Ian Williams is a London-based author and journalist
His new book, ‘The Fire of the Dragon: China’s New Cold War’, published by Birlinn, is now available
I am delighted that Fire of the Dragon 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.
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‘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.’
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 Articles
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The Sunday Times, 30 March 2024
‘The warning was chilling: there is an “urgent risk” that Chinese hackers are installing bugs in western computer systems that are capable of destroying or disrupting critical services, including water, energy, transport and communications.’
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The Spectator, 28 March 2024
‘Dangling the promise of the China market has been a familiar mantra from Chinese leaders ever since the country began on the road of ‘reform and opening’ four and a half decades ago. It is a mantra that has bewitched the boardrooms of Western companies, frequently leading to the suspension of rational business judgements as executives were transfixed by the promise of selling a billion of whatever widgets they were peddling.’
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Spectator, 22 February 2024
‘This week a security deal was announced that could see Chinese police on the streets of Hungary. Despite this, there was remarkably little fanfare about the agreement – just a few vague details in public statements made days after the deal was signed between the interior ministers of the two countries. Yet is represents another troubling challenge by Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orban to both Nato and the EU, of which he remains an increasingly troublesome member.’
The Sunday Times, 6 August 2023
‘Senior commanders have vanished or been found dead. Rumours of corruption and even the possible sale of military secrets swirl. President Xi Jinping has installed new generals at the top while issuing ever more strident demands for absolute loyalty amid a surge in war-like rhetoric’
The Spectator, 29 July 2023
‘This is the week that James Cleverly planned to be in Beijing to ‘engage, robustly and also constructively’ with China’s communist leaders. But the Foreign Secretary put his trip on hold because the man he planned to engage went missing’
The Sunday Times, 30 October 2022
Zero. That is now the sum total of women at the centre of power in Xi Jinping’s China. There are no women in the Chinese Communist Party’s 24-strong politburo and none in the seven-person standing committee. The top party bodies now consist entirely of middle-aged men, picked for their blind loyalty to the leader. How have they got away with it?
In a spectacle to warm the hearts of Iran’s clerics, the all-male Chinese elite was on parade at the party congress last weekend that saw Xi grab an unprecedented third term as leader, paving the way for him to rule China for life. The men-only line-up is indicative of a wider malaise — Xi’s decade in power has seen the gender gap widen, while feminists have been muzzled and high-profile cases of alleged assault and harassment have gone unpunished.
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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
