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Ian Williams

Ian Williams

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Keir Starmer has been too soft on China

17.12.2024 9

The Spectator

Ian Williams

China is getting ready to take on Trump

15.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Assad’s fall is also a blow to Beijing

10.12.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

The corruption scandal gripping Xi Jinping’s army

In an effort to create a cutting edge force, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) has spent billions of dollars expanding and modernising its armed...

30.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

The paper mills helping China commit scientific fraud

Few people embody the ideal of scientific excellence as much as Albert Einstein. Each year a Berlin-based foundation bearing his name hands out awards...

23.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Keir Starmer’s desperate cosying up to Beijing

Keir Starmer has met President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, telling the Chinese leader that he wants to build ‘consistent,...

18.11.2024 9

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why did China censor reports of a deadly hit-and-run?

In many respects, the Chinese Communist party’s (CCP) response to one of the deadliest mass killings in recent Chinese history is drearily familiar....

13.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Will Trump and Musk fall out over China?

Xi Jinping was quick with his congratulations, urging Donald Trump to ‘forge the right path for China and the United States to get along in the new...

10.11.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why the Great Firewall of China is waging war on Halloween

The Chinese Communist party (CCP) is spooked by Halloween. In Shanghai, police have rounded up people gathering in costumes that included a Donald...

31.10.2024 7

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why billionaires are fleeing China

‘To get rich is glorious’ is perhaps the most over-used slogan attributed to Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who reformed China and opened its...

30.10.2024 20

The Spectator

Ian Williams

How cozy is Tim Walz with China?

The term ‘old friend of the Chinese people’ has a sentimental, almost innocent ring, but the Chinese Communist party (CCP) regards it as a job...

26.10.2024 9

The Spectator

Ian Williams

While Xi reigns, China’s economy is unreformable

It was presented as a bold stimulus to boost China’s ailing economy – but while it excited stock markets in Asia, Western economists were...

25.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Own goal / Why can’t China play football?

It would be tough for any country to lose 7-0 in a World Cup qualifier, but when the losing team is China, and the thrashing is at the hands of...

19.09.2024 8

The Spectator

Ian Williams

What’s behind China’s overseas policing drive?

So China wants to make the world more ‘safe, reasonable and efficient’ by training thousands of police officers from across the globe to ‘help...

15.09.2024 20

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Are Hong Kong trade offices just Chinese propaganda machines?

China has reacted with anger at American threats to close Hong Kong’s trade offices in the United States, pledging to ‘take practical and...

14.09.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Xi speech warrior: Elon Musk’s love affair with China

Elon Musk revels in the role of ‘free speech absolutist’. Last week, for instance, he jumped to the defence of Pavel Durov, the head of the...

05.09.2024 8

The Spectator

Ian Williams

The cracks are appearing in Putin’s relationship with China

Relations between China and Russia are going from strength to strength – or so they say. In reality, the strain is beginning to show. ‘Against the...

22.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Labour are bowing to China’s influence

The new Labour government is supposedly committed to ‘defend[ing] our sovereignty and our democratic values’, as its manifesto put it, but it...

20.08.2024 6

The Spectator

Ian Williams

The controversial truth about China’s new gas field

The news was seemingly big but the announcement curiously low key. Earlier this month, China declared that it had discovered what it described as the...

17.08.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why Xi is anxious about Biden stepping down

The Chinese Communist party is rarely shy about highlighting America’s chaotic politics. State media and the CCP’s growing army of bots...

24.07.2024 7

The Spectator

Ian Williams

China’s Arctic ambitions should trouble the West

Four Chinese warships were spotted off the coast of Alaska last weekend. According to the US coast guard, the ships were in the Bering Sea around 124...

21.07.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan remains unlikely

For a second day, yesterday, Chinese fighter jets and warships surrounded Taiwan for drills which the People’s Liberation Army said were designed to...

25.05.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Putin and Xi’s anti-West alliance is strengthening

The visit by Russian president Vladimir Putin to the north-eastern Chinese city of Harbin today was no doubt designed as a symbol of the tightening...

17.05.2024 70

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Chinese society is rapidly militarising

The reports in China’s state media speak about ‘advancing national defence education in the new era’, teaching students to be ‘disciplined’,...

12.05.2024 50

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why is the UK not blaming China for the MoD hack?

The personal details of members of the UK’s armed forces appear to have been the latest target of China’s prolific cyber spies, with the Ministry...

08.05.2024 30

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why was Blinken’s China visit so underwhelming?

It had been billed as an electrifying encounter – the US Secretary of State preparing to confront Beijing with a catalogue of global misdemeanours,...

27.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why the EU is raiding Chinese companies

The target of Wednesday’s dawn raid has been on the radar of western security services for some time. There has been growing concern that Nuctech,...

25.04.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

David Cameron’s China links are too much baggage

In the years following his resignation as prime minister, David Cameron appeared to become the poster child for elite capture by the Chinese...

24.04.2024 9

The Spectator

Ian Williams

The rusting Philippine ship raising US-China tensions

The rusting and disintegrating hulk of a former Second World War landing ship has become an unlikely but dangerous flashpoint in US-China...

14.04.2024 50

The Spectator

Ian Williams

US businesses are falling out of love with Xi’s Chinese dream

A US diplomat in Beijing once told me a story of an American businessman hospitalised in the city of Ningbo after being hit at the airport by an...

28.03.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Hungary has become China’s useful idiot

This week a security deal was announced that could see Chinese police on the streets of Hungary. Despite this, there was remarkably little fanfare...

22.02.2024 30

The Spectator

Ian Williams

China calls the shots in its alliance with Russia

There has been a strange atmosphere at recent top level meetings between ‘best friends’ China and Russia. It is not so much the elephant in the...

15.01.2024 9

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Taiwan’s voters defy Beijing

Taiwan’s voters have defied Beijing’s threats and intimidation and elected as president the most independence-minded of the candidates for the...

13.01.2024 20

The Spectator

Ian Williams

Why has Xi Jinping purged his senior commanders?

The Chinese Communist party will no doubt throw a militarised tantrum should Saturday’s election in Taiwan be won by Lai Ching-te, the more...

09.01.2024 10

The Spectator

Ian Williams

How to make your life greener in 2024

People all around the world traditionally use their new year to embark on a change in lifestyle. The People’s Climate Vote, a UN survey of public...

27.12.2023 10

The Conversation

Ian Williams

‘This is a massacre of thoughts’: the exiled Chinese artist Ai Weiwei on his cancellation

19.12.2023 30

The Spectator

Ian Williams

The weaponised adorability of China’s giant pandas

So Yang Guang and Tian Tian are on their way back to China. Rather like a pair of high-profile celebrities, the giant pandas travelled in convoy to...

04.12.2023 7

The Spectator

Ian Williams

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