China

Choosing a new pope has more in common than you might expect with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress’s system for picking a new general secretary. Both processes are autocratic, secret, and rigid; they focus on the leader’s infallibility, and involve a lack of succession planning. And women don’t get a look in. China’s president Xi Jinping commands over 1.3 billion souls; so, too, will the new pope. He will also own the allegiance of an estimated 12 million Chinese. But how will he exercise his pastoral care and oversight? Pope Francis, who was laid to rest yesterday following his death on Monday, had a ‘thing’ about China. He was

Imagine a time traveller from Mao Zedong’s China – say a Red Guard  – landing in a Chinese city today, nearly half a century since Mao’s death in 1976 brought the Cultural Revolution to an end. Picture her in baggy unisex khaki and blunt bob, gaping at women her age prancing past in heels and short skirts. See her take in the soaring buildings, bustling shopping centres and pumping night clubs. She looks at a newspaper. Some things make sense: ‘America’s democracy is in decline,’ one headline declares. There are familiar reports on model workers and the same sort of photos of leaders visiting factories and welcoming foreign presidents. But

Since Trump’s inauguration in January, not a day has gone by when supporters of a liberal international order have not sunk their heads deep into their hands. The global trade war that has erupted between the US and the rest of the world is just the latest episode in the American President’s mission to overturn the old order (despite the unexpected 90-day pause announced on Wednesday for everyone but China). If this was not disturbing enough, liberal internationalists also need to contend with what will replace it. What rules and norms will prevail, or rather whose? Disconcertingly, some Europeans appear to be buying the charm offensive The People’s Republic of China

On Wednesday, the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS), Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, gave a speech to students at the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) National Defence University in Beijing. Take a moment to think about that. Radakin also met General Liu Zhenli, chief of staff of the joint staff department of the Central Military Commission, the operational headquarters of the PLA. The Ministry of National Defence reported that: The UK’s attitude towards China is already deeply confused The two sides conducted in-depth exchanges on China-UK relations and mil-to-mil [military] relations, international and regional situations and issues of common concern, and had communication on strengthening exchanges and cooperation between the two

China has announced it will impose 84 per cent tariffs on US goods imports from tomorrow, as the war of words and levies between the world’s two largest economies escalates. The new measures –  50 per cent on top of the 34 per cent already imposed by Beijing’s finance ministry – are a like for like increase for the 50 per cent increase levied by Trump overnight, taking the US’s total tariff on Chinese goods to 104 per cent. The FTSE100 – which was already down more than 2.3 per cent this morning – plunged even further to 3.6 per cent following the midday news.  Beijing had vowed a ‘firm

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has warned Russia that the alliance would defend Poland against any aggression and would do so without restraint. On a visit to Warsaw, he said: When it comes to the defence of Poland and the general defence of Nato territory, if anyone were to miscalculate and think they can get away with an attack on Poland or any other ally, they will be met with the full force of this fierce alliance. Our reaction will be devastating. This must be clear to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and anyone else who wants to attack us. Would Nato’s ‘full force’ be brought to bear against Russia if

In the fight against climate change, China loves to present itself as the world’s White Knight. Armed with wind turbines and solar panels, EVs and batteries, it will rescue us from oblivion if only we would let it.  There’s no shortage of western politicians, academics and organisations who are happy to go along with the idea that China is an ally in the global green revolution. The argument, broadly put, is that whatever our differences on other things (trifles such as security, economics and human rights), surely we can agree on saving the planet. Rachel Reeves seemed to reach that conclusion when she returned from her visit to Beijing last

They were only six words on a website, but they helped maintain Beijing’s fiction that Taiwan is part of its territory. Their disappearance has infuriated China’s communist leaders. ‘It gravely contravenes international law and the basic norms of international relations,’ raged Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, on Monday. The website in question was that of the US State Department. The words – ‘we do not support Taiwan independence’ – have been removed from its ‘fact sheet’ along with a tweak to another section that implies stronger support for Taiwan’s right to join international organisations, which Beijing has consistently blocked. The changes were welcomed by the

My late mother proudly possessed a curious object: a tea cosy decorated with the image of a Sputnik. In 1957, when Russia launched the world’s first satellite, this item would have been a charmingly incongruous mix of old and new technology. But today, younger readers might struggle to identify the functions of both a tea cosy and the shiny, spiked silver ball that was Sputnik 1.  Back in the day, the world was shocked by the news that the Soviets had beat the West in the race to space. The New York Times mentioned the satellite in 279 articles in October 1957, the month of its launch. So profound was

This week, Chinese technology has shown the West the challenge it faces – ruthless, implacable and impossible to ignore. The unveiling of the Chinese artificial intelligence model DeepSeek has not only disrupted the business models of America’s tech behemoths; it has also shown that, in the race to develop the tools for economic hegemony, Beijing is set on supremacy. The launch of DeepSeek came just days before the CIA’s conclusion that, on the balance of probabilities, the Covid virus was incubated in a Wuhan lab – a man-made killer, not a product of nature’s evolutionary mischief. China stands revealed as a power bent on using science to secure not human

Sometimes a new technology comes along that immediately shakes the world. The release this week of the new Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) tool, DeepSeek-R1, is one such moment. Despite Washington’s efforts to restrict Beijing’s development of AI, including an export ban on advanced microchips, researchers in China have created an AI tool that not only exceeds the performance of American AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, but does so at a fraction of the cost. If we are to believe the hype, it took just $6 million (£5 million) to build DeekSeep-R1, compared to more than $100 million (£80 million) for ChatGPT. This is the equivalent of building the fastest Formula

For nearly a decade, the Chinese Communist Party has censored Winnie the Pooh, owing to internet memes comparing the slightly rotund President Xi Jinping to the cheerful yellow bear. So, what happens if you ask China’s new budget AI chatbot, DeepSeek, about him? Computer says no. But how rigorous were DeepSeek’s creators?  When we asked our first question, DeepSeek began to answer – only for its censorship to activate, overwriting the reply with an anodyne attempt to change the subject. Early adopters, however, had discovered a loophole: by replacing certain letters with numbers (e.g., A with 4, E with 3), users could bypass some of the restrictions. Here’s what happened