Ian Williams is a London-based author and journalist
His new book, ‘Vampire State: The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Economy’, published by Birlinn, is now available
This is the terrifying story of China’s vampire economy
State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world’s most populous nation – nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the Middle Kingdom.
Rules and agreements mean little. Markets are distorted, statistics fabricated, foreign industrial secrets and technology systematically stolen. Companies and entrepreneurs, at home and abroad, are bullied – often with the collusion of the victims themselves. The Party is in every boardroom and lab, with businesses thriving or dying at its will.
All this is part of realising President Xi Jinping’s ambition of China becoming the world’s pre-eminent economic, technological and military power.
Latest reviews
The Financial Times, 28 October 2024
This is a timely and important read. Williams’s sceptical prognostications about China’s economic future are hard to argue against, particularly as the state is right now struggling to revive “animal spirits” that have weakened, in part, because of President Xi Jinping’s recent clampdown on wealth-creators and tech firms. Still, with China’s dominance in emerging technologies, critical minerals and green industries, it is also difficult to write it off
The Bunker podcast with Gavin Esler
8 October 2024
China’s economy has been described as “unsustainable” after its model of massive growth begins to fail. Ian Williams talks Gavin Esler through what's changed – and whether the problems can be solved
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Frontline from Times Radio, 31 October 2024
‘Many nationalists in Beijing regard the rightful borders as the Xi dynasty borders which include the large chunk of what is modern Russia.’
Russia-China alliance is a ‘marriage of convenience’ as President Xi-Jinping has his eyes on Russian territory, says Ian Williams, journalist and author of ‘Vampire State. The rise and fall of the Chinese Economy’.
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The Stand with Eamon Dunphy, 31 October 2024
Journalist and author Ian Williams joins Eamon to talk about his new book VAMPIRE STATE - THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CHINESE ECONOMY published by Birlinn
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New Books Network, 27 September 2024
State capitalism. Socialism with Chinese characteristics. A socialist market economy. There have been numerous descriptions of the Chinese economy. However, none seems to capture the predatory, at times surreal, nature of the economy of the world’s most populous nation – nor the often bruising and mind-bending experience of doing business with the Middle Kingdom
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Henry Jackson Society, 24 September 2024
Joined by HJS Executive Director Alan Mendoza, the two discussed how China’s predatory economic model - driven by state control, market manipulation, and industrial espionage - ultimately undermines its own long-term growth.
Available from Birlinn, Amazon, Waterstones, Bookshop.org and all good bookshops
Ian’s last book, ‘The Fire of the Dragon: China’s New Cold War’ was a finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing. Great news in itself, but also testament to just how important understanding China - and the threat from the Chinese Communist Party - has become.
Beijing is already waging a more complex, broader and more dangerous cold war than the old one with the Soviet Union. And it is intensifying …
Under President Xi Jinping, China’s global ambitions have taken a dangerous new turn. Bullying and intimidation have replaced diplomacy, and trade, investment, even big-spending tourists and students have been weaponised. Beijing has strengthened its alliance with Vladimir Putin, supporting Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, and brooks no criticism of its own flagrant human rights violations against the Uyghur population in western China.
Western leaders say they don’t want a cold war with China, but it’s a little too late for that. Beijing is already waging a more complex, broader and more dangerous cold war than the old one with the Soviet Union. And it is intensifying.
