China

Wednesday

Ed Prideaux

How Mao’s medicine made modern China

History repeats itself, said Marx, first as tragedy and then as farce. And when it comes to the world’s latest pandemic, China and the coronavirus are no historical exception. ‘Mao’s Flu Strikes’, The Observer declared in November 1968. ‘200,000 people are ill with Mao’s Flu in Rome’, the paper reported, ‘and the epidemic is expected to grow in the next few weeks.’ While sixties’ Brits may have sidestepped today’s loo roll stockpiling, the ‘Mao Flu Panic’ was soon high on people’s minds. By its conclusion in 1969, Mao flu – now known historically as ‘Hong Kong flu’ – had killed around one million people worldwide, including 100,000 in the US

Saturday

Charles Moore

Coronavirus is a metaphor for our vulnerability over Huawei

Monday night’s Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate. The problem for the government is not just the actual danger of our security being breached by Huawei, real though that is. It is also strategic. The government is not treating the subject this way, but sees it as merely a matter for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This is a bad mistake. We have achieved Brexit. We are making our own way in the world. Our closest allies in terms of trust, language, cultural links, democratic values and shared interests are our four partner nations in

Taki

America has turned into a bad joke

Gstaad     Rumours about the virus are flying around this village. First there was talk of a hotel being temporarily quarantined, then a shindig given by a fat social climber where one of the guests was said to be infected. So far these seem to have been false alarms but still the fat old rich who don’t ski are panicking, staying indoors and incommunicado. This is good news. Even better news is that I’ve been skiing with my son and have never had a better time, although he did have to wait for me at times. The snow was unexpectedly good and there was plenty of it. My trouble

Thursday

Johnny Patterson

Washington is furious at Boris’s Huawei bid

Boris Johnson faced his first major rebellion of the new parliament on Tuesday. Parliamentarians are waking up to the fact that this decision has far greater diplomatic ramifications than was originally appreciated. Despite their sizeable majority, the government narrowly avoided defeat and will be vulnerable when future bills relating to Huawei are tabled. The reaction in Washington DC to Boris Johnson’s decision to allow Huawei to tender for the 5G contract validates the concerns of the new ‘awkward squad’ of former cabinet ministers and Tory select committee chairs. Rarely have Democrats and Republicans been so united. Capitol Hill seldom pays much attention to Britain, but everyone from Chuck Schumer, the leader

Tuesday

Jonathan Haslam

How coronavirus could change the global order

As much as it is a threat, Coronavirus is also an opportunity. This clear demonstration of the chaos that the unseen can cause both advanced and developing nations gives global leaders the chance to reset positions and behaviour. In Coronavirus and Sars, China has been at the epicentre of genuinely life-changing diseases. The circumstances in which these illnesses developed are completely at odds with the animal welfare and health and safety regulations common in most developed nations. Western diplomacy might, if used judiciously, change Chinese behaviour while Beijing is on the defensive The trade in snakes, pangolins, bats and other wild animals has been outlawed by the Chinese authorities. Beijing has

Monday

Ross Clark

Why is coronavirus receding in China?

In the panic over coronavirus in Britain, we seem to have forgotten about China. There is a logic to that, of course. The argument goes that British and European cases are far closer to home. But if we were just a little more aware of what has been going on in China over the past few weeks we might be a little less-minded to panic.  In China, the epidemic is not over, but it is in very sharp decline. In the worst week – the second week of February – more than 3,000 people a day were being infected in a seemingly exponential upwards curve. But then the number of

Saturday

Taki

A meditation on death

Gstaad   I shoulda been a weatherman: no sooner had I announced snow to be a Gstaad rarity than it came down non-stop. But then it rained, so everything’s hunky-dory. Older rich people who don’t ski are relieved that it’s stopped; younger types who do indulge are over the moon that it’s snowed at all. Happy, happy Gstaad… but not really; the coronavirus news has some scared out of their wits. In fact, this alpine village is beginning to feel like Der Tod in Venedig, or Death in Venice for non-German speakers. The great South African doubles specialist Frew McMillan, now the best tennis commentator on TV, used to call

