China

Never before have the participants in a major sporting event been so closely monitored as in this Winter Olympics in Beijing. The 1980 Summer Olympics in Soviet Moscow were nothing in comparison. Athletes are competing under a blanket of observation, ostensibly to keep Covid at bay, yet imposed by a paranoid Communist party for whom critical words or thoughts are as dangerous as any virus. Everyone attending the games, including athletes, support staff and media, must install on their phones an app, My 2022, which harvests a wide range of personal data. It has the ability to censor and track its users, according to cybersecurity experts who have examined the

Vladimir Putin very rarely travels abroad these days – and Xi Jinping has not met a foreign leader in person for almost two years. Yet there they were together, just before the opening of the Beijing Olympics, hailing their and their nations’ friendship and concluding $117 billion in oil and gas deals. Although they themselves avoid the word, can we yet talk of a Sino-Russian alliance? Not quite: there’s more here than meets the eye. Certainly the focus was on amity and common interests. This had been signalled in the lead-up to the summit. Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi said that Moscow’s security concerns about Nato were ‘legitimate’ and needed

Nigel Inkster, a former director of MI6, has described China as an ‘intelligence state’. This was true even before the Chinese Communist party (CCP) passed laws that all individuals and organisations must help the security forces when asked. Chinese officials, party members and citizens have long been active across a broad front in advancing the interests of the CCP, seeking out political, military, scientific, technological and commercial information. Britain has to be wary of more than just the Ministry of State Security (MSS) — China’s secret police agency — or the military intelligence department. The revelation last month that the Labour MP and former shadow minister Barry Gardiner had accepted

To understand what Xi Jinping wants from the Winter Olympics, look at the man chosen to direct the opening ceremony. Zhang Yimou is one of China’s most famous film directors, but his hits (such as Hero and Raise the Red Lantern) are better loved by foreigners than by the Chinese. His job is to wow the outside world with images of China’s power and culture. In a deeply controversial Olympics — already being boycotted by ministers and officials from Britain, the US and many others — he is Beijing’s secret artistic weapon. But unlike the extravagance of Beijing’s 2008 opening ceremony (also directed by Zhang), this Winter Olympics will be

The growing alliance between Russia and China is something we shouldn’t lose sleep over, their long history of mutual suspicion runs too deep – or so we are told. Such a view is too complacent by half. China and Russia’s mutual hostility towards the West and their opportunism also run deep. And even if their burgeoning alliance is a marriage of convenience, it is still a very dangerous one. As Russia has massed more than 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, the nightmare for western strategists is that Vladimir Putin’s actions are being coordinated with those of Xi Jinping in and around the Taiwan Strait, where China’s military intimidation of

With just three weeks until the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Covid-19 is creeping ever closer to the capital. The Communist party is seeking to isolate Beijing from the rest of the country to keep the virus at bay and the games on track. But its zero-Covid policy, a desperate game of Whac-A-Mole with the virus, is looking increasingly unsustainable. All routes between Beijing and Tianjin have been closed after an outbreak in the port city, which is adjacent to the capital. Flights and high-speed train services in and out of a city of 14 million people have been cancelled and highways closed after the discovery of 126

The Kazakh uprising is over. The stench of burnt-out vehicles and bombed out buildings in Kazakhstan’s most populous city and former capital, Almaty, has begun to dissipate. Life is returning to normal. Banks have reopened. Salaries and pensions are being paid. The internet is up and running again. Almaty airport is expected to reopen today. As the fog of war lifts some clarity about these events is beginning to emerge. Officials have reported that 100 businesses and banks were destroyed along with 400 vehicles. Seven policemen died and hundreds more were wounded; 8,000 people have been arrested. Some 164 civilians were killed. The government of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has survived

I left China a decade ago when life there as a Uighur simply became too difficult. People know about the ongoing genocide of the Uighurs, but it didn’t come out of nowhere: it followed years of smaller scale persecution, which I experienced daily. I first grew aware of how bad things were in 2009, when I got a job in an inland city that required me to travel — a role that became impossible because hotels would refuse to let me stay. Receptionists would see my identity card, which bore my ethnicity, and curtly reply that there were no rooms available. Once, one smiled kindly and told me to wait

Twenty twenty-two is the year that Xi Jinping plans to seize power for life, but it is not going according to script. He is retreating further into his bunker – a self-isolation that is amplifying the Communist party’s arrogance and insecurities. Challenges are mounting at home and abroad, which will make for a bumpy year in China’s growing rivalry with the West. Xi’s most immediate problem is Covid-19, where he has backed himself into an increasingly untenable ‘zero tolerance’ cul-de-sac, just as most of the rest of the world is learning to live with the virus. Just before the new year, gun-toting police in the city of Jingxi paraded four people