China

Sitting in a bar in Shanghai, each person at our table is listing all the Dolce & Gabbana items they have in their closet. In a normal setting this would be crass, but today they’re deciding what to burn. Dolce is not cheap and my friends would have saved up to buy one of their pieces, yet the brand is now so unpopular that they are considering not just a boycott, but total incineration. From social media it’s clear that we are not unique in China, where the outrage against Dolce began with their adverts for their ‘Great Show’ fashion event in Shanghai. Short video clips, which were subsequently removed from Weibo, showed a docile Chinese girl attempting to eat Italian food with chopsticks with a male voice-over.

After repeated denials, Chinese officials finally admitted last month that they have set up internment camps in the far-western province of Xinjiang, where up to one million ethnic Uighurs, almost all of whom are Muslim, are being held. Under China’s anti-terrorism law and ‘religious affairs regulation,’ the government in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region publicly introduced the 'Regulation on De-extremification.' What it describes is a new gulag, where re-education and the suppression of Uighur identity is its main goal. There are approximately 25 million Muslims in China today, but these new draconian laws in Xinjiang are aimed solely at the ethnic Uighurs, of which there are just over 11 million.

The bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai is the fastest in the world. It takes just over four hours to travel the 819-mile journey. From the train, it is impossible to ignore China’s economic success. There are cities the size of London that many westerners will never even have heard of. They are filled with glass towers and shopping centres, selling Cartier watches and Gucci bags. As the train sets off from each station, an announcement plays in both Chinese and stilted English: ‘Dear passengers, people who travel without a ticket or behave disorderly, or smoke in public areas, will be punished according to regulations and the behaviour will be recorded in the individual credit information system.

A few months ago I wrote about the damning revelations surrounding one of China’s most trusted vaccines providers. Changsheng Biotech had been profiteering from the creation and distribution of useless vaccines for children. First, they mixed old vaccines with new ones when selling jabs meant to immunise against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus (all three diseases are potentially fatal to infants); then, a year later, they faked the production dates and batch numbers of rabies vaccines. The punishment for the first drugs transgression was a mere 3.4 million yuan – less than £400,000, and only 0.0003 per cent of the company’s annual turnover. It was no more than a slap on the wrist.

‘What the hell is going on?’ That anxious wail of economic incomprehension has been heard ever since President Trump decided last January to impose tens of billions of dollars of tariffs on China and other countries, including Canada, Mexico and the member states of the EU. The wail went up another octave last week as the White House announced a further $200 billion in tariffs. Among the politicians and think tanks of Washington DC, where I have spent the past few days, there is talk of little else; talk rendered more feverish by the prospect of midterm elections in November. A hundred billion here, a hundred billion there — pretty soon we could be talking real money.

In the last decade or so there has been a thawing of relations between China and the Holy See. Sure, China can still be harsh in its treatment of some Catholics and the Vatican continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but a change is coming. Earlier this year, there was talk of a potential deal between Beijing and the Vatican, which would see China recognising the Pope as head of Chinese Catholics, in return the Vatican would give the Chinese government a say in the appointment of bishops. This week, we hear from two sources close to the negotiations that the deal is to be signed imminently – before the end of September. It’s no secret that Pope Francis has designs on China.

The Spectator’s leading article last week ended up saying ‘It is unrealistic to expect that we can achieve what China has in Africa over the past decade.’ If we were to have done that, I for one would wish to resign my British nationality. What they have done there for the past 30 years is to systematically rape and pillage the continent. China has insidiously worked its way into Africa by establishing ‘private’ contractors who then bid for building work and underbid all local opposition by being state-funded. Many local firms were thus put out of business. Their ‘aid’ projects — starting with the ill-fated TanZam railway — were funded not by grants but by loans accepted by weak and venal governments.

The word changsheng means ‘long life’. But Gao Junfang’s Changsheng Biotech has long been in the business of robbing its victims of just that. Since taking over the company in the nineties, Gao oversaw the privatisation of the state-owned big pharma and turned it into her personal dynasty. She secured majority shares and planted her husband, her children, and their partners into the meatiest roles in the company. For decades, Gao was the entrepreneurial poster child – from rags (sort of) to riches, a walking example of the possibilities of China’s economic growth, and an idol especially for women. But last month, Gao was arrested along with 17 other people in the company. As of 2017, Changsheng had sold 250,000 dud DPT vaccines.