Trump Xi: Property man meets career communist
- 7 November 2017
- From the section China
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Reuters
Donald Trump is the kind of person who occasionally gets locked up in Xi Jinping's China. A boastful billionaire, someone who thinks he is bigger than the Party, bigger than the national project.
Such a colossus can disappear to no known location for a period of quiet reflection with the help of the Communist Party's discipline enforcers, later to reappear muttering grateful homilies on what the Party has done for his business.
As President Trump and President Xi prepare to meet in Beijing, the contrast between the leaders of the world's economic superpowers is stunning.
Where senior members of Mr Trump's own Republican Party have dismissed his White House as an "adult daycare centre" , Mr Xi's Party lieutenants describe the Chinese president as a great and wise leader, "the saviour of socialism".
Mr Trump cannot even depend on fellow US capitalists. The titans of the American tech world are not travelling to Asia with Team Trump. Instead Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. Apple's Tim Cook and Microsoft's Satya Nadella stood shoulder to shoulder in Beijing with President Xi last week for a group photograph of the advisory board for a top Chinese university.
Read full article Trump Xi: Property man meets career communist
China's Xi Jinping opens ‘New Era’ for country and the world
- 25 October 2017
- From the section China
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Getty Images
China's new leadership line-up was the last scene to play in the carefully scripted drama of the Communist Party Congress. Yet again Xi Jinping defied convention.
Halfway through one Party chief's decade in power, a leader-in-waiting would normally appear in a red carpet ceremony at the Great Hall of the People.
Read full article China's Xi Jinping opens ‘New Era’ for country and the world
Beijing's metro gives a thumbs-up to Xi Jinping's speech
- 21 October 2017
- From the section China
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Getty Images
It took Xi Jinping just under three and a half hours to deliver his all-important speech to Congress, and that is about the length of time it takes to get from one side of Beijing to the other on the subway.
It's never easy to get on at rush hour and even harder this week. Some commuters have queued for over an hour and though Beijingers are usually stoical about living in a city on lockdown for political gatherings and military parades, this week the subway actually suspended its online comment section to avoid facing users' rage.
Read full article Beijing's metro gives a thumbs-up to Xi Jinping's speech
Beijing’s balancing act over North Korea
- 12 September 2017
- From the section China
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Getty Images
Another week, another round of UN sanctions against North Korea.
With it comes another demonstration of how adept Beijing is becoming at inching back and forth along the policy tightrope it has installed between Washington and Pyongyang.
Read full article Beijing’s balancing act over North Korea
Liu Xiaobo: The man China couldn't erase
- 13 July 2017
- From the section China
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AFP
"There is nothing criminal in anything I have done but I have no complaints."
So stated Liu Xiaobo in court in 2009, and in the eight long prison years between then and now, he refused to recant his commitment to democracy. No wonder China's leaders are as afraid of him in death as they were in life.
Beijing's struggle to win Hong Kong's young hearts
- 29 June 2017
- From the section China
This week, Hong Kong marks 20 years since its return from the UK to China but Lai Chun-yin is not celebrating.
He is lying on his back on the pavement, spinning a football in the air. Between his stunt and the iconic Hong Kong harbour skyline stand a handful of mesmerised tourists.
Read full article Beijing's struggle to win Hong Kong's young hearts
Hong Kong's Carrie Lam: 'I am no puppet of Beijing'
- 21 June 2017
- From the section China
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Reuters
Carrie Lam thinks there is a place for her in heaven. "Because I do good things," she says.
She tells me this with a straight face.
Read full article Hong Kong's Carrie Lam: 'I am no puppet of Beijing'
The new Red Guards: China's angry student patriots
- 26 May 2017
- From the section Asia
Image copyright
University of Maryland
Half a century ago millions of Chairman Mao's Red Guards gathered in rallies in Tiananmen Square to chant slogans and wave their red books of his quotations in a show of loyalty to the ideas of the "Great Helmsman".
The 21st Century successors to the Red Guards are not a physical presence. After the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and the tragedy of the Beijing massacre in 1989, young people are not allowed to demonstrate in China.
Read full article The new Red Guards: China's angry student patriots
China's big push for its global trade narrative
- 12 May 2017
- From the section China
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Youtube/Chinadaily
China's President Xi Jinping intends to tell you a story.
But first he's going to try it out on the world's political leaders. Not those of the United States, Japan, India or much of the European Union. They've declined the invitation.
Read full article China's big push for its global trade narrative
Why Beijing should lead on the North Korean crisis
- 21 April 2017
- From the section China
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AFP/Getty Images
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results."
The quotation is attributed to Albert Einstein but after a torrid few days on the Korean peninsula, it's one for Chinese leaders to ponder.
Read full article Why Beijing should lead on the North Korean crisis
