The Social World

Tag: China

  • It feels as if Michael McFaul’s audience has long since left

    Since the end of the Cold War, politicians and commentators have been searching for a new paradigm through which to understand international relations. Notwithstanding Francis Fukuyama’s oft-misunderstood The End of History, we have tried various patterns to classify the world order, of which George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” first used in 2002, was among the more enduring.

    In Autocrats vs. Democrats: China, Russia, America, and the New Global Disorder, Michael McFaul acknowledges the widespread if nebulous consensus that the challenge presented by Russia and China is a kind of second Cold War – historian Niall Ferguson has labeled America’s relations with China “Cold War II.” But McFaul rejects the easy creation of a model which is reminiscent of past conflicts, arguing that it fails “accurately [to] describe the complex, unique dynamics of our current era of great power competition.”

    While McFaul’s analysis draws on his experience as a social scientist and a historian, he also dons his “policymaker hat” to provide a solution as well as commentary. Whether one agrees with his prescriptions or not – of which more anon – for that, at least, we should be grateful. It is easy enough to lament, to use Seán O’Casey’s phrase, that “th’ whole worl’s in a terrible state o’ chassis,” but considerably more demanding to say what can and should be done about it.

    There is a touch of the straw man around the edges of McFaul’s arguments. When he explains that “China is not an existential threat to the United States or the free world,” for example, he is suggesting a position which few serious foreign policy observers hold. Indeed, it is hard to say what a truly existential threat to the US would look like – at least a foreign one. As a young Abraham Lincoln told his audience in Springfield, Illinois, in 1838: “All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge… if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

    One current difficulty lies in characterizing the foreign policies of the Trump administration. McFaul notes, correctly, that the President, on returning to the White House, “immediately withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accords, the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council.” It is hard to think of a multilateral institution that Donald Trump likes or trusts, from the UN to NATO to the World Trade Organization. McFaul sums this up as “an even stronger commitment to an isolationist agenda.”

    But that will not quite do. President Trump authorized major air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June; he is escalating military action against drug cartels in the Caribbean Sea, declaring that the US is at war with the drug cartels and creating a Joint Task Force within US Southern Command to coordinate strikes; he has interposed himself as a “peacemaker” between India and Pakistan, Armenia and Azerbaijan and, most recently, in the Middle East. This is hardly shutting out the rest of the world and focusing on domestic concerns.

    What, then, would the former ambassador and director of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies advise the nation’s chief executive to do? McFaul advocates selective but not complete economic decoupling from China, lifting most of the tariff barriers Trump has imposed and encouraging American investment abroad, attracting Russian and Chinese scientific, technological and entrepreneurial talent to the US. He also argues that “defense is only part of a successful strategy. America needs more offense,” though it is hard to see him and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth agreeing on the implementation of that statement.

    Fundamentally, McFaul believes in international cooperation and in multilateralism, not only for America’s prosperity and security but also as a way of prying apart the ad hoc and transactional alliance which currently holds sway between Moscow and Beijing. I freely confess to being an enthusiast for informed debate and vigorous but respectful exchange of ideas, and someone with McFaul’s background should be listened to as America decides how to approach international relations.

    However, Autocrats vs. Democrats founders on two obstacles. The first is the highly personal and utterly unpredictable nature of Trump’s foreign policy. The President has few guiding principles save his own instincts and his attitudes can turn on a dime, making it very difficult to formulate any coherent kind of framework which can direct American policy. As we have seen with his wildly varying views on Ukraine and Russia, it sometimes feels as if he himself does not know what he will think tomorrow – making it a sheer impossibility for anyone else.

    More broadly, there is a feeling that American politics is not currently amenable to debate, discussion and exchanges of information. While the extent to which the electorate is polarized may be exaggerated, politicians certainly seem to have retreated to entrenched positions and debate can seem like a concession to a sworn enemy. In that respect, there is something slightly old-fashioned about McFaul’s book. He may have prepared an intellectual case and a list of detailed propositions, but it feels as if his audience has long since left, taken up arms and rushed to the ideological barricades.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • Fact-checking the Venezuela war hawks 

    Fact-checking the Venezuela war hawks 

    As the US Navy remains primed for action in the Southern Caribbean, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro prepares for what could be an American attempt to remove him. And as President Trump alternates between calling Maduro on the phone and authorizing air strikes, a bevy of misinformation is being peddled by public figures with an agenda. There are so many claims and counter-claims on the air waves right now that it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction.

