Category Archives: Xi Jinping

China’s US ambassador pick shines light on debate over ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy

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Analysis: Xi Jinping wants his country to appear more lovable, but critics say Beijing’s efforts are too superficial

China’s appointment of a new ambassador to the US has shone a light on the ongoing debate among analysts about how Beijing communicates with its biggest competitor, the future of its “wolf warrior” diplomacy and how Xi Jinping’s call to “tell a good China story” might work in practice.

The debate over the “wolf warrior” style – under which, as the Chinese ambassador to Sweden said on Swedish public radio in 2019, “we treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we have shotguns” – comes amid a burst of positive publicity that delighted Beijing’s propaganda officials: the foreign coverage of the herd of 15 wandering Asian elephants in southern China that captured the country’s imagination and led Chinese vloggers to travel hundreds of miles to take selfies with them.

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Biden races to unite allies against China knowing sooner or later an explosion will occur

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US president is being much tougher than expected on Beijing, but a lack of solidarity will undermine his policy’s success

It’s generally accepted in Washington that once-buoyant hopes for the emergence of a free, democratic China, initially sparked by Richard Nixon’s groundbreaking 1972 visit, have sunk without trace. President Xi Jinping’s regime is now described as a “systemic rival”, “strategic competitor” or outright “threat”. The EU, Nato, the UK, and regional allies broadly agree: the era of engagement is over.

What’s lacking is agreement over what comes next. The hole where common policy and joint action should be gapes ever more dangerously amid almost daily collisions on multiple fronts with Xi’s aggressive, authoritarian one-party state. If it’s not about human rights abuses, cyberhacking, or trade, it’s Taiwan, visas, spying, maritime disputes, the Indian border, or alleged hostage-taking.

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Chinese leader Xi Jinping makes first visit to Tibet as president

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Visit comes as China tightens control over region’s Buddhist culture and invests heavily in infrastructure

The Chinese leader has made his first visit to Tibet as president as authorities tighten controls over the Himalayan region’s traditional Buddhist culture, accompanied by an accelerated drive for economic development and modernised infrastructure.

State media reported on Friday that Xi Jinping had visited sites in the capital, Lhasa, including the Drepung monastery, Barkhor Street and the public square at the base of the Potala Palace that was home to the Dalai Lamas, Tibet’s traditional spiritual and temporal leaders.

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Reasons to be fearful of China’s data-gathering | Letters

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We should be suspicious of the role of the Chinese Communist party in the harvesting of genetic data from unborn babies, argues William Matthews

In her column (What does the Chinese military want with your unborn baby’s genetic data?, 10 July), Arwa Mahdawi suggested that the alleged involvement of the People’s Liberation Army (which is directly answerable to the Chinese Communist party) with BGI’s data-gathering (likewise answerable as a China-based company) is essentially equivalent to data-gathering by western companies. To suggest that the former case is worse, she argued, “smacks of Sinophobia”.

As a scholar of China, I cannot agree. While the harvesting of genetic data by any company is frightening and fraught with ethical issues, it should be obvious that this is a false equivalence. It is undoubtedly worse if genetic data is gathered by a company which must also comply with the rule of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and its military-industrial complex, a regime which harvests and aggregates data on its citizens on a massive scale and uses it directly to implement the most repressive system of social control on earth in Xinjiang.

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No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world

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China’s video game market is the world’s biggest. International developers want in on it – but its rules on what is acceptable are growing increasingly harsh. Is it worth the compromise?

In the years after it was founded in 1999, the Swedish video game company Paradox Interactive quietly built a reputation for developing some of the best, and most hardcore, strategy games on the market. “Deep, endless, complex, unyielding games,” is how Shams Jorjani, the company’s chief business development officer, describes Paradox’s offerings. Most of its biggest hits, such as the middle ages-themed Crusader Kings, or Sengoku, in which you play as a 16th-century Japanese noble, were loosely based on history.

