With Shanghai and Beijing facing restrictions and endless rounds of Covid testing in recent months – the capital saw renewed measures on Thursday – “the middle and upper classes are really affected… it’s been a wake-up call for the privileged, they feel that the regime is hurting them too,” said Victoria Hui, a political scientist with the University of Notre Dame. BBC
The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, struck a more assertive than usual note at the 20th Communist party congress in Beijing on Sunday, as he laid out his vision for the country’s relationship with the self-governing island of Taiwan. The ‘wheels of history’ were moving towards reunification, he said, and ‘complete reunification of the motherland must be achieved and can definitely be achieved’. Tensions over the island hit a nadir this summer when the US House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, embarked on a controversial visit to Taipei, provoking a fierce response from…
Advertisement As China’s ruling Communist Party holds a congress this week, many Beijing residents are focused on an issue not on the formal agenda: Will the end of the meeting bring an easing of China’s at times draconian “zero-COVID” policies that are disrupting lives and the economy? It appears to be wishful thinking. As the world moves to a post-pandemic lifestyle, many across China have resigned themselves to lining up several times a week for COVID-19 tests, restrictions on their travels to other regions, and the ever-present possibility of a…
Advertisement In September, Chinese President Xi Jinping chose Central Asia as the destination for his first trip abroad since January 2020. Soon after Xi’s Central Asia tour, where he visited Kazakhstan and attended at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Uzbekistan, Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan rushed to Kazakhstan to attend the sixth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). The back-to-back high-ranking visits by Chinese top leaders to Central Asian states underscore the rapid rise in China’s emphasis on national security on its…
Advertisement Since 2019, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) investments by China have markedly declined. According to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, China’s overseas development finance in 2019 amounted to $3.9 billion dollars, far from the peak of investments in 2017 at $75 billion. Many have declared this drop to be the end of the BRI, as conflicts in implementing projects have accumulated, tensions with the West continue to rise, and the internal economic situation in China continues to deteriorate. However, the death of the BRI has been greatly exaggerated.…