    A sizable chunk of this disinformation is of course being sold by Maduro himself, a man who has learned from his predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chávez, that it’s easier to blame the United States for all of your problems than own up to your own catastrophic policy errors. Maduro’s biggest fraud occurred in the summer of 2024, when he lost the Venezuelan presidential election to former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia in astounding fashion but claimed victory anyway.

    Maduro, however, is hardly the only one throwing falsehoods into the air. The Venezuelan opposition movement led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado and a vocal group of far-right Venezuelan exiles in Miami are just as guilty. Machado, whose entire career has been devoted to ending the Chavismo politics that have ruled Venezuela for a quarter-century, has given countless interviews in the American press about how Maduro rigged the 2020 US presidential election, unleashed the Tren de Aragua gang and directed a massive criminal organization dubbed the Cartel de los Soles, with the express purpose of weakening America by turning its citizens into drug addicts. “Everybody knows that Venezuela is today the main channel of cocaine,” Machado told CNN last month, “and that this is a business that has been run by Maduro.”

    Machado is hardly the only one making claims designed to push the Trump administration into military action. Emmanuel Rincón, a writer and activist, alleged on Fox News this week that Maduro declared war on the United States long ago and is “one of the main architects” of the drug epidemic in the US Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies went on the same network and called Maduro a dire threat who was turning Venezuela into a Russian and Chinese colony only 600 miles from the US mainland.

    It also sounds quite scary until you turn off the noise and start dealing with the facts. The truth is that proponents of regime change are throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Their aim is to inflate the threat, not educate the public.

    Take Maduro’s involvement in the drug trade and his supposed control of Cartel de los Soles as a prime example. Yes, Maduro’s regime is implicated in drug smuggling. We know this because several high-profile regime figures, including Maduro himself, have been indicted by the US Justice Department on various drug-related charges. Maduro is currently wanted by the FBI and has a $50 million bounty for information leading to his capture. Some senior Venezuelan officials and Maduro family members have been implicated in cocaine trafficking as well; two of Maduro’s nephews were prosecuted for cocaine distribution in 2017 and sentenced to 18 years in prison (they were later released in a prisoner exchange).

    But the notion that Maduro is giving orders to the region’s drug trafficking networks gives the former bus driver and union leader far too much credit. Indeed, the so-called Cartel of the Sons that Maduro supposedly leads isn’t even a cartel in the traditional sense of the word; it has no top-down structure or hierarchy of any kind. Command-and-control is lacking. Those who have studied drug trafficking for decades essentially refer to it as a loose, relatively laissez-faire connection between Colombian cocaine traffickers and Venezuelan army officers, who look the other way and take a cut of the drug shipments transiting Venezuelan territory for export to Europe and the United States. While this morally disturbing and certainly criminal, it’s not exactly a shocking development: corrupt politicians and officers in Latin America have participated in similar arrangements for decades. And the phenomenon is not exclusive to Venezuela – former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was feted by the first Trump administration as a major partner in Central America, ran a narco-state himself. For Maduro, dabbling in the drug business is likely less about attacking the United States as the Trump administration claims and more about giving his support base the opportunity to access criminal rents to get rich, thereby binding their economic fortunes to his political longevity. In other words, it’s a survival strategy, not a grand conspiracy.

    Another key question should be put into perspective: is Venezuela the central node in the drug trade? Listen to Machado and her supporters and you could easily think that cutting Maduro down to size would magically win the war on drugs. But this is laughable. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s own statistics, only 8 percent of the cocaine heading to the United States transits the so-called Caribbean Corridor, where Venezuela is located. The vast majority, 74 percent, is shipped from Ecuador and Colombia’s Pacific coast. The 2025 DEA drug threat assessment report didn’t even bother to mention Venezuela in the context of drug trafficking, which is a curious omission for an administration that frequently describes Maduro’s Venezuela as the epicenter of the narco world.

    Moreover, one of Machado’s biggest selling points is her contention that Venezuela will inevitably turn into a democracy once Maduro’s regime is deposed. She insists there is a 100-day plan to take over the reins of government and guide Venezuela through a political transition. Freedom of speech, free-markets, elections, justice and accountability will apparently replace repression and criminality. It all sounds pretty good.

    There’s just one problem: Machado’s camp hasn’t bothered to provide any details whatsoever about how they intend to accomplish this utopian objective. There are far more questions than answers. How will they re-build the institutions that Maduro has gutted over the last 12 years? How will they convince the Venezuelan army leadership that its interests are best served switching their support to a new government? What incentives are they willing to offer? Why are they so confident that the Venezuelan generals who made a killing under Maduro will choose cooperation over resistance, particularly when Machado continues to declare that anyone who perpetrated crimes will be prosecuted to the fullest extent? And what about the armed criminal groups and paramilitary pro-Maduro forces whose number are even greater than the regular Venezuelan military?

