China

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Listen: BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg confronts President Xi over China’s human rights

One of the clever things that politicians try to do is to redefine words and concepts that everyone thought they knew the meaning of. Take today’s ‘press conference’ that David Cameron and Chinese President Xi held in Downing Street. That ‘press conference’ consisted of statements followed by two questions, though dozens of journalists had turned up. Fortunately, the question from the British media came from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, who asked the Prime Minister how he thought a British steel worker would feel that the Chinese president was being ‘ferried down Whitehall in a golden carriage’ and whether there is ‘any price that’s worth paying in order to further our

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The British public agrees: China is buying our foreign policy

A few weeks ago, the Dalai Lama gave an interview to The Spectator where he summed up what he regarded as David Cameron’s policy of not seeing him again, so as to not upset his new friends in Beijing. ‘Money, money, money,’ he said. ‘That’s what this is about. Where is morality?’ A powerful point – and one that we put on the cover of the magazine. Now YouGov has put his words to the public in an opinion poll, and asked if they are a fair reflection of Cameron’s policy on Tibet and China. The result: 69 per cent said he was right, and just 8 per cent said he was wrong. With President

Steerpike Steerpike

Lionel Barber strengthens his ties with China

Last night’s state banquet saw Jeremy Corbyn join David Cameron, President Xi Jinping and Her Majesty to raise a glass to the beginning of a golden era of partnership between China and the United Kingdom. With Corbyn meeting the Chinese president earlier in the day to raise grievances regarding the country’s human rights track record, his encounter with the president at the dinner appeared to be a civil one. Although Corbyn’s wife Laura Alvarez chose to give the lavish do a miss, the Labour leader wasn’t short of company with other guests in attendance including the Bank of England’s Mark Carney — who previously suggested Corbyn’s economic policies would ‘hurt’ the poor, and

The Spectator

Exclusive: Boris declares that Japan is relaxed about Britain leaving the EU

Boris Johnson has recently returned from a tour of Japan. His diary of the trip appears in this week’s issue of The Spectator: Frankly I don’t know why the British media made such a big fat fuss last week when I accidentally flattened a ten-year-old Japanese rugby player called Toki. He got to his feet. He smiled. Everyone applauded. That’s rugby, isn’t it? You get knocked down, you get up again. And yet I have to admit that I offered a silent prayer of thanks that I didn’t actually hurt the little guy. They aren’t making many kids like Toki these days; in fact they aren’t making enough kids at

Ross Clark Ross Clark

A Chinese bailout won’t save Hinkley Point, our latest nuclear disaster

How easy it would be to scorn the environmentalists who are up in arms about George Osborne’s new pet project, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station. You can understand their anxiety: subsidies for green energy are being slashed, yet the Chancellor will do anything — and pay anything — to get this project up and running. He is happy to force households to pay artificially high prices for a form of energy which brings all kinds of risks — of which the world was reminded this week when Japan found the first cancer case liked to the Fukushima disaster of 2011. ‘Has the Chancellor lost his mind?’ they ask.

Tuesday

David Waywell

Is our foreign policy being dreamt up by the James Bond screenwriters?

If there’s one thing that the James Bond films has taught us it is that the Chinese are not our enemies. We should perhaps remember this as President Xi Jinping polishes his heels on our red carpets this week. Our enemies are cold war Russians, jewel-encrusted North Koreans, ex-Nazi rocket scientists, fat Europeans obsessed with gold, and, of course, bald Polish-Greek crime lords called Ernst with a love of bob sleighs and white cats. The imminent release of the twenty fourth Bond film is a handy reminder that if we’re looking for threats, we should really look closer to home. What little we know of Spectre‘s plot suggests that it’s

Steerpike Steerpike

Broadsheets help to get China’s message across (with a little help from Downing Street)

Although President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Britain is supposed to herald the beginning of a golden era of partnership between China and the United Kingdom, the visit has already been marred in controversy with many questioning why the government is teaming up with a country with a history of human rights abuses. Still, readers of today’s broadsheets could be forgiven for believing that we are already in the full grip of China-mania. Today’s Financial Times has six full-page adverts from Chinese companies welcoming the Chinese president.   Meanwhile, in both today’s Times and Telegraph there is a full-page advert — half written in Chinese — offering ‘a warm welcome to President Xi Jinping of China on his

