburn is not one to point fingers (as they are often preoccupied with his cigar), but he finds himself making an exception for President Biden over his apparent U-turn on the issue of the United States using military force to help defend Taiwan against China. Tyler Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, just unearthed a 2001 Washington Post op-ed then-senator Joe Biden wrote dissenting from President George W. Bush’s stance that the “United States had an obligation to defend Taiwan if it was attacked by China.” Biden wrote that “words matter,” and that Bush’s extreme language had "damaged US credibility with our allies and sown confusion throughout the Pacific Rim.” Speaking of confusion...

fauci
Ashley Rindsberg

The Harvard connection

On the morning of Sunday February 2, 2020, Anthony Fauci, then in the middle of putting together America’s pandemic response, received an unusual email with a highly unusual request. The email, revealed as part of a tranche of FOIA documents requested by the Intercept, was from George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School. “Alan Garber, Harvard’s provost, and I met yesterday with a team led by Jack Xia, the CEO of China’s Evergrande Company, and Dr. Jack Liu, Evergrande’s chief health officer,” Daley wrote. Addressing the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases as “Tony,” he asked for “whatever information you are willing to share on your current efforts to coordinate a response.

Ian Williams

Inside Taiwan’s plan to thwart Beijing

From our UK edition

Taipei   Nowhere is watching Russia’s faltering attempt to crush its democratic neighbour more closely than Taiwan. The Ukraine war is seen in Taipei as a demonstration of how determined resistance and the ability to rally a global alliance of supporters can frustrate a much larger and heavily armed rival. Taiwan has spent the past few years planning how it would cope if China attacked. It is developing a doctrine of defence warfare right out of the Ukrainian playbook. China was carrying out military exercises off the east coast of the island last week when I met Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister. ‘They keep circling in that area,’ Wu says. ‘Nonstop for two weeks, and it is very threatening.

Monday

Michael Simmons

No, monkeypox didn’t leak from Wuhan

From our UK edition

It’s a familiar story. Close contacts of individuals infected by a dangerous illness are being asked by UK officials to isolate as government concern about the outbreak grows. Just 57 cases have been reported in Britain so far – 168 globally – but already questions are being asked about the virus’s origins. One theory involves the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The lab, which is considered by a growing number of scientists to be the origin of the original Covid pandemic, specialises in so-called ‘gain of function experiments’. These experiments aim to genetically enhance viruses (like Covid) so they are more likely to jump species to humans.

Friday

Jane Stannus

China’s grave insult to the Catholic Church

The outrageous arrest of Cardinal Joseph Zen last week — together with the Vatican’s weak response — presages dark days for Catholics under Beijing’s authority. Nicknamed “the conscience of Hong Kong,” Cardinal Joseph Zen is known and respected throughout the world for his fearless defense of Chinese Catholics and his opposition to communism. As bishop of Hong Kong, he encouraged and celebrated annual masses on June 4 for the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre (participation in a Tiananmen Square memorial was one of the “offenses” that put Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai in jail last year). This year, the diocese of Hong Kong has canceled the June 4 Tiananmen Square memorial masses, for the first time in over two decades.

Saturday

Damian Thompson

Pope Francis has betrayed Cardinal Zen

From our UK edition

When Cardinal Joseph Zen, the 90-year-old former Bishop of Hong Kong, was arrested by Chinese authorities on Wednesday and charged with ‘collusion with foreign forces’, the White House called for his immediate release. Lord Patten of Barnes, the last British governor of Hong Kong, said the arrest was ‘yet another outrageous example of how the Chinese Communist Party is hell-bent on turning Hong Kong into a police state.’ Human rights activists lined up to defend the cardinal, who although released on bail faces the prospect of spending his last years in a Chinese jail cell. You might expect the loudest protest of all to come from the Vatican. Not so. In fact, it didn't protest at all.

Thursday

Alexander Downer

New Aussie rules: Conservative values have fallen out of fashion

From our UK edition

The election campaign is under way in Australia, barbs are being exchanged, candidates denigrated and abused, and promises – many of which are just fantastic in the literal sense of the word – are being made. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who is the leader of the Liberal party, is being challenged by the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese. Although Morrison has the edge over Albanese as preferred prime minister, neither is much loved. The leaders are unlikely to be a decisive issue in the election. What is the deeper mood of the country? That needs to be put into its historical context. Ever since the mid-1970s, Australians have expected political parties to be economically responsible.

Wednesday

James Snell

Hong Kong is now a police state

No one now denies that Hong Kong is a fiefdom of Beijing. Its democratic leaders have been packed off to prison on spurious grounds or have left the territory, and its street protests have long been beaten to pieces with batons. The 2020 national security law has made mockery of Hong Kong's last shreds of freedom of expression, rendering all criticism of the Chinese Communist Party akin to terrorism; and its uncensored homegrown newspapers are now closed by the state — their proprietors inexorably marched off to jail. Any pretense of adherence to the treaties signed by Britain and China around the time of the handover in 1997 — treaties that guaranteed Hong Kong autonomy — has long fallen away. Hong Kong is a subject province of the People's Republic now, and nothing more.