    The Venezuela policy debate won’t be going away anytime soon. Unfortunately, as the days go by, emotion, ideology and political agendas are displacing reality. And that’s a recipe for terrible policy.

  • Trump team warned over London’s Chinese super-embassy

    Trump team warned over London’s Chinese super-embassy

    So much for simple Chinese takeout. In his never-ending search for economic growth, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has finally alighted on the obvious answer: cozying up to the liberal-minded democrats of Tiananmen Square. The Prime Minister is expected to fly to Beijing in the new year, once the long-awaited Chinese super-embassy in the London neighborhood of Tower Hamlets secures planning approval next month. No wonder 2025 is the year of the snake, eh? 

    But there now seems to be a wrench in the works, ahead of the mooted approval on December 10. For a group of American politicians are up in arms about the possible threat to global financial security. Cockburn has been shown a letter by a quartet of Nebraskan state politicians addressed to Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury. It warns that the Royal Mint Court site in London poses potential risks to “Nebraska-based insurers and financial-services firms and, by extension, the broader US financial system,” arguing that:

    Because the site may provide a vantage point for physical access to fiber-optic lines, the risk extends beyond accidental outages and could include intentional metadata capture or traffic interception… Many US insurers and financial-services firms rely, directly or indirectly, on systems routed through London. Should an incident occur, the underwriting, operational-resilience, and reputational capacities of firms far removed from London could be strained.

    State Senator Eliot Bostar went further, telling Cockburn:

    It is one thing for the UK to take decisions that imperil its own national security, but quite another for risks to be taken which impact United States financial services. As a close ally of the UK and Five Eyes partner, we expect credible assurances, not denials or obfuscation. Such assurances have yet to be provided.

    So much for the “Special Relationship,” eh?

  • China has quietly taken over America’s food supply

    China has quietly taken over America’s food supply

    For all the talk about artificial intelligence and quantum supremacy, the fate of civilizations still depends on breakfast. ChatGPT can’t grow corn. Empires rise on stomachs as much as on silicon. And America’s food system – long dismissed as safe and self-sufficient – has quietly become a front line in the US-China rivalry. We act as if lunch is inevitable, but Beijing knows that food is power.

    A new report from the America First Policy Institute should wake us up. Washington long treated agriculture as a post-political space where globalization could do no harm, and was therefore happy to let much of the nation ship its growth to China. As Ambassador Kip Tom and Royce Hood argue, China has thus taken over critical pieces of the US agricultural system and food supply. That’s created an obvious strategic vulnerability.

    Through state-owned giants such as WH Group and SinoChem, the CCP has spent the last decade spreading its tentacles through America’s food production. Its means of doing so have been so patient and banal that it’s gone mostly unnoticed.

    Consider Smithfield Foods. Once a model of American agribusiness, it was bought in 2013 by WH Group, then called Shuanghui – a Chinese conglomerate financed by state banks and guided by Beijing’s Five-Year Plan directive to “go abroad.” At the time, as Tom and Hood indicate, it was the largest-ever acquisition of an American company by a Chinese firm. 

    The Obama administration approved the deal despite some bipartisan objections. In one stroke, China gained control over roughly a quarter of US pork processing. At the time, the story barely registered beyond the business pages. Now it reads like an opening chapter in a longer, scary story. Say what you will about the CCP, but dumb they are not. 

    Smithfield’s market power lets it shape prices and standards across the industry, and the profits flow neatly back to China. During the pandemic, as American grocery shelves emptied, the company still managed to ship thousands of tons of pork to Chinese ports each month.

    Then there is Syngenta. The seed and agrochemical titan was acquired in 2017 by ChemChina, a state-owned enterprise that later merged into SinoChem. Despite being headquartered in Switzerland, Syngenta is now an organ of Chinese industrial policy. Its Chinese subsidiaries are linked – through a thicket of shell companies – to Xinjiang entities accused of using forced labor.

    One of them, the report notes, sells seeds directly to the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the paramilitary conglomerate that anchors Beijing’s campaign of “re-education” aimed at the region’s Uyghur population. So while American farmers buy Syngenta products to improve yields, the profits feed into a system of repression half a world away. That is globalization at its bleakest.

    Then there’s the question of data – which matters more now than ever, considering that data-access is the CCP’s greatest advantage in the AI race. Modern farms are sensor-laden, drone-mapped, and algorithm-advised. Syngenta and its partners, including Chinese drone manufacturers DJI and XAG, sell “smart agriculture” platforms that collect torrents of data on American soil composition, crop patterns, and yields. Under China’s National Intelligence Law, all that information can be requisitioned by the state. Imagine handing a rival superpower a continuously updated MRI of your own food system – and calling it efficiency. 

