The pioneering anthropologist Isabel Crook, who has died aged 107, was the last survivor of that generation of sympathetic westerners who joined Mao Zedong’s rural revolution and stayed on after 1949 to build a “new China” – with mixed fortunes. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) her husband David Crook was accused of spying and imprisoned for five years, while Isabel was locked up for three years on their college campus. The couple retained their belief in the post-Mao leadership of the Communist party until, horrified by the Beijing massacre in…
Tag: Communism
‘We in the west were blinded’: China crackdown on business has Maoist roots
To many western investors, China under president Xi Jinping is a tough nut to crack. While Chinese leaders insist that they welcome foreign investment, the ruling party’s extension of control to companies, with crackdowns on domestic tech giants and more recently the “anti-spying” raids on consulting firms, including America’s blue chip Bain & Company, are puzzling to the outside world. Chris Marquis, author and professor of Chinese management at the University of Cambridge, believes that part of the explanation lies in the ruling party’s ideology. He says one must “dig…
Western democracy is weaker in this new cold war than it was in the first one | Rafael Behr
Once again the world is divided into competing spheres of eastern and western power, but is it a new cold war or reheated leftovers from the last one? The answer is a bit of both. For Vladimir Putin, the superpower rivalry of the 20th century never ended, although in economic and military terms there was a clear winner and it wasn’t the Soviet Union. Russia’s president is determined to reverse that humiliation, in the national imagination, at least. In other realms, the trajectory is further decline. Russia can still make…
‘The authorities will step up control’: where next for China after protests?
Since Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, China’s Communist party has enacted a sweeping crackdown on civil society. Independent NGOs have been shut down, journalists and human rights lawyers arrested and outspoken media tamed. Meanwhile, the government has invested heavily in a massive surveillance system to keep track of citizens’ movements and activities. Given their emphasis on national security and stability, party leaders would have been shocked therefore by the nationwide protests that broke out on 26 November in opposition to Xi’s “zero-Covid” policy. Demonstrators demanded an end…
China brings in ‘emergency’ level censorship over zero-Covid protests
Chinese authorities have initiated the highest “emergency response” level of censorship, according to leaked directives, including a crackdown on VPNs and other methods of bypassing online censorship after unprecedented protests demonstrated widespread public frustration with the zero-Covid policy. The crackdown, including the tracking and questioning of protesters, comes alongside easing of pandemic restrictions, in an apparent carrot and stick approach to an outpouring of public grievances. During an extraordinary week in China, protests against zero-Covid restrictions included criticism of the authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping – which was further highlighted…
Xi Jinping opens Chinese Communist party congress with warning for Taiwan
Xi Jinping celebrated China’s crushing of Hong Kong’s autonomy and warned Taiwan that the “wheels of history” are turning towards Beijing taking control of the island democracy in his speech opening the Communist party congress. The most important gathering in the five-year Chinese political cycle is expected to hand Xi another five-year term running China, cementing his position as the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. The Chinese president’s address to delegates, nearly two hours long, offered a rare if opaque glimpse into his plans and hopes for the country.…
The most powerful man in China since Mao: Xi Jinping is on the brink of total power
This week in Beijing, Xi Jinping will preside over one of his country’s great shows of political theatre and seal a long-planned political triumph, consolidating his power and extending his rule. The Chinese Communist party is poised to formally hand Xi another five years as party boss, and therefore leader of the country, at a summit that will also move his allies into key roles and elevate the status of his writings on power and government. The 20th Party Congress will – barring unprecedented last-minute drama – confirm him as…
Think Putin is a global threat? Then we need to talk about Xi Jinping | Simon Tisdall
Like fearsome dictators throughout history, Xi Jinping has a tender side. He loves his mum. In a touching puff piece on Mother’s Day this year, state TV showed China’s strongman president strolling hand in hand with 96-year-old Qi Xin, a Communist party veteran and proud mother of the paramount leader. Many mums read fairy stories or sing nursery rhymes to their young children. Not so Qi. She taught five-year-old Xi about Yue Fei, a famously hawkish Southern Song dynasty general who had “Serve the country with utmost loyalty” tattooed on…
Secret British ‘black propaganda’ campaign targeted cold war enemies
The British government ran a secret “black propaganda” campaign for decades, targeting Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia with leaflets and reports from fake sources aimed at destabilising cold war enemies by encouraging racial tensions, sowing chaos, inciting violence and reinforcing anti-communist ideas, newly declassified documents have revealed. The effort, run from the mid-1950s through to the late 70s by a unit in London that was part of the Foreign Office, was focused on cold war enemies such as the Soviet Union and China, leftwing liberation groups and…
Watching a film about communism, I realised I had been lied to as a child in China
I was born in north-east China in a province that was particularly heavy-handed with party propaganda. I learned to march in formation before knowing how to write, and maybe even count. Every morning at school started with a flag ceremony and obligatory salutes to Mao Zedong. Textbooks were illustrated with watercolour Lenins and Stalins, drawn to look much more handsome than they actually were. The propaganda made its way home as well. I think that, even to this day, my father knows only socialist songs. The life I’ve just described…