Starmer must wake up - Xi is not going to compromise

If anyone needed a China reality check, the confidence and pride of its regime have been made plain by the sentencing of 45 democracy activists in Hong Kong to prison terms of between four and 10 years for organising a primary election.

- MICHAEL SHERIDAN

The democrats were found guilty of “subversion” under a national security law imposed to bring the former British colony under the vague but absolutist powers that reign over the rest of the people’s republic. The three judges, all trained in the English legal tradition, had no qualms about the conduct of a case that obeyed the dictum of China’s “Red Emperor” Xi Jinping, that “north, south, east and west” the Communist Party commands all.

It could hardly have been better timed as a demonstration of his iron will. This week Xi bestrode the world stage at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in the dying days of the Biden administration, as president-elect Donald Trump scowled in the wings. Britain has a walk-on part in this drama, by virtue of its links with Hong Kong and its anxious bet on economic growth through business with China. So it was a tale of two emperors when Xi met Keir Starmer in Rio not long after Xi’s final meeting with Joe Biden. Which one was real?