    China views American openness as weakness – and its own opacity as strength. We’d do well to understand that mindset without arrogance. While we assumed moral superiority would carry the day, China stayed focused on the simpler, harder truths of power.

    It would be funny if it weren’t true. While our media spent years fixating on TikTok tracking teenagers – a real concern, to be sure – China nonchalantly secured access to the datasets that actually keep people alive.

    None of this is accidental. The CCP’s economic blueprints explicitly instruct its companies to secure global agricultural assets to achieve self-sufficiency through overseas acquisition. What Beijing calls “food security,” Washington calls “foreign direct investment.” One phrase belongs to a civilization that thinks in centuries; the other, to one that thinks – if it does at all – in dollar signs.

    Our policymakers should compel divestiture of strategic assets and restrict our fiercest geopolitical competitor from owning American land. If “dominance” sounds too impolite, we can at least strive for symmetry. The alternative is to tolerate theft and give up the defense of our own farmland.

  • Gavin Newsom flies to UN climate summit

    Gavin Newsom flies to UN climate summit

    “We’re in Brazil,” California Gavin Newsom said. “One of our great trading partners. One of the world’s great democracies. I mean, hell, you need rare Earth minerals, this is the country we should be engaging with. Instead, middle finger with 50 percent tariffs. That’s shameful.”

    That’s certainly a point to argue, but the question is why, exactly, was Newsom in Brazil, telling the gathered at a UN climate summit that the Trump administration had “disrespected” them?

    “I’m here in the absence of leadership of Donald Trump,” he told a Sky News reporter. “He’s abdicated responsibility on a critical issue. I’m here to show up on behalf of my country. I’m here to showcase California’s leadership, dominance in the low-carbon greenco space. I’m here because it’s about more than electric power, it’s about economic power, and I’m not going to cede America’s economic leadership to China.”

    Newsom was all over the summit, meeting with Sonia Guajajara, Brazil’s minister of indigenous peoples, appearing on a panel saying that his zero-emissions vehicle mandate has “shifted consciousness,” and saying in regards to green energy competition from China, that “the United States of America is dumb as we wanna be on this topic, but the state of California is not.” He also blamed the Los Angeles wildfires on climate change, even though authorities recently arrested an arson suspect in connection with the Palisades Fire.

    As he usually does, Newsom got the White House’s attention. In a statement, the press office said, “Governor Newscum flew all the way to Brazil to tout the Green New Scam, while the people of California are paying some of the highest energy prices in the country. Embarrassing! If Gavin Newscum’s support for the climate agenda was sincere, he would not be attending a climate summit that required chopping down thousands of acres of protected Amazon rainforest for a special purpose highway. It’s time for Newscum and other countries to drop the climate façade! President Trump will not allow the best interest of the American people to be jeopardized by the Green Energy Scam. These Green Dreams are killing other countries, but will not kill ours thanks to President Trump’s commonsense energy agenda.”

    It’s not as though Newsom’s critiques lack substance. China is dominating the green-energy space while the Trump administration provides endless carveouts for big oil. There’s also something deeply disingenuous about Newsom’s endless climate crowing, in his behavior as a self-appointed shadow President to the corners of world politics who don’t like what Trump is up to on climate and other issues. Right-wing populism and Democratic socialism may be ascendant and may garner all the headlines and headspace, but there’s still a lot of money behind Great Reset neoliberalism. Newsom is its slick-haired, alarmist American avatar, a harbinger for a set of policies that people won’t like much when they arrive at their doorsteps.

    Even though Newsom’s fire-management policies helped exacerbate an unprecedented disaster in America’s second-largest city, he still had the nerve today to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with a Brazilian territorial governor on wildfire prevention and response. “We’re identifying areas of risk, enhancing forest monitoring, and sharing research and expertise for emergency response.” Ask the people of Altadena how “enhanced forest monitoring” went for them.

    “We’re on the tip of the spear of climate change,” Newsom said. The wildfires in LA occurred “in the middle of winter,” which, mind you, can often be warm and dry and windy in Southern California. But Shadow President Newsom, preening about Brazil, doesn’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

  • Will the Andrew formerly known as prince appear before Congress?

    Will the Andrew formerly known as prince appear before Congress?

    Amidst all the ceremony and gravity of Britain’s Remembrance Day service on Sunday, one salient fact could not be ignored. The King has long talked of his desire for a “stripped-down monarchy,” and now he has his wish. The only male figures from the Firm who were out on show alongside him were the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, who together had the effect of making the royals look a rather paltry selection compared to the grander gatherings of the past.

