China

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.

Why does President Xi Jinping of China dislike being compared to Winnie-the-Pooh? The new film about Christopher Robin and his teddy bear has been banned in China, apparently because Chinese dissidents make the comparison. True, Pooh is a bear of very little brain, lacks leadership skills and is somewhat stout, but it seems a friendly thought all the same. Wouldn’t a dictator be pleased to be considered cuddly? It is interesting that characters from children’s books are seen as subversive. Saparmurat Niyazov (‘Turkmenbashi’), the late dictator of Turkmenistan, passed a law banning anyone from dressing up as a hobbit. I wonder if, in Pooh’s case, there is some cultural misunderstanding.

Why is Winnie the Pooh like Ai Weiwei? Both have landed in political hot water with the Chinese government. The artist Ai has a long history of running into trouble with the Chinese authorities. In fact, earlier this week, Ai’s Beijing studio was demolished for reasons unknown (though perhaps you can take a guess). And Pooh’s become an equally worthy dissident, all because he bears an unfortunate resemblance to President Xi Jinping. Judging by his waistline, President Xi is obviously settling in to his cushy job with too much tea and honey. And he’s feeling sensitive about it. So much so that Disney’s upcoming film about Pooh bear, ‘Christopher Robin’, has been banned in China.

In January, a pair of pandas flew to Finland on a diplomatic mission. Hua Bao and Jin Bao Bao had been dispatched from their native Chengdu as a gesture of goodwill from China’s president Xi Jinping. Their arrival, part of China’s ‘panda diplomacy’, is one of several signs that the country is on a High North charm offensive. Days after the pandas had settled into their new home, China released its first ever White Paper on the Arctic. It is a document that defies geography, referring to China as a “Near-Arctic State,” despite its borders lying over a thousand miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Yes Supporters of the global free-trade regime that has been built up over the past 25 years like to think of themselves as capitalists. Benevolent capitalists, perhaps — ones who have only the interests of the world’s poorest workers and their own nations’ least wealthy consumers at heart — but capitalists nonetheless. So why is the biggest beneficiary of their world order in fact the last of the great, deadly serious Communist states — the People’s Republic of China? Trump’s tariffs, far from being the end of the liberal economic order, may be the one thing that can save it. That order, after all, to an embarrassing degree depends upon America’s dominant position in the world.

A decision on one of the more controversial of U.S. President Donald Trump's protectionist policies was yesterday postponed as the U.S. extended the exemption from tariffs on steel and aluminium imports for a handful of allies including the European Union. The news comes in the wake of talks with Europe's 'big hitters', French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who left Washington with seemingly little to show for their efforts. But this reprieve might quietly be considered a victory--so long as the Europeans can figure out a way to make it permanent. As tensions with China escalate, the bloc will hope that Trump is realising he needs the economic might of his close European allies.

Given the mutual bluster, threats and sabre-rattling we got used to from Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, it may be hard to credit the air of sweet reasonableness that has spread over the Korean peninsula in recent weeks leading to the weekend announcement of an end to weapons testing by the North. The potential for a reversion to confrontation is all too evident. Pyongyang has a long record of reneging on agreements and its announcement contained no mention of a reduction in its arsenal that includes missiles which can hit Japan and South Korea even if it stops development of ICBMs aimed at the USA.

When Anthony Scaramucci announced that he was writing a book about his time with Donald Trump, the joke was that it should be entitled ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’. This, he says, does him an injustice because he managed 11 days as White House communications director before being fired — after a lava flow of stories that seemed extraordinary even by Trumpian standards. But he remained loyal to the President, and has been speaking in his defence ever since. This book promises to reveal one of the deepest mysteries in American politics: how Trump’s mind works. ‘I’m almost done with the manuscript,’ he says, fresh from a meeting with his publishers in New York. ‘Obviously, my short stint in the White House won’t be a major drama.

This is an extract from Martin Vander Weyer's 'Any Other Business' column in this week's Spectator. 'Stocks plunge as China hits US goods with tariffs,’ said a headline after the long weekend, and the FTSE100 duly dipped below 7,000. But I wonder what a serious trade war would look like — and how markets would respond if the White House and Beijing took the gloves off. Last year, China exported $500 billion worth of goods to the US, while US exports to China amounted to $135 billion. Last month, President Trump announced import tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese steel and aluminium, 10 per cent of the total import bill.