China
We’re anything but safe
Comically, Chinese Communist party officials have speculated that Covid-19 was planted by the US army. Yet a respectable conspiracy theorist…
How will the world be changed by the war against coronavirus?
The world as we have known it for the past 40 years has come to a stop. We have a…
How will this ‘war’ change us?
In the past ten days we have seen the greatest expansion of state power in British history. The state has…
Big Pharma and free market orgs unite against Trump’s ‘Buy American’ order
The Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM), a trade association for major pharmaceutical manufacturers such as 3M, is drafting a letter…
Corona confusion is being ruthlessly weaponised
Few words have as great a hold on the contemporary imagination as ‘disinformation.’ Few words are as ubiquitous in contemporary…
How Mao’s medicine made modern China
History repeats itself, said Marx, first as tragedy and then as farce. And when it comes to the world’s latest…
The coronavirus is springing the Thucydides trap
The first casualty of informational war is truth. The first American casualty of COVID-19 was the myth that the United…
The Spectator’s Notes
Monday night’s Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate.…
High life
Gstaad Rumours about the virus are flying around this village. First there was talk of a hotel being temporarily…
Washington is furious at Boris’s Huawei bid
Boris Johnson faced his first major rebellion of the new parliament on Tuesday. Parliamentarians are waking up to the fact…
High Life
Gstaad I shoulda been a weatherman: no sooner had I announced snow to be a Gstaad rarity than it…
Could coronavirus really trigger the next crash?
It’s a bloodbath in the markets, but by how much could the real, global economy be affected by the coronavirus…
The Spectator’s Notes
The fall from grace of Jean Vanier is truly a sad story. The founder of the L’Arche communities did extraordinary…
Feverish imaginations
The most dangerous thing about coronavirus is the hysteria
How coronavirus can save Hong Kong
The coronavirus has enforced a hiatus in Hong Kong’s widespread political unrest with worries about transmission stalling protests. Dissatisfaction with…
A dish served cold
Is the pangolin having its revenge?
The Spectator’s Notes
It was with regret that I read that Albert, retired King of the Belgians, has finally had to admit, following…
Disease control, Chinese-style
The handling of the coronavirus shows a one-party state in action
The whole of China is in an eerie state of shutdown
Shanghai ‘Do you want me to scan your temperature?’ asks the receptionist, brandishing an infrared thermometer. Arriving at my hotel…
Low life
There are no stairs or escalators to take you up to Terminal 4 from the underground Heathrow Express platform. Beyond…
Why we’ll regret the Huawei gamble
It is apparently fine for China to ban western technology from its telecommunications network but quite unacceptable for us to…
The dangers of letting Huawei build our 5G network
This afternoon Boris Johnson finally approved the use of equipment made by Huawei in building parts of Britain’s 5G network.…
Portrait of the week
Home The Duke of Sussex left England to join his wife, Meghan, in Canada. This followed an agreement that stripped…
TikTok is the world’s fastest-growing – and goofiest – digital platform, but should we fear it?
In November last year, an internet video made by a 17-year-old American went viral. The video was less than a…
There’s a long way to go before Trump can declare victory in his trade war
There is no shortage of quotes by Donald Trump that his opponents have tried to use against him — few…
