https://www.scmp.com/rss/16301/feed Kerry Brown is professor of Chinese Studies and director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College, London, and an associate on Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Programme. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com In the past 18 months, relations between Britain and China have taken a turn for the worse. The “golden age” heralded during President Xi Jinping’s state visit in 2015 may have been wishful thinking, but it would equally be a mistake to seek an overcorrection. While accepting that there are legitimate concerns and points of critical difference, both the UK and China should not overlook the many positives that remain in what is an important relationship for both, from economic links to climate... https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3113970/sino-british-relationship-needs-more-pragmatic-engagement-not-less?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3113970/sino-british-relationship-needs-more-pragmatic-engagement-not-less?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 15 Dec 2020 07:45:18 +0000 Who are the people in charge of the new China which is flexing its muscles almost daily across the rest of the world? Who has most power in this story of China’s renaissance, as it becomes so important even the mighty US now has to pick fights with it in order to restrain it? A simple answer would be the leadership of the Communist Party, and in particular the all-dominating figure of China’s president, Xi Jinping. Xi stands front, centre and back in the politics of the country, reducing by a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3016557/xi-not-boss-us-china-struggle-neithers-trump-heres-who?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3016557/xi-not-boss-us-china-struggle-neithers-trump-heres-who?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Jun 2019 01:15:09 +0000 The news that the UK is contemplating working with Huawei on 5G projects came in, almost inevitably, the worst possible way – through leaked reports from the National Security Council to a newspaper. They also made it clear that, as with so many other things in the UK, the decision seemed to have been made in solitude by Prime Minister Theresa May. This will probably be the basis for interesting discussions when the almost simultaneously announced state visit of US President Donald Trump takes... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3007819/huawei-leak-reflects-chinas-growing-importance-partner-post?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/3007819/huawei-leak-reflects-chinas-growing-importance-partner-post?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Apr 2019 17:00:12 +0000 You could almost hear the cheers in Shenzhen. Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre this week went against the grain of its Western spy agency counterparts by concluding the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, headquartered in Hong Kong’s neighbour to the north, posed no more than a “manageable” risk to the UK. That seemed a victory of sorts for one of China’s most prominent and global companies, which in recent weeks has seen its Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou being detained in Canada at... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2187358/uk-will-talk-huawei-china-then-back-us-always?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2187358/uk-will-talk-huawei-china-then-back-us-always?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 24 Feb 2019 23:01:55 +0000 With the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada – pending possible extradition to the US – and Beijing’s detention of several Canadians, the environment for cooperation between China and the rest of the world in academic, commercial and most other fields has become complex. Commentators are talking of a new cold war, though in some ways that era of tensions between the Soviet Union and the US was far more straightforward. There were tangible boundaries between the two, and clear lines... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2182831/resolving-chinas-phantom-conflict-west-demands-strong-sense?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2182831/resolving-chinas-phantom-conflict-west-demands-strong-sense?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Jan 2019 08:00:45 +0000 It is a common question: what does China want for itself and its future? The issue following on from this, often in the same breath, is what the country thinks of the outside world and the role it might play in achieving what it wants. Non-Chinese get particularly perplexed by the latter because it relates directly to them. Lord Macartney wrote in his memoirs that when he led the first British Mission to China in 1793, he was deeply puzzled as to what the Chinese he met thought of the outside... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2165790/china-puzzle-least-australia-knows-itself-uk-hasnt-clue?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2165790/china-puzzle-least-australia-knows-itself-uk-hasnt-clue?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 29 Sep 2018 08:03:05 +0000 For anyone joining the British Foreign Office in 1998, as I did, and having an interest in China as part of their life before they became a diplomat, working alongside veterans of the almost two decade negotiations over the handover of Hong Kong, which had happened the previous year, in 1997, was hard to avoid. The main sections dealing with China in London, the British Consulate General in Hong Kong, and most of the posts in the People’s Republic itself, right up to the most senior level, were... