The Little Country That Stood Up To China

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks fluent English, yet there is one word he hasn’t heard often enough to master: “No.”

The Chinese Party leader presides over a global Communist colossus that has continued growing stronger as political leaders in the United States — but for a four-year interregnum between Democratic administrations — have essentially embraced managed decline. China wields its economic, diplomatic, demographic, and military power to bully and cajole anyone who gets in its way — apparently with unflagging success. Google censors search results at its command. YouTube blames the mass deletion of comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party on a mysterious “error.” Hollywood edits both forthcoming and decades-old blockbusters in obedience to Chinese tastes. Even a tech billionaire like the part-owner of the NBA Golden State Warriors, Chamath Palihapitiya, is so subservient to Beijing that he makes excuses for its persecution of the nation’s Uighur Muslims, saying the “very ugly truth” is that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uighurs.”