Saturday

Charles Moore

Jean Vanier’s sad fall from grace

The fall from grace of Jean Vanier is truly a sad story. The founder of the L’Arche communities did extraordinary work, practical, intellectual and spiritual, to advance the idea that those suffering mental handicap had much to teach the rest of us. His was a radical idea about what community can be. Now, however, L’Arche has accepted a report that Vanier, who died last year, had sexual contact with six women from the 1970s onwards. There is no suggestion of any exploitation of the handicapped. Unlike so many claims in abuse cases, these ones seem to have been carefully investigated. The women (all adults) were his devoted followers. Vanier appears

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Coronavirus and the cycle of panic

If you have just cancelled your trip to Venice and ordered your £19.99 surgical face mask from Amazon, how about this for a terrifying vision: by the time we get to April, 50,000 Britons will have succumbed to a combination of infectious disease and adverse weather. Frightened? If you are, don’t worry: you survived. It was two years ago. In 2017-18 the Office for National Statistics recorded 50,100 ‘excess winter deaths’. The explanation, according to the ONS, was probably ‘the predominant strain of flu, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine, and below average winter temperatures’. Coronavirus (Covid-19) is a pretty virulent virus all right, but not in the way you

Tuesday

Johnny Patterson

How coronavirus can save Hong Kong

The coronavirus has enforced a hiatus in Hong Kong’s widespread political unrest with worries about transmission stalling protests. Dissatisfaction with the government still festers, fuelled by the mishandling of the health crisis – all the ingredients are there for protests to reignite. But the lull in the unrest gives the Hong Kong government and their counterparts in Beijing a window of opportunity. It is imperative that the British government encourages all sides to grasp the next few months as a moment for reconciliation. President Xi Jinping has been busy using this space to reshuffle the officials overseeing Hong Kong from Beijing’s side by appointing loyalists Xia Baolong and Luo Huining.

Saturday

Liam Halligan

The coronavirus is China’s biggest test since Tiananmen Square

Over 1,500 Chinese have died from the coronavirus, with tens of millions quarantined in their own homes. President Xi is keeping a low profile, mindful of the political dangers should China’s authorities fail to contain this killer bug. In the UK, nine people have been diagnosed with the virus, including two GPs. Several public buildings have been closed – including schools, medical centre and an old-age care home – with Health Secretary Matt Hancock warning of a ‘serious and imminent threat’. Amid fears of the human fall out from what the World Health Organisation has classified as Covid-19, concerns are growing, also, about the economic and financial impact of this

Saturday

Charles Moore

The reason our civil service is soft on China

The creation of the National Security Council under David Cameron was supposed to join up parts of British government which had not previously had the right forum. We would now be able to survey all functions of security right across government. How odd it is that this coordination was not applied to the issue of Huawei years ago. Whatever may be said against great powers, they do have in their political bloodstream a constant sense of security threat, both external and internal, which helps them develop strategy. The United States and China both devote huge amounts of money and brainpower to the subject. Despite September 11 2001, and despite the

Wednesday

Charles Parton

Why we’ll regret the Huawei gamble

It is apparently fine for China to ban western technology from its telecommunications network but quite unacceptable for us to prioritise our national security. The decision to allow Huawei into the UK’s 5G network is the first of many tough choices in the new technological era. And we’ve flunked it. Why is it a new technological era? Because we no longer simply buy goods in return for money. Increasingly we pay not just in coin, but in data as well; not just in a one-off transaction, but in a perpetual transfer of bytes back to the vendor. And when it comes to 5G, since it will underpin so much more

Tuesday

James O'Malley

The dangers of letting Huawei build our 5G network

This afternoon Boris Johnson finally approved the use of equipment made by Huawei in building parts of Britain’s 5G network. The decision is a long time coming, having initially been kicked into the long grass by Theresa May last year, but it is also important. The decision will have profound strategic implications for the UK for years to come. Why such a big deal? 5G is the next generation of mobile phone technology. It is faster and more reliable than the 4G most of us are still using. And crucially, the technology isn’t just about improving our phones, as 5G chips will connect pretty much everything, from driverless cars, to

Wednesday

The Spectator

Letters: Should conservatives be worried that high-spending Boris has a majority?

