Dali L Yang’s critique of China’s response in the early days of the Covid pandemic is thoroughgoing if academic, while poet Liao Yiwu’s account mixes fact and fiction to extraordinary effectCast your mind back, if you will, to the beginning of the pandemic, before the World Health Organization had coined the term Covid-19. Back then, it was the “Wuhan...

Protectionism in the form of tariffs is justified but the focus will be on whether Beijing retaliatesThe global economy is fragmenting and a new era of protectionism has dawned. Dreams by free marketeers of a frictionless world in which goods and services moved seamlessly from country to country are dead.That was the clear message from Joe Biden’s decision...

Friends and analysts say Lai’s tough upbringing in a working-class family has prepared him well for his next opponent: ChinaThe house itself is a modest, two-storey dwelling on a larger parcel of picturesque land. Mist floats down from the jungled hills behind, settling in the narrow lane that winds towards the rundown remnants of a mine.The only people...

Cannes film festival The 20-year failed romance between a singer and a dodgy music promoter becomes the vehicle for director Jia Zhangke’s latest exploration of China’s momentous recent historyAs so often in the past, Chinese film-maker Jia Zhangke swims down into an ocean of sadness and strangeness; his new film is a mysterious quest narrative with...

News avatars are proliferating on social media and experts say they will spread as the technology becomes more accessibleThe news presenter has a deeply uncanny air as he delivers a partisan and pejorative message in Mandarin: Taiwan’s outgoing president, Tsai Ing-wen, is as effective as limp spinach, her period in office beset by economic under performance,...

Yonaguni is a tourist hotspot – but its location just 100km from Taiwan means residents must wrestle with the creeping militarisation of their homeIn the minds of many Japanese people, Yonaguni is a sleepy paradise of crystal-clear sea and pristine beaches, where miniature horses graze on clifftops and empty roads dissect fields of sugar cane; where...