China

Barely a week after inaugurating himself as president once again, Vladimir Putin has gone to China – his first foreign trip of his new term. He is accompanied by a rarely seen entourage of all the principal ministers of state, the head of the Russian central bank, leading industrialists and top managers of state-controlled companies.  Along with all the pomp and grandeur laid on by the Chinese, this cast list provides a handy illustration of the deepening friendship and cooperation between the two superpowers. Moscow and Beijing have a history of ‘eternal friendship’. But Russia and China have never truly been equal partners in their friendship with benefits. Putin and

On a quiet street in Belgrade, a bronze statue of Confucius stands in front of a perforated white block, the new Chinese Cultural Centre. This is on the former site of the Chinese embassy which in 1999 was bombed by US-led Nato forces during the Kosovo war. Three Chinese nationals were killed. The Americans said the bombing was an accident, but the deaths allowed China and Serbia to share a common anti-Nato grievance. This week, timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the bombing, Xi Jinping visited Belgrade and talked about the Sino-Serbian ‘bond forged with the blood of our compatriots’. He had been expected to visit the embassy

The personal details of members of the UK’s armed forces appear to have been the latest target of China’s prolific cyber spies, with the Ministry of Defence’s payroll system containing the names, bank details and some addresses of up to 272,000 people on its books targeted by hackers. The government though is directing its fury at the hapless MoD contractor whose systems were breached, rather than the suspected perpetrators in Beijing. Defence secretary Grant Shapps said the attack was carried out in recent days and was ‘the suspected work of a malign actor’. He would not name the actor, though in multiple background briefings China was identified as prime suspect

The rusting and disintegrating hulk of a former Second World War landing ship has become an unlikely but dangerous flashpoint in US-China relations. The Sierra Madre, built for the US navy to land tanks, has for several decades been stranded on a shoal in the South China Sea. But now it has become a symbol of Beijing’s growing aggression in the region and its disdain for international law. The Philippines, which bought the ship in 1976, intentionally grounded her on the largely submerged Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly islands in 1999 to defend their claim to the territory. There she has remained to this day as a lonely symbol of sovereignty and home to a small contingent of Philippine marines. For many years,

A US diplomat in Beijing once told me a story of an American businessman hospitalised in the city of Ningbo after being hit at the airport by an electric buggy that was ferrying a group of Chinese VIPs who were late for their flight. The authorities confiscated his passport, demanding he pay for the damage to the buggy before he could leave. The diplomat was outraged, but when he got to Ningbo to provide help, the businessman told him to go home, explaining that he wanted to pay the fine since he was on the cusp of a big deal and didn’t want to upset the authorities. To the diplomat

When two Chinese fisherman died last month trying to flee Taiwan’s coastguard, Beijing laid the blame at Taipei’s feet and demanded an apology. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also spied an opportunity to advance its territorial claims. China has been targeting Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan, more aggressively over the past few weeks. The CCP stated that ‘there is no such thing as “prohibited or restricted waters”’ – saying that the waters around the island had been used as traditional fishing grounds by both sides. On the morning of 19 February, four Chinese coast guard vessels patrolled around Kinmen’s restricted waters. Personnel boarded and inspected a Taiwanese tourist boat that had ‘veered slightly of course’. The next day, a

This week a security deal was announced that could see Chinese police on the streets of Hungary. Despite this, there was remarkably little fanfare about the agreement – just a few vague details in public statements made days after the deal was signed between the interior ministers of the two countries. Yet is represents another troubling challenge by Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban to both Nato and the EU, of which he remains an increasingly troublesome member. The security pact will involve ‘enhancing cooperation in law enforcement and joint patrols,’ according to the Hungarian statement, while the Chinese version said the two countries would, ‘deepen cooperation in areas including counter-terrorism,

Ahead of the Chinese new year holiday, Beijing has been intervening to prop up the country’s stock markets. Regulators have tightened market trading conditions, and this week the head of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Yi Huiman, was fired abruptly, presumably as the fall-guy for the relentless decline in the markets, which have lost about $6 trillion in value since the end of 2021. There is a palpable concern about financial instability in China that travels all the way up to Xi Jinping Chinese equity prices have touched their lowest levels since 2018, and are not far from the lows reached in the 2015-16 financial crisis. Mr Yi’s two predecessors were also fired