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2157164/hong-kong-handover-took-almost-20-years-brexits-taking-two-uk?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2157164/hong-kong-handover-took-almost-20-years-brexits-taking-two-uk?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Jul 2018 08:00:45 +0000 China’s aspirations are now truly global, reaching heights that were once the preserve of Europe and Latin America. In 2015, President Xi Jinping declared that near the time the country would be achieving its second centenary goal – 2049 – it will also be hosting, and winning, a World Cup. Slogans even appeared across the country celebrating the Xi style of winning. Despite all of this, the People’s Republic of China is missing from the 2018 Fifa World Cup in Russia in a big way: the Chinese... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2154827/be-patient-world-cup-fans-china-still-playing-long-game-host?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2154827/be-patient-world-cup-fans-china-still-playing-long-game-host?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Jul 2018 07:01:10 +0000 The European Union and the United States should, in terms of trade flows, have common cause when it comes to China. Both suffer the same plight: enormous trade deficits. In 2017, the pattern of the previous decade since China joined the World Trade Association in 2001 was repeated. Of their total trade with China – US$578 billion for the US and US$431 billion for the EU in 2016 – only a third was from exports while two-thirds were from imports, leaning in China’s favour. This concern about... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2149573/us-and-eu-square-trade-one-country-stands-benefit-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2149573/us-and-eu-square-trade-one-country-stands-benefit-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2018 02:30:15 +0000 We look to power to be visible. We seek signs and clues about it. Xi Jinping standing surveying the vast, new naval fleet in April affirmed something many in the Pacific region suspected; this is a country that means to have impact. It was a great performance. Dressed in military gear with the grand panorama of different vessels in the water around him, his statement was simple. A great power needs a strong military, the ability to project its will, the assets to enforce its desire on the world... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2148802/chinas-strength-making-west-doubt-value-doubt?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2148802/chinas-strength-making-west-doubt-value-doubt?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Jun 2018 04:30:30 +0000 Domestically, China is now pervaded in the political realm by a controlled and controlling uniformity. It seems to stretch across all spaces, from officialdom into academia, and even into people’s private space. The world is full of eyes, watching, from remote spaces, ready to record aberrations, signs of dissent, of disunity. The Xi era is about achieving great historic goals. The mission to be a strong, powerful country is within reach. And disobedience, however small, however seemingly... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142926/why-beijing-so-obsessed-order-it-fears-alternative?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2142926/why-beijing-so-obsessed-order-it-fears-alternative?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 28 Apr 2018 02:15:45 +0000 We live in discordant times marked by a strange but striking fact: despite visible signs of waning American global power and the birth of a strident global China, few people dare openly use the word empire. It is as if things cannot be called by their proper name. In China, public talk of empire (dìguó) remains rare. It is a pejorative term directed at others; the word is almost never applied to China itself. State officials and media platforms instead emphasise past victimhood (‘the century of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2137370/one-world-two-empires-china-us-conflict-inevitable?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2137370/one-world-two-empires-china-us-conflict-inevitable?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 16 Mar 2018 23:30:15 +0000 Xi Jinping’s push to repeal the term limits of the Chinese presidency – a plan to be discussed and, no doubt, approved at the National People’s Congress in Beijing in early March – is the latest development to be seized on by those who suggest China is in the grip of an emerging autocracy. Another such moment came at the 19th Party Congress last October, when the lack of a successor to Xi became clear. Bit by bit the signs seem to be adding up, supporting the idea of a Xi leadership fortified... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2134912/true-test-president-xi-will-be-when-chinas-luck-runs-out?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2134912/true-test-president-xi-will-be-when-chinas-luck-runs-out?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Mar 2018 05:15:00 +0000 Theresa May’s first visit to China as prime minister this week will no doubt have been a great experience for her – but probably for the wrong reason.  Cosseted in the splendid meeting rooms, and being ushered in and out of VIP meetings, she will at least for once have been spared the constant questions of the press which she has to deal with back in Britain.  While press conferences and some of the public events meant she still had to deal with demands about what is happening with her... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2131801/what-do-chinese-see-auntie-theresa-may-brits-dont?