This thought-provoking and alarming book examines this new cold war’s many fronts – from Taiwan and the South China Sea to the Indian frontier, the Arctic and cyberspace. In doing so it proclaims the clear and sobering message that we must open our eyes to the reality of China’s rise and its ruthless bid for global dominance
A second, updated edition of Fire of the Dragon was published in March 2024 and can be ordered from Birlinn, Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org
Praise for Fire of the Dragon
‘The scales definitely fell from my eyes when I read The Fire of the Dragon by Ian Williams recently. This well respected journalist lays out a compelling case for why successive policies towards China have been unhelpful and how we are all going to be affected more dramatically by issues emanating from the country. In his opinion, we all need to get wiser, and fast’
Martha Lane Fox, president of the British Chambers of
Commerce, chancellor of the Open University
‘The most important book I’ve read this year. Eye opening’
— Matt Ridley, biologist, author of Red Queen, Genome, Rational Optimist, and Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid
‘Really, really good, a fascinating book to read … Some of it is pretty scary stuff’
Eamon Dunphy, The Stand with Eamon Dunphy Podcast
‘Reading this superb book by the brilliant @ianwill. I recommend it very highly’
— Benedict Rogers, Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch
‘A fascinating, accessible guide to our new geopolitical reality’
James Wilson, Tortoise Media, 11 August 2022
‘In May the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the Biden Administration was not seeking a new Cold War with China. Ian Williams thinks it’s a little too late for that. In this fascinating new book the former foreign correspondent, who’s covered China for Channel 4 and NBC News, asserts that the West is already engaged in a new Cold War with Xi Jinping’s regime, and that economic integration and Beijing’s arms buildup make this one far more dangerous than our frozen stand-off with the Soviets. While a decent portion of The Fire of the Dragon is understandably focused on the dispute over Taiwan, the book also covers China’s movements in the arctic, its cyber capabilities, its frosty relationship with India and its ever-closer friendship with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. A fascinating, accessible guide to our new geopolitical reality.’
‘Few trade books in the world today cover the length and breadth of China’s rise, its foreign policy ambitions, its domestic challenges, and its political priorities as does Ian Williams’ 2022 book, ‘The Fire of the Dragon’.
Shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize, a prestigious award for political writing in the UK, the book presents detailed accounts of many key issues plaguing the Indo-Pacif ic regional and global orders today –from the security concerns surrounding Taiwan and the South China Sea, to China’s massive carbon emissions, and to the threat of North Korean aggression –all through the lens of Williams’ visits and conversations as a long-time journalist and writer. Moreover, each chapter is seeped in historical narrative, especially the ones on Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and the writing style is such that there is a consistent back-and-forth between the contexts of the present and the past.’
Anushka Saxena, Indian Public Policy Review
Previous book
‘Ian Williams has written a superb and deeply informed study on containing a technological totalitarian state. It is a chilling reminder to all who believe in the rule of law and an open society of China's present threats to our way of life'
Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes), last governor of Hong Kong and current Chancellor of Oxford University
Recent media
The Daily Mail, 6 November 2024
With a plump, barrel-shaped body and eight stubby legs, the water bear may not be a beauty – but it is almost indestructible.
The creatures, also known as ‘tardigrades’ and measuring less than one millimetre long, can survive being frozen, boiled, exposed to the vacuum of outer space or whacked with X-rays at a dose 500 times that which would kill a person.
So when Chinese scientists recently claimed to have combined tardigrade genes with human DNA – to produce a human gene resistant to radiation – it set alarms ringing in the West.
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The Spectator American edition, November 2024
The term ‘old friend of the Chinese people’ has a sentimental, almost innocent ring, but the Chinese Communist party (CCP) regards it as a job description. It is a label used to describe foreigners looked on favourably by the CCP, but it also carries obligations. ‘Old friends’ are expected to be sympathetic and further the interests of the party. ‘China will never forget their old friends,’ said President Xi Jinping when he met Henry Kissinger, the most famous holder of that title for his supposed pragmatism toward Beijing, last year.
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The Spectator, 25 September 2024
It was presented as a bold stimulus to boost China’s ailing economy – but while it excited stock markets in Asia, Western economists were underwhelmed. At a rare press conference in Beijing on Tuesday, the usually gnomic governor of the People’s Bank of China, Pan Gongsheng, unveiled a range of measures designed to ‘support the stable growth of China’s economy’ and see that it hits this year’s target of five per cent growth
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The Spectator, 21 September 2024
It would be tough for any country to lose 7-0 in a World Cup qualifier, but when the losing team is China, and the thrashing is at the hands of arch-rival Japan, it is deeply humiliating. The defeat was ‘shameful’, according to an editorial last week in the Global Times, a state-controlled tabloid, while the Shanghai-based Oriental Sports Daily called it ‘disastrous’, adding: ‘When the taste of bitterness reaches its extreme, all that is left is numbness.’ Some commentators called for the men’s team to be disbanded, bemoaning that a country of 1.4 billion people could not find 11 men capable of winning a match.
