In China’s Russian Princess: The Silent Wife of Chiang Ching-kuo, author Mark O’Neill tells the extraordinary and largely unknown story of how a factory worker named Faina Ipat’evna Vakhreva ended up married to the son of Chiang Kai-shek.

O’Neill lived in Taiwan from 1981 to 1983, when the island was still under martial law, and Chian Ching-kuo was president at the time. O’Neill said that his wife was never seen in public or on television, and little seemed to be known about her, which is what inspired him to research and write this book.

In a presentation at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, O’Neill recounted how Chiang and Vakhreva met while they were working, most unexpectedly, at the same heavy machinery plant in Yekaterinburg. She was born in Orsha in 1916 and fled war to the more favorably located Yekaterinburg. Chiang, meanwhile, had asked his father, Chiang Kai-shek, if he could study at Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow, where he excelled at learning Russian and drinking and dancing, among other things. 

After graduating, he attended a military academy in Leningrad, after which Stalin would not permit him to return to China, effectively holding him hostage in the Soviet Union. Chiang was exiled to a communal farm, then a labor camp, and finally Uralmash, the heavy machinery plant where he met his future wife. 

The couple did eventually leave for China, where they endured World War II and civil war before fleeing to Taiwan in 1949. It’s an altogether fascinating story, one worth diving into for all the dramatic details.

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China’s so-called ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy is not a new phenomenon but it has taken on a new dimension over the course of the pandemic, said Bloomberg reporter Peter Martin in a Zoom talk hosted by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong. 

“Some of China’s strengths have been highlighted; its ability to use its supply chains to produce massive amounts of vaccine and personal protective equipment, and to ship those around the world, kind of plays to a strength of the Chinese system,” said Martin. “But it’s paired with this insistence that once that aid is received, countries must be publicly grateful to Beijing and they should keep quiet about issues over which they might disagree.”

Martin, the author of China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, also discussed the origins of the Wolf Warrior ethos within the Communist Party, stemming from the inception of the party.

He explained that China’s first foreign minister, Zhou Enlai, “came up with the idea that Chinese diplomats should think and act like the People’s Liberation Army in civilian clothing, which meant of course that they would be unfailingly loyal to the Communist Party, they would show extraordinary discipline following orders and they would also develop what he called a ‘fighting spirit’ when China’s interests were challenged.”

Martin offered an overview of how China implemented this ethos in its foreign policy during its rise to power as the world’s second-largest economy, detailing a pivot from low-profile and conciliatory foreign diplomacy toward a more combative, defensive and provocative stance in recent years.

He said that the Wolf Warrior approach really gained momentum in 2017: “When China’s economy was stronger and larger than it had ever been, Xi Jinping was pushing the Belt and Road Initiative around the world, [China] opened a military base in Djibouti and was militarizing islands in the South China Sea.”

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Offering an overview of the relationship between China and Hong Kong, longtime public servant and politician Regina Ip, a member of the Executive Council and the Legislative Council, said that tensions between the mainland and the SAR were natural and to be expected. 

“The implementation of ‘One Country, Two Systems’ was never expected to be painless and trouble-free,” said Ip during a lunchtime talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. “It is a bold and innovative concept, but the accommodation of a small but radically different system within a large, continental-size economy, is bound to be fraught with tensions and challenges.”

Describing One Country, Two Systems as “a reunification project,” she offered a firsthand account of being present at the negotiations between Britain and China that preceded the Joint Declaration. She also reflected on her time as the Secretary for Security, when she was responsible for implementing Article 23 of the Basic Law, which led to widespread protests.

“It is really a great pity that my draft bill did not get enacted,” said Ip. “If it got enacted, it would not have been necessary for Beijing to do it for Hong Kong. I experienced firsthand how a legitimate constitutional requirement to protect national security was scuttled at that time because of widespread misunderstanding of our constitutional responsibility.”

Speaking about the National Security Law enacted in 2020, Ip was quick to defend it. 

“The implementation of the National Security Law is bound to impose certain new limits on Hong Kong people’s freedoms, but this trade-off between security and freedom is a universal phenomenon,” said Ip. “Hong Kong’s National Security Law remains much milder and more restrained than similar legislation in many other jurisdictions.”

She continued: “Our judiciary remains independent in reaching judicial decisions, and robust in upholding legal principles.”

Asked to comment on freedom of speech under the National Security Law, Ip did not seem concerned. 