Elliot Wilson

China needs Britain more than Britain needs China

When King George III sent the diplomat-statesman Lord Macartney to Beijing in 1793 to meet China’s all-powerful Qianlong Emperor, history was in flux. The Celestial Empire had dominated world trade for two millennia, yet it was in a state of protracted decline. Britain in contrast was a rising superpower on whose empire (to use a term coined by Macartney) the sun ‘never set’. The mission’s task was simple: unveil the latest wares from Manchester, Bristol and Edinburgh – globes, telescopes, weaponry – then wait for a dazzled and covetous audience to open trade routes through northern China. Yet despite pausing lovingly over an ornate clock, the 81-year-old Emperor declined the

Monday

Sebastian Payne

Michael Fallon: there’s no need to worry about Hinkley Point because it’s French-led

How worried should we be about China’s involvement in building the Hinkley Point nuclear power station? Even if concerns were raised at the National Security Council about the Chinese involvement, Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, doesn’t appear too concerned. At Defence Questions this afternoon, the shadow defence secretary Maria Eagle said it was ‘frankly astounding’ that the government is allowing China to back the Hinkley Point project — given the ongoing threat from cyberattacks. Fallon told Eagle there was no need to worry because China is only providing money for a French-led project: ‘I hope the honourable lady will join with me in welcoming the president of China on his visit to this

Steerpike Steerpike

Steve Hilton takes a swipe at the Tories over China

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Britain today to embark on his official state visit. While the visit aims to build on George Osborne’s own trip to China to reinforce trade relations, Jeremy Corbyn is expected to ruffle feathers by bringing up the country’s bad track record on human rights when he meets the president this week. Government figures are hoping Corbyn will spare them blushes by using a private meeting with the president for the conversation rather than Tuesday’s state banquet, with China’s ambassador to the UK warning that he expected British people to know how to behave at the dinner. However, should Corbyn give off a frosty demeanor at the lavish do,

Thursday

The Spectator

Britain should not mistake its allies for friends

It would be hard to dream up a more absurd piece of political satire than an agency of the British government called Just Solutions International winning a contract to train prison officers in a country that has executed 175 people in the past year, many of them in public beheadings for offences such as sorcery, witchcraft, adultery and political activism. That it sought this contract in the first place is a sign of the great void at the heart of our foreign policy. This week, the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, pulled out of the deal with Saudi Arabia — thereby attracting the ire of the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, who called

Alexandra Coghlan

The polyphonous Babel of global music

‘Following custom, when the Siamese conquered the Khmer they carried off much of the population, including most of their musicians, to be resettled in what is now Thailand.’ The history of music isn’t a story of chords and scores, instruments or their players. Music’s story is one of wars, invasions and revolutions, religion, monarchy and nationhood. Whether you look at the histories of Africa or Iran, Europe or Uzbekistan, the narratives are the same: colourful, bloody, complicated. Music is not an aesthetic response, an artistic translation of life; music and musicians are society itself. It’s a principle that acts as the guiding thread through the labyrinth of traditions and terminologies

Sunday

Steerpike

Helen Goodman finds herself in hot water over Jeremy Hunt tweet

At this year’s Tory conference Jeremy Hunt defended the government’s tax credit cuts, claiming they would make the British people work as hard as the Chinese. While Hunt has since claimed that his comments were misinterpreted, tonight Labour’s Helen Goodman hit out at the Health Secretary for the comments. She says if things are so great in China then why did Hunt’s wife Lucia — who is from Xi’an, China — move to Britain: Given that the personal dig hardly fits in with Jeremy Corbyn’s promise of ‘a new kind of politics’, Labour supporters have been quick to call on Goodman to apologise. Speaking on Westminster Hour this evening, Lady Basildon — the Labour