But in 2016, Paradox decided to try something a little different. Its new game, Stellaris, was a work of sprawling science fiction, set 200 years in the future. In this virtual universe, players could explore richly detailed galaxies, command their own fusion-powered starship fleets and fight with extraterrestrials to expand their space empires. Gamers could choose to play as the human race, or one of many alien species. (My personal favourite dresses in a lavish golden cape and has a head like an otter’s, with soft reddish-brown fur, dark eyes and a black snout. Another type of alien is a sentient crystal that eats rocks.)

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Chinese president Xi says China won’t be ‘bullied’ by foreigners during anniversary speech – video

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Chinese president Xi Jinping has warned 'foreign forces' who attempt to bully China will ‘get their heads bashed’. In an hour-long televised address from Tiananmen Square marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, Xi pledged to build up China's military, committed to the ‘reunification’ of Taiwan with China and stressed the autonomy held by Hong Kong and Macau. Beijing faces external criticism over its clampdown in Hong Kong and treatment of ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Xi said that anyone who tries to 'bully, subjugate or enslave' the people of China 'will have their heads bashed bloody against the Great Wall of Steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.'

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Chinese Communist Party 100th anniversary: Xi Jinping delivers key speech – live updates

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Tight security in Tiananmen Square as country marks CCP centenary and China’s president delivers ‘important’ address

He is pledging to “root out any elements who would harm the party’s purity... or viruses which would erode its health”.

Now to Hong Kong and Macau, which he says both retain a “high degree of autonomy”.

Some images from the scene at Tiananmen Square:

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China blasts Japanese minister’s ‘sinister’ remarks about Taiwan

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Beijing lodges diplomatic protest with Japan after defence minister calls island a ‘democratic country’

China and Japan are once again embroiled in a diplomatic row over Taiwan, in the latest example of Beijing’s extreme sensitivity over the status of the self-ruled island and Tokyo’s changing attitude towards Beijing.

Speaking to the US conservative thinktank Hudson Institute on Monday, Japan’s state minister of defence, Yasuhide Nakayama, spoke of a growing threat posed by Chinese and Russian collaboration, and said it was necessary to “wake up” to Beijing’s pressure on Taiwan and protect the island “as a democratic country”.

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The Chinese Communist party: 100 years that shook the world

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As China marks the centenary of its ruling party, we examine key episodes in its tempestuous history, including the Long March, Mao’s purges and Xi Jinping’s rise to the top of an emerging superpower

Anyone visiting First Meeting Hall in Shanghai, the museum recreating the site of the first conclave of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) in 1921, will also find themselves in one of the city’s fanciest districts.

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G7 leaders seek right balance in dealing with their China dilemma

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Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?

• G7 summit: latest news and reaction

In an extra-secure, 90-minute session, with the phones and wifi cut off, all designed to block any eavesdropping by a prying foreign state, leaders of the G7, with glorious St Ives sunshine outside, wrestled with an issue that will probably dominate the rest of their political lives – China and the right balance between extreme competition and necessary cooperative coexistence.

Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy director, describes the dilemma as presenting “complex coexistence paradigms”, something of which he says the US has had little previous experience.

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China Communist party ‘striving for people’s happiness’, says Xi Jinping, in call for charm offensive

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China must tell the world a better story about itself, says president, as he seeks stronger ‘international voice’

China needs to improve the way it tells the world stories about itself, and convince people the ruling party is striving for the happiness of all Chinese people, Xi Jinping has said.

The Chinese president’s comments to a Communist party meeting on Tuesday come amid the country’s growing isolation in the global community, and tension with international media, largely driven by international concerns over human rights abuses.

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EU ‘suspends’ ratification of China investment deal after sanctions

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Massive trade agreement stalls after tit-for-tat sanctions prompted by Chinese policy in Xinjiang

The European Commission has said that efforts to ratify a massive investment deal with China have been in effect suspended after tit-for-tat sanctions were imposed over China’s treatment of its Uyghur population in March.

“We now in a sense have suspended … political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” said the commission’s executive vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis, on Tuesday. He said that the current state of relations between Brussels and Beijing was “not conducive” for the ratification of the deal, which is known as EU-China comprehensive agreement on investment.

