China

Coca-Cola’s most controversial bottling plant is a huge factory located in an industrial zone just outside the city of Urumqi in western China. Logistically, the factory is well situated: the international airport is a short drive away, as is the high-speed train station close to the fashionable Wyndham hotel. But the problem for Coca-Cola — and other western companies such as Volkswagen and BASF, which operate plants in the same region — is the existence of hundreds of facilities not mentioned on any official map. The Cofco Coca-Cola plant, a joint venture with a Chinese state company, is surrounded by prisons and re-education camps in which China suppresses local ethnic

The Chinese Communist Party regime’s repression is pervasive and intensifying. Over the past five years, Xi Jinping’s brutal assault on basic human rights has accelerated with horrifying ferocity and speed.  But while the incarceration, forced sterilisation and enslavement of millions of Uyghurs is increasingly recognised as a genocide, and the dismantling of Hong Kong’s promised freedom and autonomy a grave breach of an international treaty, it is worth remembering that numerous groups in China are under attack. Christians in China are facing the worst conditions since the Cultural Revolution, the Falun Gong spiritual movement continues to be hounded, repression in Tibet increases, and human rights defenders, civil society activists, bloggers,

The events on Capitol Hill were always going to be met with schadenfreude — perhaps even glee — amongst autocracies in one-party states. They suddenly had the best ammunition they could have hoped for. From Turkey and Zimbabwe to Russia and Iran, state media and spokespeople latched on, turning the language often thrown at them back at America — calling for ‘restraint’ and ‘dignity’. For the Chinese government, which has been no stranger to violent mass movements in recent years, the analogy was obvious. Hong Kong’s legislature had been stormed just last year, with pro-democracy activists forcing their way into the building and vandalising the walls with anti-Beijing slogans. Beijing

Earlier this morning, 53 democrats from Hong Kong were arrested. Their crime? Trying to win last September’s elections. As absurd as it sounds, the new reality in Hong Kong is that it is now effectively a criminal offence, under the National Security Law, for the opposition to have the audacity to try and boost its representation in parliament. ‘The operation today targets the active elements who are suspected to be involved in the crime of overthrowing, or interfering (with)…the Hong Kong government’s legal execution of duties,’ said John Lee, Hong Kong’s security minister. But, as he later suggested, in reality this meant that those who were arrested were simply trying to win a majority

It took Brussels and Beijing seven years to agree an investment deal. A deal that, until its conclusion a few days ago, had been largely eclipsed by the Brexit process. Once the negotiations had concluded, however, the European side suddenly came under intense criticism — China, detractors said, was not the sort of country the EU should be cosying up to. That the deal was finalised on the penultimate day of the year was a sure sign that Angela Merkel was pushing for closure. She had stated before the pandemic that advancing EU-China relations would be one of the goals of Germany’s EU Council presidency (now passed on to Portugal).

While Britain is the first country in the world to approve a vaccine, it is not the first to start vaccinating people. A million people in China have already been inoculated with Sinopharm and Sinovac jabs. The vaccines, however, have not completed phase three trials, which assess potential side effects. In other words, they have not yet been granted regulatory approval. Could this be the reason that Beijing – never usually shy when it comes to good news – is keeping quiet? The vaccinations first started in July, when a legal provision for ‘emergency vaccinations’, based on the WHO’s response to Ebola, was introduced. Frontline workers in health, transport and