China

At the tail end of last year, Chinese scientists claimed they had achieved something world-changing. In a widely circulated paper, the researchers said they had developed an algorithm run on a quantum computer that is able to break the best encryption that exists today. Modern encryption runs on mathematical problems which take the most powerful computers tens of thousands of years to crack. It has long been theoretically possible that quantum computers could one day be capable of cracking these codes in a practical timescale. If the Chinese claim is correct, then Xi Jinping now possesses a terrifying assault weapon in cyber warfare.  The paper, however, was greeted with derision

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. China’s continuing claims that the balloon was an innocent weather balloon blown off-course are looking increasingly absurd Investigators are continuing their efforts to recover the wreckage of the balloon and its payload of surveillance kit from shallow waters off

China’s ‘spy’ balloon, (or is it an errant weather balloon?), is currently being tracked across America. Picked up above the Aleutian Islands, it was buzzed by US planes above Montana and is now headed eastwards as it is pushed by the prevailing Jet Stream. The Pentagon has decided not to shoot it down; it does not want debris landing on middle America. China insists the balloon is used for meteorological research and strayed because of bad weather. But the incident has prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his trip to China that was scheduled for next week. Was the balloon inspired by Japan’s Emperor Hirohito? Starting in

As the world’s attention focused last month on whether to send tanks to Ukraine, Japan’s Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, was on a whistle-stop tour of the West. He held various meetings with G7 leaders, including Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden. His objective was clear: to create a new alliance that can counter China. Japan has been forming a ‘Quad’ with Australia, India and the US on naval manoeuvres  Japan adopted a ‘peace constitution’ in 1947 when it was occupied by the US, pledging that the country would never again wage war. For the past half a century, the military budget was capped at 1 per cent of GDP, and Japan

China usually shuts down for the Lunar New Year, but Communist party leaders have marked the arrival of the Year of the Rabbit with a burst of activity worthy of that skittish animal. They have followed their colossal U-turn on zero-Covid with a charm offensive to convince the outside world that China is open for business. In many ways it is as abrupt an about-turn as scrapping Covid controls in the first place. Xi Jinping despatched his trusted vice-premier and economic tsar Liu He to Davos to schmooze with western business leaders. In his speech to the World Economic Forum two weeks ago, he mentioned ‘strengthening international cooperation’ no less

A few days ago, an email arrived from someone I know in China: my book The Great Sea had been spotted on the bookshelves of president Xi when he delivered his beginning of the year address to China and the world. China watchers were expending plenty of energy identifying the other books on his shelves, and came up with 62 titles. The great majority were by Chinese authors, including famous classics: the history of ancient China by Sima Qian and the Full Collection of Tang Poems, not to mention works by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. Admittedly there is a scattering of translations, including Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy

Why did China end its zero Covid policy so abruptly? This question has confounded China-watchers and even the Chinese people over the last month. For the last three years, the Chinese government dictated its people’s lives to an extent unseen since the Cultural Revolution. Zero Covid had become part of Xi Jinping’s political legacy. It was touted as proof of socialism’s concern for human life, compared to capitalist indifference. And yet, almost inexplicably, zero Covid ended pretty much overnight at the beginning of December. For the first time ever, the Chinese government appears to have admitted the real reason – zero Covid was failing to control the Omicron variant. In

Beijing’s roads are busy once more. Though zero Covid had ended in December, cities across China emptied out again over the past month as the virus swept through the population. Many stayed home to avoid getting infected or, more likely, to recover from infection. One government model estimated that a fifth of the Chinese population (250 million people) were infected in the first twenty days of December. But now, those who have got better are going back on to the streets and back into their workplaces. Cities which fell first, like Beijing, are hoping that they are over the worst of this wave. The return to normality has come at

One University of Hong Kong model has forecast that there could be up to a million Covid deaths in China over the coming months. That would be a political problem for the Chinese Communist Party, which prides itself (or tries to) on its competence. But it turns out the CCP has a rather elegant solution: stop counting cases, and you won’t see the scale of the deaths either. Nobody knows for sure how high case numbers in the country are right now. At the beginning of December, the National Health Commission announced that it would no longer count asymptomatic cases. But even if you’re symptomatic, you’re unlikely to be counted in the

For more than 20 years the West ignored China’s militarisation of the South China Sea. Until, that is, it was too late. Now, after being artificially expanded and built out with sand, the islands of this crucial maritime space are dotted with Chinese missile systems and runways. The region’s smaller nations, who also lay claim to sections of this sea, can only protest in vain.  Will the Free World learn from the mistakes of history? Beijing is now trying to redraw the map across the Himalayas, most recently in Arunachal Pradesh, a territory in North-eastern India that China claims as ‘South Tibet’.  Last week, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in the

Zero Covid seems to be ending in China. After three years of pushing this policy, the message from the state has now changed: each person’s health is now their own responsibility. State media is emphasising ‘new evidence’ showing that Omicron has a lighter viral load than previous strains. Meanwhile, testing sites across the country are being dismantled and new vaccination targets have been set to protect the most vulnerable. Some Chinese are bemused, asking themselves: ‘do protests work?’ The timing certainly suggests so – in the same week as student leaders were being rounded up, state media started talking about how Covid has no long term complications and quietly dropped

Tony Blair recently described the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s zero-Covid policy as ‘completely irrational’. He is completely wrong. Within the context of the CCP’s interests, it makes sense. ‘Completely political’ would have been nearer the mark, but not a bull’s eye. When Covid first appeared, the CCP got it right. Lockdowns and restrictions meant the China largely escaped deaths and serious illness. Later the mistakes – or rather the inevitabilities of the system – kicked in. China’s home-produced vaccines were insufficiently effective, but the CCP refused to use foreign vaccines, even though they had been licensed for use within China. Partly, this was misplaced nationalistic pride. But ever wary of

I’ve always loved the Chinese national anthem. I used to think I was the loudest Communist Youth League pioneer as my class belted it out, dressed in our little red neckerchiefs, during our school’s weekly flag-raising ceremony. ‘The March of the Volunteers’ was composed in the 1930s during the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; it starts with ‘Stand up, those who refuse to be slaves’ and only gets more rousing. I could see, even at a young age in the early 2000s, that China wouldn’t be facing those days again – it was getting wealthier and more powerful. Standing in a Nanjing schoolyard, I was proud of China’s return to greatness.

It is easy to imagine that a dam might be bursting in China. There have been spontaneous street protests across the country against the country’s zero Covid policy, unconfirmed videos in Shanghai show crowds calling for president Xi Jinping to resign, and political content is slipping though China’s draconian social media censorship.  Earlier in the pandemic, Chinese residents in Covid-stricken cities were trapped in their apartment buildings while, in one memorable dystopian moment, a horde of drones deployed by the local communist party told them to ‘control your soul’s desire for freedom’. Now, after a fire in a residential block in Urumqi killed ten people, it seems as though people have suddenly had enough.  

The Chinese people seem to have run out of patience with their country’s draconian Covid policies. After almost three years of brutal lockdowns, mass testing and sweeping quarantine, all facilitated by claustrophobic surveillance, they appear to have snapped. The protests that swept China at the weekend are the biggest challenge to Xi Jinping since he took power in 2012, and try as he might he cannot shift the blame. Zero Covid is his policy. Dissenting voices pointing to the economic and social cost have been silenced, and ‘defeating’ the virus and demonstrating the superiority of the Chinese Communist party over the floundering West is part of the cult of Xi.