Thursday

Steerpike

Listen: Sarah Montague’s disastrous turn on Today

Oh dear. Sarah Montague is not having a good day. The Today presenter managed to make not one, not two, but three gaffes while hosting today’s Radio 4 show. 1. Things got off to a bad start when Montague began her interview with Simon Kirby, the Chief Executive of High Speed Two, on the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s trip to China for investment for the rail network. Alas, Montague appeared not to have managed to get her head around the purpose of the trip; repeatedly grilling Kirby on whether the project is doomed if the Chinese don’t give up to £12bn to help finance it. He had to explain several times that China are actually being asked

Sebastian Payne

Podcast: the great British kowtow and do all right wingers have bad music taste

Britain’s policy towards China appears to be quite simple: doing exactly what China wants. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Jonathan Mirsky and Fraser Nelson discuss this week’s Spectator cover feature on George Osborne’s visit to China and our interview with the Dalai Lama. Why is the Chancellor so keen to please the Chinese government? Is David Cameron wrong to say he will never meet with the Dalai Lama again? And what does the Dalai Lama think of the Prime Minister’s position? Rod Liddle and James Delingpole also debate whether they have bad music tastes, following revelation that Delingpole enjoyed listening to Supertramp with the Prime Minister at university. Do

Jonathan Mirsky

‘Money, money, money’

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3″ title=”Listen: Fraser Nelson and Jonathan Mirsky discuss Britain’s attitude towards China” startat=35] Listen [/audioplayer] The Dalai Lama is a connoisseur of absurdity. When we met in London on Monday I reminded him that two years ago, desperate to resume relations with China, No. 10 said it had ‘turned the page on that issue,’ by which he meant the Dalai Lama. He responded with his celebrated chuckle but it became clear that he’s far from sanguine about being snubbed by Britain. He agreed with me that not even Beijing could have thought up a phrase like ‘turn the page’. And in case Beijing didn’t get that craven message, Mr

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The great British kowtow

Any British Prime Minister who meets the Dalai Lama knows it will upset the Chinese government — but for decades, no British Prime Minister has much cared. John Major met him in 10 Downing Street, as did Tony Blair. These were small but important nods to Britain’s longstanding status as a friend of Tibet. Of course the Chinese Communist Party disliked seeing the exiled Buddhist leader welcomed in London — but that was their problem. How things have changed. Now China is far richer and Britain is anxious, sometimes embarrassingly so, to have a slice of that new wealth. From the start of his premiership, David Cameron has been explicit

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Exclusive: the Dalai Lama lambasts David Cameron’s China policy

The Dalai Lama was in London on Monday and met his old friend (and Spectator contributor) Jonathan Mirsky. Time was when he could expect to see the British Prime Minister too – but Beijing was furious that David Cameron met him three years ago and outrageously demanded that the Prime Minister apologise for it. Cameron did what Beijing wanted. He said in public that he had ‘no plans’ to meet the Dalai Lama again. Such was his hunger for Chinese deals, which has been on full inglorious display in George Osborne’s giant kowtow in China this week. Jonathan has known the Dalai Lama for 35 years, and asked him what

Tuesday

George Osborne

Why Britain and China should stick together

Today I’ve been at the Shanghai Stock Exchange – the epicentre of the volatility that spooked global markets over the summer. I deliberately chose to come here because I wanted to make sure this simple message would be heard in both our country and China: through the ups and downs, Britain and China should stick together.  Indeed the constant refrain of my five-day tour – with one of the broadest, most ambitious British delegations of recent years – is that China can count on Britain to be its best partner in the West. That means Beijing choosing London as its bridge to Western financial markets, which it has demonstrated this

Sebastian Payne

George Osborne: engaging with China is better than ‘megaphone diplomacy’

Britain and China must ‘stick together’ through the ‘ups and downs’ according to  George Osborne. The Chancellor is currently touring China to drum up support for a ‘bridge’ with the City of London, as well as attempting to reassure the markets. On the Today programme, Osborne said he is pursuing a close relationship because it will create ‘jobs and investment in Britain’ — but he is not ignoring the human rights concerns either: ‘This is primarily an economic and financial dialogue but of course we’re two completely difficult political systems and we raise human rights issues but I don’t think it’s inconsistent to do more business with more than one fifth of