My father’s imprisonment Sir: Harald Maass’s piece on the plight of Uyghurs in China (‘A cultural genocide’, December 14) captures the grim reality of what has been happening. Articles like this draw vital attention to the crisis. I am an ethnic Uyghur and live in Belgium with my wife and children. My father, a 58-year-old secondary school teacher from Xinjiang, was jailed in China in April 2018. No reason was provided by the authorities as to why, and there was no trial or any other legal procedure. He was obviously imprisoned just because he is a Uyghur. After 18 months in prison, he was finally released recently and is at

Thursday

Harald Maass

The chilling stories from inside China’s Muslim internment camps

Vegetable-seller Kairat Samarkhan didn’t know why he had been summoned to the police station. ‘I had to empty my pockets and hand over my belt and laces. Then they started to ask questions,’ he says. After days of interrogation, during which he was hardly allowed to sleep, officers pulled a sack over his head and drove him to a camp near the city of Altai. Samarkhan, a Muslim Kazakh, told me about his experience in the camp: ‘Every day, we had to renounce the Muslim faith and confirm that we respect the laws of China. Before every meal, we chorused: “Long live Xi Jinping!” ’ In the past two years

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Bercow steps down, Hoyle steps up and an election begins

Home Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Labour MP for Chorley and deputy Speaker since 2010, was elected Speaker by the Commons. His first words were: ‘No clapping.’ Nigel Farage, the leader of the Brexit party, proposed an electoral pact with the Conservatives, but only if Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, repudiated the agreement on Brexit that he had made with the European Union. When this was not forthcoming, he said: ‘We will contest every single seat in England, Scotland and Wales.’ But he declined to stand for parliament himself (which he had done seven times before, without success). Philip Hammond, the former chancellor of the Exchequer, decided against standing as an

Alec Ash

Brave front: The pro-democracy guerrilla fighters taking on Hong Kong’s riot police

 Hong Kong Mo Ming zig-zagged through the tear-gas. He ran across a central Hong Kong flyover in a low crouch he learned from the shoot-’em-up video game Counter-Strike. It was 1 October, China’s National Day, and the confrontations in Hong Kong were in their 17th week. I followed him as he picked a path through the thickening fog, slingshot at the ready for a counterstrike of his own against the police’s water cannon — their most formidable weapon, which sprays protesters with blue, irritant-laced water. It fired just short of our position, and we made it across to the far side, where other pro-democracy fighters had retreated. These were the

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

From Brexit to Beethoven: John Humphrys returns to radio

Some listeners will have had quite a shock first thing on Monday. Turning on at six to Classic FM they would have heard a familiar voice but not quite the one they expected. In yet another surprising turn of events, John Humphrys, the fox terrier of news broadcasting, has just completed a stint on Classic FM’s breakfast show, swapping Brexit for Beethoven and smooth radio for the ebullient hectoring of the Today programme. ‘No need to readjust your radio,’ laughed Humphrys just after seven, before introducing the next track, Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite. Humphrys actually sounded as if he was beginning to enjoy himself, reading out readers’ emails, introducing the School

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Brexit uncertainty, Turkey in Syria and a Chinese threat

Home Brexit teetered from uncertainty to uncertainty. Parliament had been summoned to sit on Saturday 19 October to debate what Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, had brought back from a European Union summit. He had held talks before the week began with Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach of Ireland, at Thornton Manor in the Wirral, from which optimistic noises emerged. Margaret Atwood, 79, from Ottawa, and Bernardine Evaristo, 60, from Eltham, shared the Booker Prize. The Queen wore the George IV diadem at the State Opening of Parliament instead of the heavy Imperial State Crown. Among 26 Bills set out in the Queen’s Speech were seven relating to Brexit, one of