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CAPX, The Centre for Policy Studies, 16 September 2024
Xi has portrayed himself as ‘supreme reformer’, the heir to Deng Xiaoping, even though his principal achievement since coming to power in 2012 is to put Deng’s reforms sharply into reverse. The Chinese economy is in trouble, more so than is commonly understood. Growth continues to slow, the property bubble continues to burst, with slumping sales and prices, youth unemployment is soaring,and inward investment is plunging amid growing signs of social stress, including a spike in protests
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The Spectator, 7 September 2024
Elon Musk revels in the role of ‘free speech absolutist’. Last week, for instance, he jumped to the defence of Pavel Durov, the head of the messaging and social media app Telegram, after he was arrested by the French police. But while Musk claims he is a defender of free speech, he frequently kowtows to the Chinese Communist party, for whom the concept is alien.
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The Sunday Times, 21 July 2024
‘If economic growth was measured by the output of empty slogans, then China would surely be booming again. There will be “high-quality development” and “innovation vitality” to “comprehensibly deepen reform” and achieve “national rejuvenation on all fronts”, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared at the end of a key meeting last week aimed at rebooting the country’s ailing economy’
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Daily Mail, 29 October 2022
The scene is like something from a horror film. A horde of terrified shoppers battling a crew of uniformed guards, desperate to escape the building in which they have been locked.
It looks like hysteria after a terror attack — yet this is footage from a Saturday afternoon at an Ikea store in Shanghai, following an announcement that a Covid case had been traced to the shop.
The Ikea lockdown took place in August after a single shopper had been exposed to a six-year-old boy with an asymptomatic dose of Covid-19. Those unable to escape were barricaded inside for four hours before being bussed to quarantine.
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The Sunday Times. 31 July 2022
China is being swept by a new kind of protest — stealthy, rapid and difficult for the country’s communist leaders to suppress. Tens of thousands of homebuyers are withholding mortgage payments on their unfinished homes, fearing their money is being stolen by property developers …
Globally, China is increasingly overextended and unloved. It is all a long way from the vaunting promise of the “China century” — which in 2015 motivated David Cameron to raise a pint with a visiting Xi Jinping in an attempt to make Britain China’s “best friend in the West”.
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The Sunday Times, 17 July 2022
China’s first homegrown narrow-body passenger jet recently completed its debut test flight, a triumph of local innovation, according to China’s communist leaders. It is better described as a stolen plane, developed by plundering secrets from western aerospace companies on a breathtaking scale …
… it is only the latest example of efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to spy on the world in an attempt to stay ahead of its rivals in technology, industry, politics and power. The threat is enormous — but one that Britain in particular has hardly begun to grasp.
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The Spectator cover story, 28 May 2022
Nowhere is watching Russia’s faltering attempt to crush its democratic neighbour more closely than Taiwan. The Ukraine war is seen in Taipei as a demonstration of how determined resistance and the ability to rally a global alliance of supporters can frustrate a much larger and heavily armed rival.
The Spectator, 10 July 2021
One of the first places Professor Stephen Toope visited as Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University was the Chinese embassy in London. He posed for photographs with ambassador Liu Xiaoming and the two men discussed furthering the ‘golden era’ of China-UK relations. Shortly after that 2017 meeting, Toope told Xinhua, China’s state news agency: ‘There will be more opportunities to engage actively with China, a country with an extraordinarily growing influence which a university like Cambridge must pay attention to …
The Novels
Beijing Smog
‘A biting satire of corruption and repression in modern China.
Ian Williams has reported on China for more than 20 years and his debut novel has a lot of fun exploring the cynicism of the country’s Kafkaesque system’
Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post
Zero Days
‘Williams’s excellent sequel to 2017’s Beijing Smog …
… (a) tale of a privacy-destroying big tech spying empire, where “connected” household devices can become savage weapons’
Publishers Weekly
The (e) box set
Now available - Beijing Smog and Zero Days together as an (e) box set. The full misadventures of reluctant cyber sleuth Chuck Drayton