    We all know about Harry, but although some would like to see him, too, stripped of his royal title, Montecito’s second most famous resident continues to be able to refer to himself as a prince. This is not a luxury that his disgraced uncle enjoys any longer, as he adjusts to life not as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, but plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. As he prepares to leave Royal Lodge for a more modest existence in a grace and favor home tucked in some obscure corner of the Sandringham Estate, he may look around and wonder if his disgrace is yet over. Well, judged by recent events, the bad news for him just keeps on coming.

    During his “heyday,” Andrew liked to present himself as a swashbuckling, entrepreneurial figure, thanks to his Pitch@Palace initiative, which invited would-be moneymakers to come to Buckingham Palace and get their businesses off the ground. Unsurprisingly, given his shame, this is no longer a going concern. Documents seen by the Guardian show that the last remaining part of the business, Pitch@Palace Global, has been wound up after its UK side foundered in 2021.

    Admittedly, after Andrew’s disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview, it is doubtful that even the most desperate would-be businessman would have seen the soon-to-be banned old Duke of York as the answer to their prayers, but the knowledge that this beleaguered endeavor is no more shows how total, and terminal, his disgrace is. (Lest we forget, it was from the Chinese arm of Pitch@Palace that the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo emerged, suggesting that Andrew’s judgment when it comes to those he kept company with has always been terrible.)

    And what of middle England? Well, Andrew has a few supporters who argue doughtily for the presumption of innocence before guilt is proved. Yet the overwhelming majority of the country consider that enough wrongdoing has now been established to regard the former prince as unspeakable, and they are not afraid to make their feelings felt. Residents of Prince Andrew Road and Prince Andrew Close in Maidenhead are hoping that the names of their streets will be changed, to avoid the taint of association. One long-sufferer local, Kelly Pevy, told the Daily Telegraph that: “If you’re giving someone the address, it’s the first thing [they’re] going to say. When I speak to energy companies and they ask for the address, they make a little joke. It’s mentioned more and more, and so then you start thinking about it more.”

    It remains to be seen whether the dwellers of Maidenhead succeed in their petition to the local MP to end this little joke, but if Andrew takes a moment out from a head-down routine of self-pity and video games, he may by now be seeing the enormity of the disgrace he faces. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have asked that he be summoned to the United States and Congress to answer questions about the precise nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Although they have no legal power to compel him to attend, Andrew knows that to do so would be potentially hazardous. Not only could he be prosecuted for perjury if any part of his testimony is false, but his presence in America would open him up to investigation, even arrest, for his alleged activities with the then-17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – there is currently some debate as to whether his last name will be hyphenated or not – is as maligned as anyone in public life today. Yet if he had stopped playing Call of Duty on Sunday and watched his elder brother and nephew remember the fallen, he would have been aware of what real courage and real sacrifice look like. Andrew, by contrast, is an insignificant figure, too sinister and grim to be pathetic and too boring to be laughable. His downfall, in all its embarrassing little details, reflects the man perfectly.

  • China is holding the West to ransom over rare earths

    China is holding the West to ransom over rare earths

    China’s naked weaponization of rare earths brings to mind Mao Zedong’s “four pests” campaign, the old tyrant’s fanatical effort to exterminate all flies, mosquitoes, rats and sparrows, which turned into a spectacular piece of self-harm.

    Sparrows were always an odd choice of enemy, but Mao and his communist advisors reckoned each one ate four pounds of grain a year and a million dead sparrows would free up food for 60,000 people. The campaign, launched in 1958, saw the extermination of a billion sparrows, driving them to the brink of extinction. But the sparrows also ate insects, notably locusts, whose population exploded, and the ravenous locusts wreaked far more damage to crops than the sparrows ever did, hastening China’s descent into the deadliest famine in human history.

    Nobody is expecting a repeat of that tragedy. But the rare earth controls threatened by Beijing, which could cripple advanced western economies, could and should backfire if they finally open western eyes to the need to urgently address dangerous dependencies on China.

    Rare earths are a group of 17 elements, until recently little known beyond the chemistry lab, but vital to hi-tech industries ranging from fighter jets, submarines and satellites to mobile phones, electric vehicles, wind turbines and batteries. China controls 61 percent of the world’s mining and 92 percent of refining, according to the International Energy Agency.