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2131801/what-do-chinese-see-auntie-theresa-may-brits-dont?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 02 Feb 2018 13:45:30 +0000 President Xi Jinping had two big challenges to navigate in 2017. The first was the election of US President Donald Trump, and how he would handle his new, very unorthodox counterpart. This issue was particularly important because, at least during his 2016 campaign, Trump deployed fiery language about China, extreme criticisms even by the standards of the more recent campaigns. Analysis: What President Xi Jinping’s new leadership team means for China’s economy Xi’s second was the 19th party... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2126175/politicking-over-and-team-place-2018-when-chinas-xi-has-deliver?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2126175/politicking-over-and-team-place-2018-when-chinas-xi-has-deliver?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Dec 2017 06:16:01 +0000 Perhaps it was deliberately to reassure the outside world. In the elite enclave of the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on October 18, while Xi Jinping as General Secretary was giving his epic report, his predecessor but one Jiang Zemin was gazing at his wrist watch, slumbering, sporadically yawning, and, at a couple of points, picking up a splendid white magnifying glass with inbuilt light and gazing quizzically at the speech text. Even the most uncharitable have to admit for a nonagenarian... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2117367/opinion-why-chinas-xi-might-come-regret-all-power?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2117367/opinion-why-chinas-xi-might-come-regret-all-power?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 29 Oct 2017 05:30:53 +0000 Looking at various congresses over the past nine decades, one can map a narrative of the Communist Party and its development. They form the backbone of the organisation’s story. The first, in 1921, was an epic of endurance and survival, held over nine days – the first seven in Shanghai and the last two in neighbouring Zhejiang after police disrupted proceedings. Of the 13 delegates who attended, more than half were to end up murdered, exiled or purged in the ensuing years. China’s Asia vision... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2115953/real-message-world-chinas-first-global-congress?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2115953/real-message-world-chinas-first-global-congress?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 21 Oct 2017 00:17:01 +0000 Visitors to China’s capital, Beijing, will notice it has a series of ring roads circling out from the centre, around the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen Square. The first ring road vanished long ago. The second follows the old contours of the ancient city walls felled by Mao Zedong (毛澤東) during the early years of his drive to impose Soviet inspired modernity. The third, fourth and fifth gravitate out until, deep into the suburbs, the relative peace of the sixth ring road offers at least some... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2105476/what-beijings-ring-roads-say-about-chinas-foreign-policy?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2105476/what-beijings-ring-roads-say-about-chinas-foreign-policy?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 06 Aug 2017 03:15:15 +0000 An ill wind usually blows someone somewhere some good. And so it has proven between the European Union (EU) and China. The Trump presidency may well be about to achieve what most thought even a few months ago was next to impossible – the injection of some real meaning into the notion that the EU and the People’s Republic might have something approaching a close strategic partnership. That was the term that was first used in the distant past when Wen Jiabao had just become premier of China in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2096623/china-and-eu-were-never-natural-partners-trump-has-made-them?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2096623/china-and-eu-were-never-natural-partners-trump-has-made-them?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 04 Jun 2017 08:30:15 +0000 The ancient tale of the wise men feeling different parts of an elephant and being at a loss for how best to describe it could be applied to the Belt and Road plan, China’s current signature foreign policy initiative. The novelty of having China propose something as grand and all-encompassing in the first place has itself attracted much attention. Powers like the United States and the EU have been demanding for years that an increasingly economically powerful China state its posture on its global... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2094166/what-brexit-britain-has-gain-chinas-belt-and-road?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2094166/what-brexit-britain-has-gain-chinas-belt-and-road?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 12 May 2017 13:15:45 +0000 Now that Britain has triggered the two-year, formal process of leaving the European Union (EU), what impact might this have on Britain’s relations with Asia, and in particular with China? The politicians who support Brexit wax lyrical about restoring Britain as a global economy and creating a new set of trading relations away from its dominant partner, the EU. They are however, placing hope above experience. At present, 90 per cent of British trade is with Europe and the United States. The... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2083879/opinion-dreams-chinese-riches-show-brexit-britains-living-bubble?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2083879/opinion-dreams-chinese-riches-show-brexit-britains-living-bubble?