Category: The Economist

It is not every day that someone from Xi Jinping’s inner circle drops a reference to Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong’s chief diplomat. Yet Zhou’s dapper ghost hung over a recent speech given in Havana to developing-world leaders by Li Xi, boss of the feared Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Indeed, the whole speech was filled with nods to the past. Mr Li recalled mid-20th-century struggles for “national independence and liberation”. He mentioned the “Bandung Spirit” and “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”. That refers to the Bandung Conference of 1955, at…

A sea-cucumber farm is not an obvious target for spies. So when a group of foreigners turned up at one in north-east China last year, the owner, Mr Zhang, did not think much of it. According to state media, the guests received permission to install seawater-quality monitors. After they left, Mr Zhang noticed that the equipment was not working properly. It also had a mysterious, beeping antenna attached to it. So he called the authorities. They said it was transmitting strategic data on China’s oceans to “hostile powers”. The foreigners…

PU’ER TEA is an earthy brew beloved of dieters for its digestive qualities. Its leaves come from the forests of Jingmai mountain in south-west China, which was listed as a World Heritage site by UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, on September 17th. The designation, China hopes, will boost tea sales and lure tourists to the region, which is near the border with Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. Chinese officials work hard to obtain the UNESCO stamp of approval. Only Italy has more such sites. No country comes close…

An ability to groom talented officials, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, once said, “largely determines the rise and fall, as well as the survival or demise” of political parties and countries. After a sweeping reshuffle of ministerial posts in March, the government’s main news agency, Xinhua, recalled Mr Xi’s words in an article aimed at showing how meticulous the selection process had been. Since late June, however, two of the most senior officials who were promoted in that shake-up have disappeared: first Qin Gang, the former foreign minister, and more recently…

MAO ZEDONG used to say that political power grows from the barrel of a gun. In other words, controlling the armed forces is key to any leader’s success. Xi Jinping, China’s current supremo (and a keen student of Mao), appears to believe the same, having built his authority to a large extent on his sweeping overhaul of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the past decade. Yet just as those changes were supposed to be bearing fruit, a broadening purge of the PLA’s top ranks is calling into question its…

THE STREET signs in Inner Mongolia, a region in northern China, are written in two languages. There are the blocky characters of Mandarin, the mother tongue of most Chinese. Then there is the vertically-written script of Mongolian, which is spoken by many people in the region. The language is not just seen on signs; it is heard in cafés and used in classrooms (such as the one pictured). More Mongols live in Inner Mongolia than in Mongolia, the country next door. But the Mongolian language is dying in China, say…

It looked like a spontaneous tribute to Russia. Standing in the bombed-out shell of a theatre in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, a Chinese opera singer, Wang Fang, belted out a Soviet-era ballad (pictured). In March last year many Ukrainian civilians were killed in a Russian attack on the building. So when a video of the 38-year-old’s performance this month circulated online, it sparked a furore. Unlike their government, some Chinese people prefer to side with Ukraine. To be sure, there are many Chinese who back Russia. News of the…

For almost two months the authorities have been cracking down on the blatant corruption that has long plagued China’s health-care system. The Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, its fearsome graft-busting arm, is among a swathe of agencies leading the charge. Heralding the campaign in late July, officials said it would last a full year. State media have called it “a storm” and an unprecedented exercise in “shock and awe”. The 21st Century Business Herald, a newspaper, said that graft-busters were “speeding into the deepwater zone”. Within days of…

Listen to this story.Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android. Your browser does not support the <audio> element. UNDER XI JINPING, the Communist Party is building the most ambitious police state in China’s history, with the legal powers and surveillance tools to bring order and ideological conformity to every corner of daily life. Special attention is being paid to grassroots law enforcement, notably via China’s system of administrative punishments: a vast array of sanctions, including physical detention, that may be imposed by police without a court hearing or…

For years Xi Jinping has been inviting the world to hitch a ride on the “express train of China’s development”. The slogan is a Xi favourite, wheeled out when the Communist Party chief talks to foreign leaders about economic co-operation, especially via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global infrastructure programme launched a decade ago this month. To foreign critics, such swaggering talk is a blunder. Yes, they aver, local elites in poor countries may welcome Chinese envoys bearing loans to pay for new airports, dams and other infrastructure.…