    In an interview last weekend with CBS News’s 60 Minutes, Donald Trump said of the rare earth threat: “That’s gone. Completely gone.” He explained that his moves to impose an additional 100 percent tariff forced Xi Jinping to back down. In fact, his summit with Xi in South Korea produced a truce at best, and the rare earth controls are merely on hold. It’s a shaky agreement. Later in his interview, Trump claimed he had secured a window to build US (and global) resilience: “This was really a threat against the world. So the whole world has come together, I think, at our behest. And rare earths, within two years, rare earths will really cease to be a problem.”

    Sweeping new export controls would have required any company that wants to supply rare earths produced in China or which are processed with Chinese technologies – even outside China – to obtain a license from the Chinese government, giving the Chinese Communist party a veto over who uses them and how they are used.

    The dirty little secret about rare earths is that they are not so rare; they are found throughout the world, including in the US, Brazil, Australia, Vietnam, India, Greenland and Canada. Even Britain has small deposits. It is in refining – a filthy business – where China has the greatest edge, and where it tolerates high levels of environmental degradation. Washington is now scouring the globe for alternative supplies, signing deals with Japan and Australia among others.

    The European Union has vowed to break dependencies on Beijing. The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has warned of a “clear acceleration and escalation in the way interdependencies are leveraged and weaponized.” Canada has announced a flurry of investments and partnerships, and Turkey has touted the discovery of potentially vast reserves.

    In his 60 Minutes interview, Trump appeared to take credit for much of this, boasting of the partnerships he was establishing “with Japan, with Australia, with UK, with just about everybody, frankly.” Yet his wider tariff policy is also alienating key allies. Beijing has been keen to exploit that by presenting itself as a champion of free trade, though that claim, always implausible, is being undermined globally by its aggressive exploitation of its rare earths monopoly.

    It’s hard not to conclude that western democracies sleepwalked into the rare earth crisis. The CCP has long been a master of “war by other means,” using trade, investment and market access as means of coercion, and Beijing has made no secret of its willingness to weaponize its near monopoly.


    As long ago as 2010, it slashed exports to Japan after a territorial dispute, and experts have long warned about the potential dangers. In December 2023, a scathing report from the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee warned: “Successive governments have failed to recognize the importance of critical minerals to the UK economy and failed to respond adequately to the aggressive capture of large parts of the market over the last three decades by China.”

    Witnesses complained their warnings were not heeded. Jeff Townsend, director of the UK Critical Minerals Association, told the committee he began raising the issue with the government in 2012 and said he had “been banging my head against a brick wall ever since.”

    Britain, warned by China of “consequences” if its proposed new mega-embassy in east London is not approved, appears to be particularly vulnerable. Rare earths are critical to the technologies of the so-called “green transition.” Attempts to gain a foothold in the rare earths industry – a key platform of the government’s much hyped “critical minerals strategy” – collapsed last month after Pensana, a mining company, scrapped plans for a refinery near Hull, England. The facility was to have processed minerals from Angola, but it is instead to be built in the US, which offered more support.

    China’s rare earth controls go far further than any coercive measures it has taken before. Unlike the often petulant boycotts and bans that characterised past Chinese efforts at punishing countries or companies deemed to have caused offense, China has put in place a systematic licensing system that can be calibrated and targeted at will. It framed its rare earth controls as a matter of “national security,” a response to US restrictions on the sale of powerful chips used for artificial intelligence, but its sweeping nature and potential to bring western hi-tech industries to a standstill go far beyond anything imposed by America.

    They were also well prepared; over recent months the authorities gathered detailed information about how rare earths are used in western supply chains and restrictions have reportedly been imposed on the ability of factories in the industry to shift equipment out of the country and on the international travel of their executives.

    The system may become a model for other areas where the West is dangerously dependent, from critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt, so essential to “green” technology, to the tiny cellular modules that are the “gateway” component for all connected devices, where China is intent on gaining a monopoly – and even pharmaceuticals, where antibiotics and other vital drugs rely on Chinese supply chains.

    Beijing’s economic policy under Xi is explicitly built around the twin goals of self-reliance in technology and building dependencies on China. As Xi himself told a meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission in 2020: “We must tighten international production chains’ dependence on China, forming powerful countermeasures and deterrent capabilities based on artificially cutting off supply to foreigners.”

    Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the initial disruption to energy supplies is a stark lesson in the dangers of over-dependence on a hostile state. The controls on rare earths, in effect holding western economies to ransom, should be a defining moment – if, that is, the right conclusions are drawn about foolhardy dependencies on China.

  • How to survive a Chinese banquet

    When heading to China on a business trip, I was somewhat bemused to be warned about the banquets I would be attending. Do not sit next to the host, I was told. I was to find out why.

