Ian Williams

It is strange and surreal, even by the standards of the looking-glass world of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Foreign Minister Qin Gang has disappeared, not seen in public since 25 June and the information vacuum about his whereabouts has inevitably been filled with all manner of rumour about marital infidelity, a love child, and even the dark world of foreign espionage. First the facts, as far as there are any. Qin, a former ambassador to the United States is a protégé of CCP leader Xi Jinping. He was regarded as a rising star, one of the new generation of aggressive ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats and was appointed foreign minister in December ahead of others who were regarded by China watchers as more senior.

China is engaged in a ‘whole of state’ assault on the UK and the government’s approach has been ‘completely inadequate’. That is the devastating verdict of today’s long-awaited report on China by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee. The committee accepts that Chinese influence and interference activities may be difficult to detect, but questions whether the government has even been looking in the first place. ‘China’s size, ambition and capability have enabled it to successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy,’ it states.

‘The Chinese Communist party is probably the funniest thing that exists,’ the dissident artist Ai Weiwei once told me, ‘but it doesn’t have a sense of humour.’ The brave band of comics in China’s fledgling stand-up comedy scene are discovering that poking fun at the grim-faced old men who run the country with an ever-tighter grip is a dangerous pursuit. Last month, at a comedy club in Beijing’s Dongcheng district, 31-year-old Li Haoshi mocked a military slogan coined by President Xi Jinping. Li said that ‘Forge exemplary conduct! Fight to win!’ reminded him of his two dogs chasing a squirrel. A clip of the show spread rapidly online.

So now it’s official, Chinese chatbots will have to be ‘socialist’ and woe betide any tech company that allows its AI creation to have a mind of its own. While the communist party wants to lead the world in AI, it is terrified of anything with a mind of its own ‘Content generated by generative artificial intelligence should embody core socialist values and must not contain any content that subverts state power, advocates the overthrow of the socialist system, incites splitting the country or undermines national unity,’ according to draft measures published Tuesday by China’s powerful internet regulator, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC).

It’s 2026 and China begins its invasion of Taiwan with an intense missile bombardment that in a few hours destroys most of the island’s navy and air force. The Chinese navy begins ferrying its main invasion force of tens of thousands of soldiers and equipment across the Taiwan Strait. But all is not lost. US submarines, bombers, and fighter jets, reinforced by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, rapidly cripple the Chinese fleet. The People’s Liberation Army is defeated, and communist party rule in China destabilised, but victory for the US and its allies comes at an enormous cost. Chinese missiles destroy US bases in Japan and Guam; the US loses dozens of ships, including two aircraft carriers, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of servicemembers.

It has been a bumpy week for China’s beleaguered technology giants. They are under increasing scrutiny overseas, and the communist party continues to tighten the screws on them at home. In many ways they are also their own worst enemies. The UK has become the latest government to ban the Chinese-owned TikTok from government devices over security concerns. Parliament has also banned the app from its network. This follows similar bans from the European Union and 11 countries, including France, New Zealand, Denmark and the US. Western lawmakers are unconvinced by TikTok’s often cack-handed attempts to distance itself from its Chinese parent, ByteDance, and that company’s obligations to the Chinese communist party.

It hardly seems like the most propitious time for Xi Jinping to be visiting Moscow. There’s an international arrest warrant out for his host Vladimir Putin for war crimes, and the man Xi has described as his ‘best friend’ spent the weekend inspecting land he’s snatched from Ukraine – in gross violation of the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, which Xi endlessly trumpets. On the eve of today’s formal talks in the Russian capital, the US said Xi should press Putin to end his barbarity. ‘We hope that President Xi will press President Putin to cease bombing Ukrainian cities, hospitals and schools, to halt the war crimes and atrocities and to withdraw his troops,’ said John Kirby, the White House’s National Security Council spokesman.

China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang has come out growling, using his first media appearance to accuse the US of ‘all-out containment and suppression’. He said his country’s friendship with Russia was a beacon of strength and stability which ‘set an example for foreign relations’ and asked: ‘Why should the US demand that China refrain from supplying arms to Russia when it sells arms to Taiwan?’ He said that China and the US were heading for inevitable conflict if Washington does not mend its ways. It was a fiery performance, even by the standards of Beijing’s ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats. The tirade took place on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC).

China is moving to consolidate and exploit its position as world leader in solar power technologies, by restricting the export of key components. The move could deliver a severe blow to the European and American solar industries and is a stark warning about the dangers of over-dependence on Beijing for critical technologies of the future. It also illustrates the impact of China’s industrial-scale cyber theft.  Beijing is reportedly looking to add raw materials and other vital items used in the manufacture of solar panels to a list of items that could be restricted in order to ‘help safeguard national security’ and require special permission for export.

There will no doubt be some tense moments in the boardrooms of western technology companies over the coming days after the revelation that the Chinese spy balloon shot down after traversing the United States had western-made components with English-language writing on them. The finding was reportedly contained in intelligence briefings to US lawmakers and will almost certainly lead to still greater scrutiny of the sale to China of advanced ‘dual-use’ technology.