Have Xinjiang's camps been closed?
A few months ago, an intriguing article in the Washington Post shed light on the latest situation Xinjiang, the western region of China where the Uighur minority live. The two journalists, Eva Dou and...
6 Feb 202342min
Covid's legacy: how will China remember the pandemic?
Three years ago, as people across China welcomed the Year of the Rat, a new virus was taking hold in Wuhan. In London, the conversation at my family’s New Year dinner was dominated by the latest updat...
23 Jan 202347min
Should Britain's Confucius Institutes be shut down?
Should Confucius Institutes be shut down? There are hundreds of these centres across six continents, funded by the Ministry of Education, with the stated goal of public education on and cultural promo...
9 Jan 202330min
Strangers in a strange land: being foreign in China
Over the last few hundred years, China has had a difficult and complicated relationship with foreigners. On the one hand, they added to the country’s intellectual richness by introducing western philo...
12 Dec 202239min
Echoes of 1989: where the protests go next
Comparisons with 1989’s Tiananmen Square protests are too often evoked when it comes to talking about civil disobedience in China. Even so, this weekend’s protests have been historic. It’s the first t...
29 Nov 202240min
Second class citizens: the lives of China's internal migrants
When the city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, locked down recently, some of its factory workers had nowhere to go. Hoping to escape Covid restrictions, many of them walked mi...
14 Nov 202240min
Reflections on the 20th Party Congress: how Xi took complete control
This week Xi Jinping has taken his new Politburo Standing Committee on a group trip – to Yan’An, the base of Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution after the Long March. The symbolism is easy to see.On thi...
28 Okt 202232min
Censorship and sexuality: being gay in China
I recently caught a rare viewing of a 2001 Chinese film, Lan Yu. It tells the story of two gay men falling in love and finding domestic life throughout the reform and opening years of China. The filmm...
17 Okt 202230min