    Learning the rituals of banquets is an essential part of doing business in China. I was treated to at least one every day on a ten-day trip around the country – and sometimes two or three. There is no such thing as a casual business lunch. Any meal will turn into a semiformal event held in a private room and hosted by the most senior person in the organization.

    The meal starts slowly, with a few rather unappealing cold dishes laid out on a lazy Susan that sits on a round table, though initially no one sits down. The host will welcome everyone and dominate the conversation, mostly talking in Chinese to his or her colleagues. Then suddenly, without any overt signal, everyone sits down.

    Drinks are offered, usually in the form of a tiny glass and a small jug filled with a transparent liquid. A second warning: go slowly because this is rice wine, which can be as much as 50 proof. The custom is then for all to clink glasses and down the first round.

    Meanwhile, other more appetizing dishes appear, sometimes so numerous that the staff struggle to squeeze them onto the lazy Susan. This gets to be more and more of a problem as no dish seems ever to be finished. That’s partly because there is always far too much food, but also because empty dishes are likely to be instantly refilled.

    No one seems to order the food. It just arrives, either because there is a secret menu or it has been organized beforehand. The dishes are varied but first you need to understand the drinking process, which continues throughout the meal. After the initial drink or so, people get up at random intervals and walk over to another guest, welcome each other and clink glasses. This goes on throughout the meal, with people making sure they have greeted every other guest at least once and usually several times. Being able to hold your drink – and chopsticks – are considered impressive feats.

    The fare ranges from cold meats and plain vegetables to every possible combination of meat, fish, tofu and seafood in sauces from the bland to the burning hot.

    Here’s where the seating advice comes in. If you sit next to the host, they will ply you with portions of every dish, however obscure. It was the sea snails I found the hardest to stomach. I had seen them alive in the restaurant entrance, finger-sized slugs with disconcertingly human-looking mouths, their only organ apart from an anus, struggling to breathe in a bowl of water.

    Away from the host, you can ignore the more exotic dishes and concentrate on the fabulous ones that suit your taste. These seem never to stop coming, so eat slowly and leave room for more. Just as you are flagging, out comes the pièce de résistance, often a whole fish in a lavish sauce. Finally the dumplings arrive, familiar to dim sum diners but tastier. There may then be a small bowl of rice, though not always, and to round off, a small fruity dessert or just pieces of fruit, but desserts do not seem to be a common feature and I never saw a lychee. Nevertheless, no one ever leaves hungry.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Trump plays battleships

    Trump plays battleships

    The US Navy retired its last battleship 19 years ago, the grand warship’s devastating firepower deemed surplus to requirements in the new war on terror. But the era of Great Power conflict has now returned with storm clouds gathering between the US and China. And with them the old warhorse bristling with guns, the battleship, is facing a call back to action.

    President Trump has said the battleship will come back as the centerpiece of his new Golden Fleet – a cadre of warships designed to equip our navy to face the challenges of the future, not the past.

    In a speech to the nation’s top military brass, Trump said:

    “I think we should maybe start thinking about battleships, by the way. You know, we have – Secretary of the Navy came to me – because I look at the Iowa out in California and I look at different ships in the old pictures… Some people would say, no, that’s old technology. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s old technology when you look at those guns, but it’s something we’re actually considering, the concept of battleship, nice six-inch size, solid steel, not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it… Now those ships, they don’t make them that way anymore… But I tell you, it’s something we’re seriously considering.”

    America hasn’t built a new battleship since World War Two. The warship class fell to the wayside because submarines and aircraft carriers can project power further, and nuclear weapons became a focus. The last American battleships built were modernized for use in the First Gulf War in 1991 and were mainly shelled Iraqi shore positions.

    The “Iowa” that Trump referenced in his speech is the eponymous battleship, built in 1944 and finally retired in 2006 after on-and-off service for decades, including in Operation Desert Storm. It now sits as a museum ship in Los Angeles, drawing crowds who wish to see the last of the iconic warships that captured the public imagination for generations. That fascination with the battleship has led to films, board games and plenty of influence on popular culture. And it may now augur the return of the ship class, given the president’s powerful interest in the matter.

    Battleships were always about bringing to bear as much destructive long-range firepower as possible, while retaining the ability to strike back if hit by the enemy. And it’s those qualities that the US Navy believes it needs again. Beijing has the ability to block access to the Taiwan Strait for American surface ships with longer-range missiles. But if America possessed battleships with similar ranged missiles it could make a difference in defending the island. These long-range munitions have been effective in the Ukraine War and may be similarly effective in the looming conflict in Asia, especially if they are based on maneuverable warships.

