Confucius, China, and the Question of Influence: A Reflection Six Years On

 In the second half of one of my 2020 lockdown pieces, ( Churchill and the World as a Struggle against Totalitarianism (link opens in new tab)) I wrote about China’s influence in the UK — particularly through its education system and the pressures placed on Chinese students studying abroad. 

At the time, my concerns were framed in fairly robust terms: ideological conformity, academic freedom under threat, and the long reach of a totalitarian state. Looking back now, six years later, I can see that my instinct was not simply geopolitical – it was closer to Confucius than I realised. 

Churchill, Confucius, and the Question of How We Judge the Past

Today, on VE Day, I’ve been reflecting on how we might look at Churchill — and leadership more broadly — through a Confucian perspective that asks not for perfection, but for the fulfilment of one’s role with integrity, courage, and a sense of the moment.

That reflection is outlined here. It’s not about defending or condemning Churchill, but about asking a deeper question: How should we judge the past, and what do we owe to those who carried burdens we can barely imagine?

A review of Victor Sebestyen’s 'Weimar Germany: Death of a Democracy'

 

(Source: The Spectator, Caroline Moorhead's review of Victor Sebestyen’s book )

In this week’s Spectator, a review of Victor Sebestyen’s Weimar Germany: Death of a Democracy offers a sobering reminder of how swiftly a modern society can drift from openness to authoritarianism. What struck me most was not the familiar litany of crises — inflation, humiliation, political violence — but the way Sebestyen reconstructs the texture of the years themselves, the sense of people living through turbulence without quite recognising its direction. It is a story that feels uncomfortably close to our own times, precisely because it shows how the erosion of a society and its shared values rarely announces itself until the ground has already given way.