Leading Chinese scholars and foreign policy advisers have taken aim at the country’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomats and state media, saying their efforts to defend Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic are backfiring…. Read more »
Whereas Mikhail Gorbachev granted his people freedom and suffered a crushing personal defeat, Vladimir Putin is doing exactly the opposite, says a leading analyst. Putin, whose greatest fear is pressure… Read more »
China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned… Read more »
A journalist who had worked for some of China’s most powerful propaganda outlets has been jailed for 15 years after being accused of attacking the ruling Communist Party, AFP reports:… Read more »
“Overall, the dangers are much greater than the opportunities” in terms of the pandemic’s impact on liberty and democracy, says Stanford University’s Francis Fukuyama. “I do think there are opportunities… Read more »
The COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate the very weaknesses that have marked the democratic erosion of the last decade in most of the 137 developing and transformation countries examined in the… Read more »
The quality of democracy, market economy and governance reached its lowest level since 2004 when the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Transformation Index (BTI) was first published, it reported today. Limits on freedom… Read more »
The crisis atmosphere of the coronavirus response raises the risks of corruption as aid flows to graft-prone healthcare systems. But it’s not too late to put safeguards in place, writes Abigail… Read more »
The coronavirus has given rise to a flood of conspiracy theories, disinformation and propaganda, eroding public trust and undermining health officials in ways that could elongate and even outlast the… Read more »
The West has largely been in disarray in responding to autocratic disinformation on the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting calls for the U.S. to launch a “multilateral” initiative with like-minded democracies to… Read more »