EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE, by Ian Williams

In his new book chillingly titled Every Breath You Take, Ian Williams, who was Channel 4 News foreign correspondent for Asia from 1995 to 2006, graphically explains why we should be wary of the world’s most dangerous and fastest growing superpower. China’s reputation has been heavily tarnished of late by the fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the attitude of officials has vacillated between on the surface cooperation and cover-ups. But in all the uncertainty one thing is clear, China has emerged from the pandemic stronger than before. The fear that was generated by the virus outbreak has allowed the totalitarian state to wield its internal power in new and frankly terrifying ways. It has even used the fear stoked by the virus as a smoke screen in order to make multiple arrests in Hong Kong and tear up the ‘one country two systems’ agreement, confident that every other government in the world would be so busy with its own problems that the deed would pass unnoticed, and it did, for a while. Other aspects of life in China are also passing unnoticed, and the warning in this book is clear. If we do not make more of an effort to curtail China’s influence, it will be too difficult to stem the tide of her insidious ambitions…