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Apr 2017 08:02:07 +0000 4.5 stars It is a sultry early autumn day in the central province of Hunan in China, half a century ago in 1967. In a small cluster of villages, remote from the main political centre in Beijing, life revolves around farming, tending animals, just making a basic living. But for a couple of weeks, from around August 20, the marketplaces, and the areas by the rivers and fields, are the scenes of a new kind of activity – the brutal slaughter by neighbours, relatives and friends of people from within... https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2062491/book-review-killing-wind-not-faint-hearted-it-charts-cultural?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2062491/book-review-killing-wind-not-faint-hearted-it-charts-cultural?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 16 Jan 2017 05:15:45 +0000 China’s leaders have been recognised as the ultimate pragmatists. In the past few decades they have been able to work across the Middle East, when most others in the region have had to choose between enemies and friends. Some have called this approach amoral, and it is certainly motivated by an intense sense of what best serves China’s interests. In recent decades, in international affairs, that has been securing resources, finding markets to sell to, acquiring and developing technology and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2060037/unpredictable-trump-challenges-chinas-self-interested-foreign?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2060037/unpredictable-trump-challenges-chinas-self-interested-foreign?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Jan 2017 03:00:30 +0000 It’s a simple question: “What do Chinese people believe?” But answering it has never been easy. Does the ringing affirmation by the ruling Communist Party at its plenum this year that the People’s Republic is on track to finally become a middle-income country in the next five years, which will be rejuvenated and powerful, finally answer this vexed question? Is this faith in the “Chinese Dream” of national destiny what, in the end, unites all Chinese people? For all the outward confidence of the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2047234/china-21st-century-confucianist-outside-confused-inside?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2047234/china-21st-century-confucianist-outside-confused-inside?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 18 Nov 2016 08:14:01 +0000 The celebration of the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war in Asia gives a moment to remember something too often forgotten, and which needs acknowledging while there are people still alive from this era: the huge contribution that Chinese armies and citizens made to the total war effort, in their epic struggle against Japanese imperial forces. The simple truth today, as historians have pointed out in recent years, is that China was an ally of the US, Britain and the Allied... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1854654/let-september-3-be-remembered-not-politics-war-heroes-who?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1854654/let-september-3-be-remembered-not-politics-war-heroes-who?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 02 Sep 2015 05:00:00 +0000 It remains one of the most famous encounters between the West and China - the celebrated visit by Lord Macartney and his delegation to the Qing Court in Beijing in 1793. Emperor Qianlong's rebuttal of trade relations with Great Britain on the grounds that China had no need for foreign goods is often offered up as an example of how out of touch the Chinese empire was then. Within half a century, the first opium war and then a century of decline, war and disintegration occurred, something used to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1840220/china-offers-excellent-trade-ideas-not-just-goods-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1840220/china-offers-excellent-trade-ideas-not-just-goods-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 16 Jul 2015 09:56:50 +0000 One issue that the founding father of Singapore, the late Lee Kuan Yew, did put on the international radar in the 1990s was that of Asian values. There was a lively debate between, in particular, he and the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, about what precisely these values were. A definition that everyone could accept and understand proved hard to find. In the end, Asian values tended to circulate around issues of respect for hard work, family and social harmony. But as Patten crisply... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1754275/can-diverse-asia-truly-forge-shared-values-and-common?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1754275/can-diverse-asia-truly-forge-shared-values-and-common?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Apr 2015 09:14:59 +0000 The news that British Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire failed, during a visit to Hong Kong, to meet Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying earlier this month was interpreted by some as a snub - a sign that both the local and Beijing governments are using whatever symbolic means they can to show the former colonial masters they no longer have much standing in their old terrain. This interpretation at least grants some political grit to the UK. It is, in spite of everything, a power still worth... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1694819/tired-british-diplomacy-has-little-offer-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1694819/tired-british-diplomacy-has-little-offer-hong-kong?