Think of the Maldives and you’re likely to conjure up images of expensive honeymoons and golden beaches, but the archipelago is also the focus of an extraordinary spat with India. The Maldives’ high commissioner was summoned by the Indian government last week after three Maldivian deputy ministers published derogatory posts on X/ Twitter, labelling Indian prime minister Narendra Modi a ‘terrorist’, ‘clown’ and ‘puppet of Israel’. One message even compared India to cow dung. The fallout from this imbroglio has been swift. The trio were suspended and the posts have now been deleted. But India is furious: the hashtags #BoycottMaldives and #ExploreIndianIslands have been trending and there have been reports

Taiwan’s voters have defied Beijing’s threats and intimidation and elected as president the most independence-minded of the candidates for the job. After a typically boisterous election, Lai Ching-te of the China-sceptic Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) declared victory Saturday evening, having received just over 40 per cent of the vote in Taiwan’s first-past-the-post system. ‘We’ve written a new page for Taiwan’s history of democracy,’ he told reporters, after winning by a bigger margin than expected. Hou Yu-ih from the more China-friendly Kuomintang (KMT) came second with 33.4 per cent, while Ko Wen-je of the populist Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) received 26.4 per cent. There was no immediate reaction on Saturday from Beijing, which had denounced Lai, 64, as a dangerous separatist and ‘a troublemaker through and through’. The Chinese Communist party

Since the Umbrella Movement democracy protests in 2014, China’s president Xi Jinping has been dismantling Hong Kong’s freedoms – and its very democratic essence – in plain sight. The culmination of the city-state’s metamorphosis from open society to authoritarianism is marked by the trial of Hong Kong entrepreneur, media mogul and pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai, which began a week before Christmas and resumed on 2 January. Initially the erosion of Hong Kong’s way of life was gradual. But over the past four years, since the imposition of a draconian national security law in June 2020, the destruction has been rapid, far-reaching and comprehensive. Freedoms of expression, assembly, association and of

Why should we care that Beijing has suspended tariff relief for 12 Taiwanese petrochemical products? The move certainly lacks the fear factor which Chinese military manoeuvres around Taiwan generate – exercises which have become more routine and grander in scale during 2023. Yet China’s economic warfare against Taiwan is just as pernicious. It is also premeditated, with moves on this front aligning with key moments in Taiwan’s political calendar and developments in the country’s relationship with the United States. By targeting specific products with restrictions and sanctions, Beijing seeks to punish both the Taiwanese people and their government. What’s more, while it seems unlikely to win the hearts of the former, these punitive

There is something shameful about the government’s reluctance to publicly call for the release of Jimmy Lai, a British citizen and democracy campaigner, held in solitary confinement in Hong Kong. Lai, the founder of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, and one of the most prominent critics of China’s Communist Party, has languished in prison for more than 1,100 days. His trial, on national security charges, finally got underway today. Yet it is only now that a British minister has summoned up the courage to properly condemn Lai’s prosecution for the politically motivated sham it undoubtedly is. Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, said he was ‘gravely concerned’ about the trial, and joined the  United

So Yang Guang and Tian Tian are on their way back to China. Rather like a pair of high-profile celebrities, the giant pandas travelled in convoy to Edinburgh airport this morning, with every detail of their last days in the UK scrutinised in dewy-eyed detail. They’re not travelling business class, not quite, but they do have specially constructed metal crates apparently complete with sliding padlock doors, bespoke pee trays and removable screens so the keepers accompanying them can check on them during the flight. ‘I think they’ll be fine. I’m sure they’ll have a safe journey,’ said Rab Clark, the zoo’s blacksmith, who built the crates. Arguably the giant panda,

When Rishi Sunak announced that the 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel cars would be delayed by five years, he framed it as a common-sense move. What he didn’t say is that he had been advised that, had the original deadline stuck, Britain’s electric vehicle (EV) market would have been handed over to China. Going green, Sunak was told, would mean going Chinese. At the COP climate summit in Dubai starting this weekend, other leaders will have reached the same conclusion. They’re all a bit late. With little fanfare and a lot of state help, Chinese companies are now world leaders in wind, solar, hydro, lithium batteries and electric cars