Isabel Hilton

London

Contributing Editor at Prospect Magazine

Contributing Editor,Prospect. Founder China Dialogue Trust. Visiting prof KCL. I follow China, climate change geopolitics. The usual disclaimers apply.

Articles

What does China really think about Trump? They know about humiliation and won’t take it from him

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Isabel Hilton

Last week, Mao Ning, head of China’s foreign ministry information department, posted a blurry black-and-white clip of a moment in history. In 1953, Chairman Mao made a defiant speech of resistance to what he called US aggression in Korea. Kim Il-sung, the North Korean leader and founder of the Kim dynasty, now in its third generation, had invaded US-backed South Korea.
What Even Is Trump’s China Strategy?

2 weeks ago | chinafile.com | Wendy Cutler |Michael Hirson |Lizzi C. Lee |Isabel Hilton

When it comes to China, there are several different factions pushing the Trump Administration in different directions: MAGA nationalists who favor economic, cultural, and possibly military warfare against China; more old-fashioned Republicans who simply distrust the Chinese Communist Party; and the tech elite, especially Trump advisor Elon Musk, who has huge investments in China and doesn’t seem to want cross-Pacific tensions.
The flaw in Trump’s ‘genius’ China strategy

1 month ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Isabel Hilton

In the blizzard of brave but possibly doomed efforts to predict what Donald Trump will do next, two stand out. One says that in this new age of strongman politics, Trump will settle for a grand bargain that abandons the Pacific to China and Europe to Russia while the United States revives the Monroe Doctrine and runs the Americas as its fiefdom.
Could Trump strike a bargain with Beijing?

2 months ago | theneweuropean.co.uk | Isabel Hilton

Beijing’s response to Donald Trump’s opening tariff salvo last week was both calm and well prepared. “Nobody wins,” the foreign ministry spokesperson wearily repeated, “in a trade war.” China quietly burnished its image as a law-abiding and responsible global player by moving to file a complaint against the United States at the virtually paralysed World Trade Organisation. Nobody trembled at that move, but the moment brought back memories of Xi Jinping’s only personal appearance at Davos.
Taiwan’s frontline dilemma

2 months ago | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Isabel Hilton

In a deep tunnel driven into a granite hillside, a group of soldiers crouch around a heavy field gun. They are in a fortified emplacement on the island of Greater Kinmen, two miles off the Chinese coastal province of Fujian, and their attention seems fixed on a target that lies just across the narrow stretch of calm blue sea. A little below the gun emplacement a row of rusting tanks sits on a heavily fortified beach. The guns in the tunnel are real, if antique.
How Covid changed China

Jan 23, 2025 | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Isabel Hilton

On 23rd January 2020, China imposed a lockdown on Wuhan, a city of 11m people, in an effort to control an outbreak of a novel corona virus, Covid-19. The country had experience of such events: in November 2002, a virus that originated in bats had jumped to humans in Guangdong Province after travelling through a civet cat, an animal often sold in live markets to a public that believes that eating wild animals is good for the health.
Could Trump undo Biden’s climate legacy?

Jan 20, 2025 | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Isabel Hilton

December is not the best month in the Polish city of Katowice. Unless you are a fan of coal-driven heavy industry, the town’s appeal is not obvious. In December 2018, the smell of coal that hung in the air was a bleak reminder to delegates of the Cop24 climate conference, hosted that year in the city, of the scale of the task. There was a bright spot, however: a large delegation from the United States who styled themselves the “We Are Still In” coalition.
Prince Andrew may have been a victim of Chairman Mao’s ‘magic weapon’ | Isabel Hilton

Dec 14, 2024 | theguardian.com | Isabel Hilton

The late Chairman Mao, China’s former supreme leader, once called the United Front Work Department (UFWD) one of the three “magic weapons” of the Chinese Communist party (CCP). That the other two were the People’s Liberation Army and the party’s propaganda arm signals how central the UFWD has been to the CCP’s efforts for nearly a century. The operation involving Andrew must count as one of its more unusual achievements. The UFWD’s job began as neutralising potentially hostile actors at home.
台湾の電力が足りない──“世界の半導体工場”が直面するジレンマ

Dec 5, 2024 | wired.jp | Isabel Hilton

台湾の首都台北から南西約80km、台湾トップクラスの大学が集結する地区の近くに戦略的に配置され、総敷地面積1,471ヘクタールの広さを誇る新竹科学園区（サイエンスパーク）は、台湾屈指のテクノロジー企業群のインキュベーターとして世界的に知られている。1980年に開園したこのサイエンスパークは、水田だった土地を台湾政府が買い上げて整備し、先進的な研究と工業生産が融合するテクノロジーハブを築くことを目指して創設された。現在、台湾に数カ所あるサイエンスパークには、併せて1,100を超える企業が入居し、32万1,000人が働き、年間約1,270億ドル（約20兆円）の収益を生み出している。その成長過程で、新竹サイエンスパークの工業技術研究院（ITRI）は、のちに世界をリードする企業へと成長するスタートアップを多数輩出してきた。そのうちの1社であるTSMC（台湾積体電路製造）は、世界の最先端ICチップの90％以上を生産している。企業全体を合わせると、台湾勢が占める半導体製造の世界市場シェアは68％にもなる。...
Why Donald Trump is so bad for the climate

Nov 9, 2024 | prospectmagazine.co.uk | Isabel Hilton

Just days before the opening of this year’s COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, and towards the end of a year marked by climate disasters and the highest global temperatures in human history, analysts, activists, investors and political leaders are scrambling to respond to the imminent return of Donald Trump to the White House. Here is a man who calls climate change a “hoax,” and who will once again have the power to undermine national and global efforts to avoid climate catastrophe.