China

Home Rishi Sunak, aged 42, became Prime Minister. At the weekend Boris Johnson had flown back from a holiday in the Dominican Republic in response to the resignation of Liz Truss. She said she could not ‘deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the Conservative party’. The 1922 Committee devised a hurdle of 100 nominations for any MP to be considered as leader, with secret ballots of MPs and, if two candidates remained, an online vote by party members. It was thought that if Mr Johnson secured 100 votes, the membership would elect him. At 9 p.m. on Sunday, the day before nominations closed, he withdrew from the

China’s President Xi Jinping opened the CCP’s 20th party congress by doubling down on four key issues: no let up on zero-Covid; no renunciation of force when it comes to Taiwan; a promise to build up China’s military strength; and no tolerance of any opposition to his rule. As he enters his third term, the most important new challenge he has to address are the export controls announced by the US on the eve of the congress that threaten to undercut China’s ability to develop semiconductors and supercomputers. Xi remains defiant: he promised to ‘resolutely win the battle in key core technologies.’ Yet Xi must be worried that the US

It is hard to say what is more shocking, dozens of former British military pilots lured by vast salaries to work for China’s People’s Liberation Army or the fact there appears to be no law to stop it. At least 30 experienced pilots, who have flown Typhoon, Jaguar, Harrier and Tornado fighters, as well as piloting advanced helicopters used for anti-submarine warfare, have been lured to China on packages worth as much as $270,000 dollars, according to the Ministry of Defence. The information they are passing on will be especially important should there be a conflict over Taiwan, and the PLA comes face to face with western military aircraft. It

The chip war between China and America is heating up, with an increasingly assertive Joe Biden battling with Xi Jinping as he enters his third term as Chinese leader. The US last week further restricted China’s access to advanced American know-how, in what were some of the most stringent export controls for decades. Xi didn’t mention semiconductors in a speech on Sunday marking the opening of the Communist party’s twice-a-decade congress in Beijing, but he did pledge that China would ‘resolutely win the battle in key core technologies’. To compete with the US, China will need better tech. These new export controls will make Xi’s vision much harder to achieve. Joe

It was a new dawn, a new day, and a new North Korean missile test. The land of the morning calm – as South Korea is affectionately-nicknamed – awoke to the launch of the fifth North Korean ballistic missile in ten days. Over the past ten months, the international community has become accustomed to a growing number of North Korean missile launches, of an increasingly diverse range of missiles. Kim Jong-un’s determination for North Korea to become a nuclear state, and be recognised as such is only heightening. Russia and China are now more reticent than ever to side with the West and support sanctions on North Korea Last night’s

Unlike some Americans, China’s communists have no problem getting their heads around hereditary monarchy. Last week, President Xi sent his condolences to the United Kingdom. Now, he’s sending one of his most trusted deputies to pay respects at the Queen’s funeral. China has called off its wolf warriors, its diplomatic ideologues known for berating the West. Beijing is on best behaviour. Instead, the bellicose rhetoric is coming from a few British MPs, indignant that Chinese officials have been invited to the funeral. Vice-president Wang Qishan, the man tasked with representing China, is one of Xi’s most reliable lieutenants, having led the President’s flagship anti-corruption drive. But the two men go even further back,

President Xi Jinping hasn’t stepped outside his country since the pandemic began. For almost three years, China’s elderly leaders have been swaddled inside Beijing; journalists granted an audience with Xi have told me that they had to go through days of hotel quarantine before the meeting. Today Xi returns to the global stage. His first stop is Kazakhstan, a country rarely on the minds of western politicians. It goes to show how important China’s western backyard is to the country. Washington and London are attempting to pivot to the Indo-Pacific to respond to Chinese influence in the South and East China seas; what they’ve failed to focus on is Beijing’s

The German air force has taken off for its first deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. It will take part in Australia’s biennial warfare exercise Pitch Black from Friday, side by side with other western nations as well as regional partners such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea. Berlin’s show of solidarity will be welcomed by Nato allies, but it will also draw pushback from China. It’s an opportunity for Germany to show that it can make a meaningful contribution to the deterrence of Chinese aggression in the Pacific. But in order to do so convincingly it will have to resist pressure from Beijing with more confidence than it has in

This week, the world is gripped by the risk of conflict between the US and China. The People’s Liberation Army has fired live missiles into the Taiwan Strait in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei and those who fear that China vs America is the next world war see Taiwan as a flashpoint. Some analysts imagine a repeat of the Cold War: two countries, two rival political systems, vying for world economic supremacy. China’s dominance is inexorably linked to the size of its population. It has long been the world’s most populous country. A technologically advanced society, with a great army of young workers and soldiers,

In the coming hours, Nancy Pelosi is expected to arrive in Taiwan. The plane that is thought to be carrying her is approaching the island from the east to avoid the Taiwan Strait and any attempt by the Chinese to fly close to her. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, she will be the most senior US figure to visit Taipei this century. The economic effects of a Taiwan invasion would dwarf those of the Russian invasion of Ukraine Beijing is furious about Pelosi’s decision to go. It has warned that its military ‘won’t sit idly by’ if she does touch down and is planning various displays of military

The BBC carried a story this week with the headline ‘Covid origin studies say evidence points to Wuhan market’. Bizarrely the paper in Science they are referring to, by Michael Worobey and colleagues, says no such thing. It says: ‘the observation that the preponderance of early cases were linked to the Huanan market does not establish that the pandemic originated there’. All three of the scientists quoted in the BBC story have been highly dismissive about even discussing the possibility that the pandemic began as an accident in a Wuhan laboratory. Their vested interest is clear: they worry that the reputation of their field of virology would be threatened by