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 29 Jan 2015 06:54:16 +0000 For all the controversy surrounding the opening of hundreds of Confucius Institutes across the world in the last decade, one crucial factor has been overlooked: Confucius himself. The institutes, funded partially by the Chinese government through its Hanban organisation, have been accused of operating as propaganda outfits. They have been criticised for being part of a sinister global campaign by a cash-rich Communist Party to brainwash outsiders and win the Chinese government illicit influence... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1523308/case-eliminating-confucius-chinas-confucius-institutes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1523308/case-eliminating-confucius-chinas-confucius-institutes?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 01 Jun 2014 19:30:45 +0000 With Xi Jinping dreaming of a Chinese renaissance and Ma Ying-jeou battling for final support for a landmark services trade deal with the mainland that might make or break his legacy, perhaps now is a good time to ask who in the Greater China area will be rated well in the decades ahead. Who is the best leader the region has had over the past 100 years, that can set a sort of benchmark for modern leaders to emulate? Americans undertake this sort of survey of their presidents every few years.... https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1469076/who-greatest-chinese-leader-past-century?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/article/1469076/who-greatest-chinese-leader-past-century?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 08 Apr 2014 10:15:45 +0000 The consultations on constitutional reform in Hong Kong mark a moment of major decision-making in the special administrative region. The outcomes are still very unclear, but one thing is certain: Beijing's appetite for hearing British government wisdom on this issue is weak to non-existent. This was made clear in the response to British minister Hugo Swire's piece in these pages last September. "There is no perfect model anywhere in the world," Swire wrote, "but the important thing is that the... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1419999/democracy-hong-kong-was-never-britains-concern-pre-and-post?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1419999/democracy-hong-kong-was-never-britains-concern-pre-and-post?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 03 Feb 2014 10:30:30 +0000 Bo Xilai has been tried, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. That, in the normal order of things, should be the end of the matter. Barring profound change in the political habits of the Communist Party in dealing with those once in power who are felled, Bo will spend the rest of his life silenced. Maybe in the future, the world will be rewarded with his own words smuggled out as they were for Zhao Ziyang , giving his full, final account of what happened. But his ability to directly... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1316103/after-bo-chinas-political-dysfunction-just-opaque?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1316103/after-bo-chinas-political-dysfunction-just-opaque?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 23 Sep 2013 16:00:00 +0000 The admission last week by GlaxoSmithKline, after claims of misconduct by Chinese authorities, that staff of the massive pharmaceutical company "appear to have acted outside of our processes" seems like a hasty climbdown. But it raises a deeper question, and one that companies such as GSK which are doing well and are in important sectors in China will almost certainly have to face more in the future. There are plenty of risks which lead to a foreign multinational doing poorly in a complex... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1292825/was-glaxosmithkline-doing-just-too-well-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1292825/was-glaxosmithkline-doing-just-too-well-china?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 29 Jul 2013 16:00:00 +0000 Once upon a time there was a leader of a major country who grew so tired with vested interests and self-serving elites who had their hands on the main levers of power that he decided to launch a campaign to bring them down to size. He talked of their corruption, of their being remote from the people, of their failing in their historic mandate to be the moral, just rulers of a nation being reborn and rejuvenated. He came out with powerful statements at public meetings to mobilise officials to... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1190784/can-xi-jinping-succeed-where-mao-failed?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1190784/can-xi-jinping-succeed-where-mao-failed?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:00:00 +0000 When an American president is elected or re-elected, there is a wave of speculation about who will be on his governing team. Who will he appoint to the State Department, the National Security Council and defence? This is a key way in which he offers clues to how he might exercise power and what policies he might follow. The Chinese leadership transition gives no such clues. New Communist Party boss Xi Jinping might be at the heart of the group, but exactly what say he has in the appointment of... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1132392/change-look-chinas-non-state-sector?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1132392/change-look-chinas-non-state-sector?