Tag: china

International

Would Jimmy Lai Have Been Any Better Off In Britain?

BY NOAH KHOGALI Justice doesn’t always die in front of a firing squad. For Jimmy Lai, a 78-year-old British citizen, the Chinese Communist Party simply sent over a certificate that ensures he will likely die alone in a prison cell. Before the trial even began, the state issued a “certificate” under the National Security Law. In one letter, it abolished the jury and replaced twelve … Continue reading Would Jimmy Lai Have Been Any Better Off In Britain?

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Geopolitics

BRICS: The Delusion Bloc

BY RAKESH PATEL The grand illusion of BRICS – that Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa could stand together as equals, forging a new world order beyond the grasp of Western hegemony – was always more wishful thinking than sober reality. From the beginning, the alliance was a patchwork of competing interests, bound not by shared ideals but by a mutual, if temporary, resentment … Continue reading BRICS: The Delusion Bloc

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Thoughts

People Deserve the Leaders They Get?

BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The argument that people deserve the leaders they get is a seductive one. I heard it expressed in a Janners pub this week. It is simple, clean, and fits neatly into the moral framework we like to impose on the world. Bad people get bad leaders. Good people get good ones. But the world is hardly so tidy. It is messy, complicated, … Continue reading People Deserve the Leaders They Get?

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International

How Successful Would a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Be?

BY PETER HARRIS It is a truism within military history that the outcomes of conflicts have been decisively affected, among other factors, by the terrain and climate in which the conflict occurred. Two of the reasons Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union survived Napoleon and Hitler’s offensives respectively is because of the enormous size of Russian and Soviet territory which was impossible to subdue and … Continue reading How Successful Would a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Be?

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Immigration

Attached to Self-Destruction

BY ALEX STORY Man is often more attached to his worldviews than to the world. Few examples illustrate this better than the leadership of the Communist Party in China. Indeed, the leaders of the Middle Kingdom implemented its one child policy in 1979 in part because the system they themselves created could not cope with population growth. By the time Mao died in 1976, 30 … Continue reading Attached to Self-Destruction

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International Relations

Can Sino-Russian Cooperation Last? Part II

BY PETER HARRIS Part I can be read here. Russia regards the five former Soviet Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan as part of its sphere of influence. So far, Russia has tolerated and benefited from Chinese initiatives in the region such as the aforementioned Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road Initiative. However, China’s moves within the region are … Continue reading Can Sino-Russian Cooperation Last? Part II

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China

Cultural Cringe

BY ROGER WATSON “I just love Chinese culture.” I hear this often from people whose encounter with Chinese culture is limited to a weekly visit to the Yangtze River Chinese restaurant in town or having watched some ‘limited hangout’ documentaries by Michael Palin or Niall Ferguson on the BBC. My inevitable response is, “which aspects of Chinese culture do you like?” and offer them a … Continue reading Cultural Cringe

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Travel

Welcome Back to Taiwan

BY ROGER WATSON “Welcome back to Taiwan…” “…do you still have diarrhoea?” Few, if any people arriving in the landside of customs at Chiang Kai-Shek airport near Taipei in Taiwan will have been greeted like this. The young student sent to welcome me, demonstrating typical Chinese directness and insensitivity, was referring to my previous visit when I arrived from Hong Kong following the worst bout … Continue reading Welcome Back to Taiwan

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International

Mother Russia Calls in Vain

BY EFFIE DEANS Everybody including me got everything wrong about the war in Ukraine. The Germans and the French thought it wasn’t going to happen right up until the moment that it did. The British and the Americans thought that the Ukrainians would be defeated within a week or so. The fear was that the Russians would then threaten Lithuania and Poland and that NATO … Continue reading Mother Russia Calls in Vain

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Education, Opinion

The Imperialism of Anti-Imperialists

BY IAN MITCHELL The controversy over the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oriel College, Oxford, suggests that the modern world is opposed to imperialism. I believe the opposite is the case. It shows that Oxford dons are at least as imperialistic as Rhodes ever was, though in a more sly and dishonest way. In fact, the most dangerous imperialism that has descended on the civilised … Continue reading The Imperialism of Anti-Imperialists

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International

China’s Consumerist Virus

BY BERNADETTE SPOFFORTH Guest Writer Bernadette Spofforth on the West’s China dependencies China’s exploitation of consumerism is a virus, but we created it. I have many experiences of business in China, over 25 years in fact, from dealing with small family factories to multibillion-dollar factories; good ones, who at least attempt to follow ethical working practices, to ones that hide child workers before inspections. They … Continue reading China’s Consumerist Virus

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International, security

BIOT is Key

BY DANIEL KAWCZYNSKI MP As Britain prepares to step out of the European Union, our Overseas Territories will play a hugely important role in re-establishing ‘Global Britain’. Nowhere is this contribution more obvious than in the realm of defence. Last year, I joined two fellow MPs on the first-ever official parliamentary visit to the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). On that trip, I saw first-hand … Continue reading BIOT is Key

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coronavirus, Social Commentary

Snitchers’ Paradise

BY TARQUIN SUTHERLAND There has been much in the news of late to perturb the deeper thinker – regardless of so-called ‘conspiracy theories’. It does not really matter what one might think of David Icke, but his recent banning from social media platforms should worry all and any that consider the notion of Freedom of Speech an inalienable right. It appears that we are staggering … Continue reading Snitchers’ Paradise

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editorial

Zero Sum

CSM EDITORIAL The gossip spreading around the internet about China since the Coronavirus outbreak hitting the West should be enough to make the Chinese Communist Party take stock. Some of the chatter associated with the virus has been nonsense – on a par with the 5G rubbish emanating from Ickeians and Gab wingnuts. Increasingly China is seen to have hatched the virus in a lab … Continue reading Zero Sum

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coronavirus

Lies Now Costing Lives

BY EFFIE DEANS It is clear now that Covid 19 originated in Wuhan China sometime in November or early December 2019. It might have been stopped if the Chinese Government had taken the necessary steps early enough. Instead they tried to prevent Chinese doctors from telling the truth about the illness and repeatedly lied to the rest of the world about its nature, the danger … Continue reading Lies Now Costing Lives

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Social Commentary

Kung Flu

BY FRANK HAVILAND It was once a feature of adulthood that we labelled things correctly, something even the millennials’ Bible (Harry Potter) acknowledges: ‘Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself’. The Wuhan Virus however, has shown how staunchly opposed to facts our societies have become. On February 11th, the World Health Organisation declared it had … Continue reading Kung Flu

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Interviews

Interview from Coronavirus China

The Editor of Country Squire Magazine interviews a German business colleague, Jürgen, who is stuck in his apartment in Shenzen in mainland China. While Jürgen is allowed out, he lives in fear of high-handed Chinese police officers and someone in his building getting Coronavirus. Jürgen is a made-up name – there have been police crackdowns on those in China telling the truth about the situation … Continue reading Interview from Coronavirus China

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