Articles by: "Minxin Pei"
China’s zero-Covid mess

China has lately experienced its largest and most politically charged protests since the pro-democracy movement in 1989 ended in a massacre by government forces on Tiananmen Square. The recent social eruption should not be surprising; …

Xi’s house of cards

At the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, starting on Sunday , Xi Jinping will almost certainly be confirmed for a third term as the party’s general secretary and China’s president. With that, …

China’s Gorbachev phobia

There was a time when well-meaning, if not wishful-thinking, Westerners thought that ‘China’s Gorbachev’ was the highest compliment they could pay a Chinese leader who looked like a reformer. But when Zhu Rongji, the straight-talking …

Pelosi’s visit and the coming Taiwan crisis

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan has incited a predictably strong response from China. Chinese warplanes have brushed up against the median line dividing the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese foreign ministry …

What the Ukraine war should teach China

As Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its fourth month, the endgame remains murky. But one thing is clear: Russia’s military has taken a beating from Ukrainian forces that, at the start of the conflict, were …

China will be deglobalisation’s biggest loser

Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine has accelerated the division of the world into two blocs, one comprising the world’s democracies and the other its autocracies. This, in turn, has exposed the risks inherent in economic …

Nixon was right to gamble on China

With China currently the only country capable of unseating America as the leading global power, many in Washington may wish that US President Richard Nixon had never made his historic trip to China 50 years …