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000 The months of speculation are mercifully over. Questions of whether there would be nine or seven are now resolved; who is in and who is out is settled. When the new Chinese Communist Party leadership walked before the world's press last week, there was a feeling of anticlimax. If Hu Jintao had wanted to create a process that ended up boring everyone into submission, it worked. In the end, a group of men with very similar backgrounds and life stories, wearing similar suits and acting in uniform... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1088387/xi-jinpings-public-relations-test?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1088387/xi-jinpings-public-relations-test?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 22 Nov 2012 16:00:00 +0000 Sometimes when you follow Chinese politics, you experience moments of deep confusion, not about the obvious things, like the opacity of the system and its continuing Byzantine qualities, even into the 21st century, but about the ways in which issues which you thought had been consigned to history make unexpected comebacks. The case of Bo Xilai and the accusations rained down on his head since the formal announcement of his expulsion from the Communist Party at the end of last month is a case in... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1055977/smaller-club-chinese-leaders-isnt-good-news-china-or-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1055977/smaller-club-chinese-leaders-isnt-good-news-china-or-world?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 07 Oct 2012 16:00:00 +0000 One of the stark truths about elite Chinese politics uncovered by the remarkable fall of former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai is that, in contemporary China, despite all the recent excitement about the power of social networks and new communication tools, public opinion is neither well known nor important. Those who have dealt with China since the late 1960s find themselves in a comfort zone when they look at how Bo has been handled compared to previous great fellings. The similarities are... https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1019375/bo-xilai-case-underlines-top-priority-chinas-political-elite?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1019375/bo-xilai-case-underlines-top-priority-chinas-political-elite?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:00:00 +0000 What links Bo Xilai and Chen Guangcheng, beyond the fact that they have both posed huge challenges to the Communist Party's powers of crisis management? The first is a mighty figure who, it seems, has been felled after allowing his ambition to reach too far. The other is a member from one of the most disadvantaged, voiceless groups in Chinese society - the rural disabled. One came from party aristocracy; the other was a self-taught lawyer who didn't even have the chance to go to university and... https://www.scmp.com/article/1001561/equal-law?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/1001561/equal-law?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 May 2012 16:00:00 +0000 If all goes according to plan, Hu Jintao will step down from his position as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party at the 18th party congress to be held later this year. It is supremely ironic that one of the most tightly controlled contemporary leaders of a major country should have his final months in charge, at least of the party, mired in scandal and rumour over the travails of a Politburo colleague, Bo Xilai . For all those who have studied, worked with and observed Hu, this sort... https://www.scmp.com/article/999464/going-script?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/999464/going-script?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:00:00 +0000 One side effect of the Dengist economic reforms that started to penetrate deeply in the 1980s was the transition from a ruling Communist Party that focused on class struggle and revolutionary aspiration under Mao Zedong , to one in which a new technocratic elite were in control. In the words of Wang Hui, one of contemporary China's foremost public intellectuals, that shift meant that the party started fulfilling a more 'evaluative' function and became the sort of 'bureaucratic machine' that... https://www.scmp.com/article/975056/next-lap?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/975056/next-lap?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 31 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000 The first tangible signs in the past few days that Kim Jong Il's third son, Kim Jong-un, is being groomed as his successor comes after many months of speculation both about the Dear Leader's health, and what will finally happen when he dies. With a position both in the military and the party, the younger Kim is now in pole position to replace his father when he retires, or dies. The fact that so little is known about just how this succession process in the world's last truly Stalinist state... https://www.scmp.com/article/728199/tougher-job?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/728199/tougher-job?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000 Speculation is going into overdrive over who will form the elite of the Communist Party in the next two years, largely provoked by a party plenum due to take place in Beijing next month. Vice-president Xi Jinping is likely to be anointed a deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission. If that happens, he is almost certain to replace Hu Jintao as party secretary in 2012. All these machinations only underline the fact that power in contemporary China is a curious thing. In the old days,... https://www.scmp.com/article/724683/perilous-journey?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/article/724683/perilous-journey?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:00:00 +0000