    American warships today are generally lightly armored and rely on avoiding or countering enemy fire, but that may not be possible in a more evenly matched conflict. Battleships are meant to strike hard, yet survive by absorbing enemy firepower. Executing retaliatory strikes after taking enemy hits gives it an advantage over other modern warships.

    And modern battleships could be built to field more advanced weapons systems, whether that is the long-discussed railgun – which the Japanese are heavily testing – or swarms of autonomous drones providing cover and extending range. All of this would be powered by the same nuclear reactors that make our aircraft carriers and submarines the most advanced in the world.

    But creating a brand-new ship design would be incredibly time-consuming and expensive. America already struggles to build and maintain the fleet that we have, so adding a novel warship class would tax that maritime infrastructure to its limit. We would need to build several additional shipyards to accommodate the construction of the “Golden Fleet,” but these new facilities would possibly be more useful producing already-existing, combat-ready ships and submarines. Even if those facilities were available immediately, the design, construction and testing process for the new battleships would take years, if not a decade. Any claims as to when these ships could roll off the line would likely be a significant underestimate.

    The China challenge is not in the far future. It is here in the present. America’s limited resources should, in the minds of the battleship skeptics, be ruthlessly prioritized to build as many useful, proven ships as quickly as possible. China’s navy is larger than our own and we need to play catch-up. If we decide to innovate a novel design, we will only fall further behind Beijing at a time in which we cannot afford to. The American people are only so willing to incur more debt and finance larger military budgets, even in the face of a powerful adversary. Prioritization is necessary to make the most of our constraints and still achieve victory. And achieving that victory is a must.

    America is historically a maritime power built around a mighty naval force that defends our interests and commerce abroad. The past two decades of land-based imperial policing actions in Western Asia have abstracted us from that storied history and downplayed our innate national advantages. Focusing on our naval mission, especially in an era of Great Power conflict, is crucial. It, alongside our aerospace dominance, will be the defining military factor in any American success over the coming decades. The battleship may or may not be a part of that success, but the conversation that the idea has sparked is a prerequisite for achieving it.

  • A rare earths deal is China’s gift to Trump

    A rare earths deal is China’s gift to Trump

    Donald Trump went nuclear. Before his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping at an air base in South Korea, he ordered the Pentagon to test atomic weapons on an “equal basis” with China and Russia. Was Xi impressed?

    Probably not. While Russia expressed indignation, China did not permit itself to be distracted by Trump’s nuclear shenanigans. Instead, Beijing aimed to obtain economic concessions from a prideful Trump, which it did. From the outset, Xi sought to bring Trump down a peg, declaring that “both sides should consider the bigger picture and focus on the long-term benefits of cooperation, rather than falling into a vicious cycle of mutual retaliation.”

    Trump seems to have absorbed the lesson. He caved to Xi on a number of fronts, including dropping tariffs to 47 percent (still a staggering amount that is set to punish the American consumer) and dropping port fees on Chinese ships. In return, Xi promised to end his suspension of the export of rare earth minerals for a year and to purchase soybeans from America. How many? Trump said it would be “tremendous” amounts. But during Trump’s first term, China made similar vows and never followed through. The big payoff for Trump, however, was that he and Xi agreed to meet each other next year. According to Trump, “I’ll be going to China in April, and he’ll be coming here sometime after that, whether it’s in Florida, Palm Beach or Washington, DC.”

    For Trump, the prospect of a fresh visit to Asia seems to possess a new cachet. He received no presents from Xi, but was clearly impressed by the numerous gifts that were bestowed upon him in Malaysia, Japan and South Korea. The high point came at South Korea’s Gyeongju National Museum, where Trump received a replica of a tall golden crown that he was told “symbolizes the divine connection between the authority of the heavens and the sovereignty on Earth, as well as the strong leadership and authority of a leader.” Trump also received the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, a civil honor made of a laurel leaf medal. Trump was pleased, indicating that he would “like to wear it right now.”

    So much for No Kings. The truth is that Trump has long had a penchant for viewing himself in monarchical terms. Earlier this year, the White House posted on social media a fake TIME magazine cover of Trump wearing a golden crown with the headline “Long Live the King.” South Korea was simply following Disraeli’s famous adage: “Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel.” 

    When he returns to America, however, Trump will encounter a less gilded reception. His popularity ratings continue to sink, according to a new Economist poll – 39 percent of American approve of the President and 58 precent disapprove. And for all Trump’s nuclear muscle-flexing, the National Security Nuclear Administration would require about three years to resume nuclear testing and many of its employees are currently furloughed as a result of the government shutdown. With problems mounting at home, it’s small wonder that Trump enjoys cavorting abroad and collecting tribute.