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Biden and Xi talk of a clash of civilisations. But the real shared goal is dominance | Richard McGregor

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The US president has challenged the idea that the ‘east is rising, the west declining’. Instead, he insists that America’s day is far from done

Finally, we have arrived, not at a clash of civilisations, but at the clash of civilisations. Or so President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress would have you believe. The US versus China. The west versus the east. Democracy versus autocracy. Biden’s speech last week was rich in laying down markers for Washington in the contest of the century.

“They’re going to write about this point in history,” Biden told a gathering of US television news anchors before his speech, in remarks later released by the White House. “Not about any of us in here, but about whether or not democracy can function in the 21st century.”

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Biden’s pledge to slash US emissions turns spotlight on China

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World leaders will be unable to halt climate breakdown without strong action from biggest emitter

The US, the world’s second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is now committed to halving emissions this decade.

Joe Biden’s announcement, at a White House virtual climate summit, has thrown the spotlight clearly on the world’s biggest emitter: China.

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China’s Xi Jinping to attend Joe Biden’s climate summit

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Virtual summit on Thursday will be the first meeting between the two leaders since Biden took office

China’s President Xi Jinping will attend a US-led climate change summit on Thursday at the invitation of President Joe Biden, in the first meeting between the two leaders since the advent of the new US administration.

Biden has invited dozens of world leaders to join the two-day virtual summit starting on Thursday, after bringing the US back into the 2015 Paris agreement on cutting global carbon emissions.

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Will a chilly meeting in Anchorage set the tone for US-Chinese relations? | Emma Graham-Harrison

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Openings of summits are often dull affairs, but the tense exchanges in Alaska hint at turbulent times ahead

In a protracted, unplanned public spat in Anchorage late on Thursday, China and America’s top diplomats traded barbs for over an hour in front of astonished journalists.

The openings to diplomatic summits are usually dull and carefully choreographed, a showcase for the world’s cameras before the doors close and the real talks begin.

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China’s five-year plan could push emissions higher unless action is taken

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Target is in line with previous trends and could mean greenhouse gas emissions continuing to rise

China has set out an economic blueprint for the next five years that could lead to a strong rise in greenhouse gas emissions if further action is not taken to meet the country’s long-term goals.

The 14th five-year plan, published in Beijing on Friday, gave few details on how the world’s biggest emitter would meet its target of reaching net zero emissions by 2060, set out by President Xi Jinping last year, and of ensuring that carbon dioxide output peaks before 2030.

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Smile for the camera: dark side of China’s emotion-recognition tech

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Xi Jinping wants ‘positive energy’ but critics say the surveillance tools’ racial bias and monitoring for anger or sadness should be banned

“Ordinary people here in China aren’t happy about this technology but they have no choice. If the police say there have to be cameras in a community, people will just have to live with it. There’s always that demand and we’re here to fulfil it.”

So says Chen Wei at Taigusys, a company specialising in emotion recognition technology, the latest evolution in the broader world of surveillance systems that play a part in nearly every aspect of Chinese society.

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Australia should resist the march of autocracy, but there will be consequences | Jonathan Pearlman

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The old world order is ending. The challenge for Australia is that the driving force behind the change is China, a country so crucial to our future in Asia

In June 1987, a group of world leaders met in Venice to plan global economic policy for the 21st century. The leaders represented seven of the eight wealthiest countries in the world; the Soviet Union was excluded.

Addressing the summit, US president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an example of “how not to run a country”. But he was less hostile towards China, which was then the world’s ninth-largest economy, just ahead of Spain.

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Yak politics: Tibetans’ vegetarian dilemma amid China meat boom

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While China pushes for more industrialised farms, Buddhist monks urge now-sedentary nomads to embrace vegetarianism

Former free-roaming nomads now mostly resettled in rows of sun-baked block houses in Tibet are facing a struggle for their identity, their spiritual and cultural practices – and even their stomachs.

These yak-tending herders have always eaten meat. In addition to the milk, butter and cheese they derived from yaks, meat was a necessity in their harsh lives.

But a movement spurred by Tibetan Buddhist monks in the region over the past two decades has increasingly urged now sedentary nomads to practise vegetarianism, to pay a “life ransom” for the release of animals destined for the slaughterhouse, and to abandon the slaughter of their own animals because they have settled down.

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