Recent writing - écrits récents
Starmer, Jimmy Lai and the eternal dream of China trade
[These comments were supplied to BBC News Chinese 2 February 2026]
The UK is isolated. Divorced from Europe with reconciliation a mere distant hope, and in a shaky, undependable alliance with the USA, Starmer's Britain has nowhere to go. Faced with the immediate threat of Russia, Starmer and his advisors have chosen in desperation to turn to China. But, what does the UK have to offer China? Apart from its rapidly dwindling cultural and moral capital, the UK government has few cards to play. And Steamer's softly softly, lily-livered approach on human rights will not and cannot work.
The UK government's excuse for its so-called pragmatism –which in fact is seen as little more than servile weakness by Xi's government – is economic opportunity. But, there were no big gains commercially from Starmer's trip and there never will be.
The Chinese authorities' lifting visa bans on UK parliamentarians was a strict minimum in terms of political gesturing. However, the CPC's dismissive attitude towards the UK is plain to see in its obstinate position on Jimmy Lai and Hong Kong human rights in general. The UK's failure to press CPC to release Jimmy Lai combined with giving in on the new Chinese embassy project in London, show the weakness of the UK government in the face of the Xi presidency. The off-hand manner in which Starmer and his delegation were received in China on this occasion revealed blatant contempt on the part of the CPC. Happily, Starmer doesn't seem to understand the concept of face, otherwise he'd be obliged to acknowledge that his was quite simply thrown on the floor.
Starmer's advisors need to wake up and come clean: the Chinese government is hostile to the UK and all it claims to stand for. China is a key ally of Russia in its war in Ukraine, and has shown its aggressive and predatory nature in multiple ways around the globe over the past few years. In the UK alone, never have the Chinese authorities' espionage activities been so virulent; likewise its intimidation of members of the Chinese British and Hong Kong Chinese British community in the UK. Even if there is little that the UK can do now to bring pressure to bear on what happens in Hong Kong, the least it could do would be to protect those living within its own frontiers.
[These comments were supplied to BBC News Chinese 2 February 2026]
Starmer, Jimmy Lai et le rêve éternel du commerce avec la Chine
2 févr. 2026
Lisez le texte complet sur mon blog/Le Club de Mediapart.
[These comments were supplied to BBC News Chinese 2 February 2026]
The UK is isolated. Divorced from Europe with reconciliation a mere distant hope, and in a shaky, undependable alliance with the USA, Starmer's Britain has nowhere to go. Faced with the immediate threat of Russia, Starmer and his advisors have chosen in desperation to turn to China. But, what does the UK have to offer China? Apart from its rapidly dwindling cultural and moral capital, the UK government has few cards to play. And Steamer's softly softly, lily-livered approach on human rights will not and cannot work.
The UK government's excuse for its so-called pragmatism –which in fact is seen as little more than servile weakness by Xi's government – is economic opportunity. But, there were no big gains commercially from Starmer's trip and there never will be.
The Chinese authorities' lifting visa bans on UK parliamentarians was a strict minimum in terms of political gesturing. However, the CPC's dismissive attitude towards the UK is plain to see in its obstinate position on Jimmy Lai and Hong Kong human rights in general. The UK's failure to press CPC to release Jimmy Lai combined with giving in on the new Chinese embassy project in London, show the weakness of the UK government in the face of the Xi presidency. The off-hand manner in which Starmer and his delegation were received in China on this occasion revealed blatant contempt on the part of the CPC. Happily, Starmer doesn't seem to understand the concept of face, otherwise he'd be obliged to acknowledge that his was quite simply thrown on the floor.
Starmer's advisors need to wake up and come clean: the Chinese government is hostile to the UK and all it claims to stand for. China is a key ally of Russia in its war in Ukraine, and has shown its aggressive and predatory nature in multiple ways around the globe over the past few years. In the UK alone, never have the Chinese authorities' espionage activities been so virulent; likewise its intimidation of members of the Chinese British and Hong Kong Chinese British community in the UK. Even if there is little that the UK can do now to bring pressure to bear on what happens in Hong Kong, the least it could do would be to protect those living within its own frontiers.
[These comments were supplied to BBC News Chinese 2 February 2026]
Starmer, Jimmy Lai et le rêve éternel du commerce avec la Chine
2 févr. 2026
Lisez le texte complet sur mon blog/Le Club de Mediapart.
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How did China become China? And where is it leading us? We talk as if it had always existed: eternal China with its 5,000 years of uninterrupted history. But the name ‘China’ was first used by sixteenth-century Europeans, and its Chinese equivalent, Zhongguo, only gained currency in the mid-1800s.
China Imagined is a thoughtful exploration of the idea of China, from the naming and mapping of its territory and peoples to the creation and rise of the modern nation-state. China’s early history describes a multilingual space, ruled by a homogeneous elite with its own minority culture—a far cry from Maoism’s national mass culture, or Xi Jinping’s state-controlled digital society today.
In this book I trace this complex, diverse entity’s evolution since the Opium Wars into a China made in ‘our’ image. Today, it is a great power integral to the global system, whether it comes to climate change, security or inequality. Given this rapid convergence with the West, Xi’s China holds up a mirror to our own nations. Trump’s America, Putin’s Russia and post-Brexit Europe all betray echoes of ’the Chinese Dream’.
‘This richly provocative text, written with verve and urgency, has something to say to all scholars of China, past and present. Its broad reach and moral grasp enable penetrating questions about exactly what it is we think we are studying when we study China.’
Craig Clunas, Professor Emeritus of the History of Art, University of Oxford, and author of Art in China
‘If there’s one word to describe Gregory Lee’s book, it’s iconoclastic. Bristling with ideas and insights leavened by his vast knowledge and understanding of ‘things Chinese’, this sweeping account lays the ground for a new reading of both China and the Western imagination of it.’
Michael Dutton, Professor of Politics, Goldsmiths University of London and author of Beijing Time
‘An erudite and trenchant analysis of a political, cultural, social, ethnic, and linguistic world that has taken many shapes under several different historical pressures. Each chapter contains a wealth of information, presented clearly and vividly. One could not wish for a better guide and interpreter than Gregory Lee.’
David Palumbo-Liu, Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University
Nationalism Unbound: China, Hong Kong and Brexit through the Prism of Castoriadis
3 January 2020
Castoriadis, wrote very little that directly dealt with Chinese politics. What is striking, however, is how with a time-lag of between ten and twenty years, Castoriadis's analysis of the Soviet Union may be mapped onto Mao's China. Even today looking at Xi Jinping's China the insights of Castoriadis ring true.
An English Poet from the Liverpool Cantonese Borderlands — Jennifer Lee Tsai
2 November 2019
There is no way I could not like Jennifer Lee Tsai’s poetry, a poetry that rises like mist off the mingling tides of the rivers Mersey and Pearl. Her poetry is written out of lived experience, and so rings true. Its “Chineseness” seems natural, woven-in, not forced, not precious or ostentatious. But Tsai’s is above all a personal and ‘local’ poetry —in the best senses of both terms.
2 November 2019
There is no way I could not like Jennifer Lee Tsai’s poetry, a poetry that rises like mist off the mingling tides of the rivers Mersey and Pearl. Her poetry is written out of lived experience, and so rings true. Its “Chineseness” seems natural, woven-in, not forced, not precious or ostentatious. But Tsai’s is above all a personal and ‘local’ poetry —in the best senses of both terms.
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