As Russia flirts with recession, its international standing permanently marred by images of the Bucha butchery, there will be no shortage of embarrassment in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping miscalculated drastically by declaring a “no limits” partnership with Moscow in February, only three weeks before the invasion of Ukraine. China’s international reputation has been worsening […]
Why the lab leak theory refuses to die
Conspiracy theory isn’t what it used to be. The term has taken on a pejorative quality of late, and those who subscribe are increasingly viewed as dangerous lunatics. It was once the case that a person who believed in shadowy government cover-ups was considered eccentric but harmless. Celebrity adherents were smilingly indulged. In 2003 the […]
Secrets and lies at the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Nine miles from the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, a cluster of nondescript buildings sits at the forested edge of the city. This is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and it houses China’s only biosafety level 4 lab studying human infectious diseases. Since the beginning of the year a conspiracy theory has been quietly simmering […]
Dealing with the Devil: debt traps on the Belt and Road
The coronavirus crisis has frozen construction projects all along the Belt and Road, the century’s most ambitious geopolitical venture. Researcher Wade Shepard reports that “work has stopped along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Cambodia’s Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone has come to a standstill, the Payra coal power plant in Bangladesh has been delayed, and projects across Indonesia, Malaysia, […]
Is Hong Kong heading for civil war?
When Chief Executive Carrie Lam addressed the Hong Kong press on August 13, she chose an alarming turn of phrase. “Look at our city and our home,” she said, apparently fighting back tears. “Could we bear to push it into an abyss where everything will perish?” As a puppet of the regime in Beijing, Lam […]
The long shadow of Tiananmen Square
14-minute read Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. On this day in 1989 martial law troops fired on student protesters and random bystanders outside the Square at the heart of Beijing, killing an as-yet-unconfirmed number – perhaps as high as ten thousand.i The number of the dead counts as one […]
China’s ticking timebomb
11-minute read On 13 March 2015 Mihrigul Tursun arrived at an Egyptian airport with her eight-week-old triplets. She boarded a plane to China, hardly imagining that she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Mihrigul had planned to visit the children’s grandparents in the western province of Xinjiang, but when she arrived […]