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Hello and welcome to Chinese Whispers with me, Cindy Yu. Every episode, I'll be talking to

journalists, experts and long-time China

watchers about the latest in Chinese politics, society and more. There'll be a smattering

of history to catch you up on the background knowledge and some context as well. How do the

Chinese see these issues? 2020 is drawing to a close, but none of us will forget this year anytime soon.

For China, has it also been a watershed year?

As I wrote recently on the Spectator's Coffee House blog,

you don't need a Pew survey to know that China has lost much goodwill around the world.

Western rhetoric hasn't been so hawkish in a very long time,

with talk of a Second Cold War

gracing commentary pages and calls to decouple with supply chains. Lost in the noise is what China

thinks about the latest development. Has it recognised a global shift and what is the leadership

doing about it? I'm joined today by one of London's leading experts on China, Dr. Yu Jiao, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.

Jia, thank you so much for joining.

Well, Cindy, I'm delighted to be joining with you today as well. Thank you for inviting me.

And I think we have to say that we're not related. We're not related, but we share the spelling on the same surname.

So first of all, I guess let's talk about China's relations with the rest of the world first

before turning our gaze into domestically.

Sitting where we are in the UK, we're both in London.

It's impossible not to feel, I think, something has changed.

Can you, would you agree with that, first of all, and also secondly, how irrevocable

...