Advertisement When the Kuomintang-led Nationalist Army lost the Chinese Civil War and fled to Taiwan, millions of soldiers who had been forcefully drafted found themselves forced to accept a new home. These soldiers and their descendants have lived on the island ever since. The century-old KMT continues to rely on this population as the backbone of its support, even as the cohort ages. As a result, only 3 percent of KMT party members are below the age of 40, making it the oldest political part in Asia in two senses.…
Month: April 2022
China’s Covid Lockdowns Stir Memories of a Planned Economy
Yang Wenhui should be a proud example of China’s rise from economic rubble to global powerhouse. Growing up poor, he ate so much cabbage that he didn’t touch it again for many years. He worked as a farmer and a construction worker before joining the country’s nascent logistics industry. In 2003, he started his own freight logistics company, striking gold as online shopping took off in the 2010s and products moved swiftly between provinces. Then the Omicron variant started spreading in China. In the government’s zealous pursuit of its “zero…
Covid lockdown fears spark panic buying in Beijing as largest district begins mass testing
Beijingers were flooding supermarkets to stock up on food on Monday, hoping to avoid Shanghai-style shortages in the case of a city-wide lockdown as the capital records a growing number of Covid infections. Authorities in Beijing have ordered 3.5 million residents and workers in the biggest district of Chaoyang to report for three coronavirus tests this week, after the area recorded 26 of Beijing’s 47 symptomatic cases since Friday. On Monday, China reported 3,266 symptomatic cases and 20,454 asymptomatic cases. The majority were in Shanghai, where 19,455 were reported. Beijing…
The Guardian view on Ukraine and Taiwan: looking for lessons | Editorial
Five thousand miles away from Ukraine, Russia’s invasion is bringing long-term questions into close and urgent focus. Concerns about Taiwan’s future have been mounting for years; in January, Beijing’s ambassador to the US said the issue could bring China and America into military conflict. China’s Communist party has regarded the self-ruled democracy as a renegade province since Chiang Kai-shek’s defeated forces fled there at the end of the civil war in 1949; Taiwan has never declared independence for fear of the reaction, but says it is already a sovereign state.…
Beijing braces for rise in Covid cases amid outcry over Shanghai blockade
Authorities in Beijing are on high alert for an upsurge in coronavirus cases amid a fresh outcry in Shanghai over buildings blockaded under China’s zero Covid policy. The number of new cases in the capital rose by 22 on Sunday – all locally transmitted – compared with six the day before, according to official reports. Beijing authorities have so far not taken steps to lock down the capital, but they have ordered a number of gyms and after-school activity providers to suspend in-person classes. Health official Pang Xinghuo said preliminary…
It will neither rattle Putin nor change our obligations in the war.
Just over a week ago, Joe Biden acted like Joe Biden and called the Russian campaign in Ukraine a “genocide” — leaping ahead of our major allies, our State Department and the available facts. The comment prompted head-shaking from people nervous about American escalation and praise from people seeking it (notably, the president of Ukraine). I am generally on the side of the nervous people: In a conflict with a nuclear power there is always an interest in reducing the existential stakes, and accusations of genocide should be made only…
It’s Not Just High Oil Prices. It’s a Full-Blown Energy Crisis.
Look to the Mediterranean, for an example. Europe’s decoupling from Russia will intensify the geopolitical tensions over gas around the sea. In the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey resents its exclusion from energy projects and has been increasingly confrontational in asserting its interests. When Turkey struck a deal with Libya in November 2019 to claim new maritime economic boundaries for itself in the eastern Mediterranean, European Union leaders denounced the agreement as a violation of Greek and Cypriot sovereignty and incompatible with United Nations law. Now the route for a pipeline to…
The world’s engines are spluttering: IMF points to deeper problems beyond 2022
The International Monetary Fund’s revised World Economic Outlook is sobering. It is rare for the organisation to revise down sharply its projections for economic growth only one quarter into the calendar year. Yet in this case, it has done so for 86% of its 190 member countries, resulting in a decline of almost one percentage point in global growth for 2022 – from 4.4% to 3.6%. Moreover, this forecast is accompanied by a significant increase in projected inflation, and all this bad news is packaged in a wrapping of deeper…
Fast, precise, too tough? Lockdowns risk stalling China’s economy
Veteran lorry driver Meng Hong has become an unlikely social media star in recent weeks. Since March, his short video talks about life on the road during Covid outbreaks on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, have won him millions of likes. Most of Meng’s videos had been about “spreading positive energy” as he wrote in his account description. But on 13 April, he began to complain about what happened when drivers transported goods to Shanghai. “After we have delivered food, we were quarantined [after we left] or locked down…
Could the West punish China the way it has punished Russia?
Apr 23rd 2022 HONG KONG “WOULD THE US really dare to freeze or confiscate China’s reserve assets?” asked Wang Yongli, a former director of Bank of China, in an article last month. Good question. After Russia invaded Ukraine, America and its allies imposed crippling sanctions on Russia’s central bank, removing from its reach about half of its foreign-exchange reserves. They also cut off some of Russia’s biggest banks from the Western financial system and banned many high-tech exports to the country. If China were to do something geopolitically rash, such…