“I think the freedom of speech — although some people are naturally a bit concerned whether what they say, what they do, what they write could infringe the National Security Law — I think the freedom of expression is still alive and well. I mean, [the FCC is] carrying on business as usual,” said Ip. “I think the concerns are understandable but I don’t think there is any really undue suppression of the expression of freedom in Hong Kong.”

As for Hong Kong’s future, Ip was wholeheartedly optimistic: “Our economic integration with the GBA will bring unprecedented opportunities to the people of Hong Kong.”

In conclusion, she said, “My personal opinion is that the future of Hong Kong cannot be brighter.”

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While some Western governments may look at China’s rise with anxiety and some with awe, many Chinese see their country’s growing prominence on the global stage as a return to a natural state of affairs. In his insightful historical survey Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World, journalist and author Michael Schuman examines how the Chinese view their past and their place in the world—and how that affects their present policies and ambitions.

In a lunch talk at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club moderated by FCC President Keith Richburg, Schuman said that his own experience of learning history had inspired the book.

“We are, I think, all in part shaped by our history and, more importantly, how we learn our history and how we perceive our history, or in some cases, misperceive our history,” said Schuman. 

“This creates a certain worldview — how we see ourselves, how we see other countries, and how we see that they fit into the greater world — and my sense of what’s going on now as we seem to be heading unfortunately into a new period of superpower competition, is that you can see these different worldviews playing a role in this unfolding and unfortunate competition.”

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For over 20 years, award-winning political cartoonist Harry Harrison has put pen to paper satirizing Hong Kong life and politics for the South China Morning Post. Having recently released a new book, Add Ink: Cartoon Chronicles of Life in Hong Kong, Harrison appeared at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club to discuss his career and the process of drawing cartoons. 

He explained that his creative process starts every day around 6pm, when he receives a list of news stories for the next day’s newspaper. He then drafts as many as ten cartoon ideas and sends them in for review.

“Every night, I think they hate the cartoons,” said Harrison. 

He said that his sense of humor stemmed from being a child whose family moved around a lot, which meant that he often encountered bullies at new schools.

 “I discovered humor, one-liners, would diffuse just about any situation and make you friends very quickly,” said Harrison.

FCC President Keith Richburg, who moderated the event, said that, in spite of all the negative developments for press freedom in Hong Kong, he felt that SCMP continuing to publish Harrison’s cartoons was a positive sign.

Harrison responded: “I’m continuing doing what I do assuming I’m treading the right side of whatever invisible red line there. As far as I know, that’s what’s happening and they know what my cartoons are about. Either that or I’m sitting on a powder keg.”

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China’s active approach to governing social welfare goals in the age of big tech has become a widely known attribute of the CCP’s modus operandi in recent years. However, according to a panel of experts who were invited to speak by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, this starkly contrasting approach to regulation in the West poses a myriad of uncertainties for some of its largest companies looking to raise capital in U.S. equity markets, and have stoked concerns of data privacy and national security risks for both the U.S. and Chinese governments. 

“The content regulation part of the fan and gaming economy is saying, ‘Hey, these types of activities we don’t want to see our youth engaging in, and we don’t want to see this driving our social media and getting the attention of society, we don’t think it’s healthy,’” said Rui Ma, founder of Tech Buzz China. “‘We don’t think it’s moral’ – you could say that is political, or you could say that also actually that’s been very evident from day one, this has been part of policy in general.”

Paul Triolo, head of the geo-technology practice at the Eurasia Group, highlighted the regulatory complexities for Chinese firms tapping foreign capital with U.S. stock listings: “How viable is the VIE structure from a U.S. regulatory point of view?”

“There needs to be more transparency in revealing regulatory risk, and also just emphasizing for U.S. investors that the VIE structure does not mean ownership in a Chinese company but in a shell company in the Cayman Islands,” said Triolo. “There’s a sense that there has to be some level of collaboration here so that you don’t disrupt financial markets, and big areas of business where there still tremendous amounts of dependence between the two economies.”

“The political climate doesn’t allow the current administration to be too close to China, so at the end of the day, I’m still very optimistic in terms of some of the biggest issues the world is truly facing, such as climate change and pandemic. It does require the world’s two largest economies to work together,” said Jennifer Zhu, executive chairman of the Commons Project. 

“The most important thing is that we’re not going to see many Chinese tech companies listing in the U.S., and they will choose domestic stock markets — and when I say domestic, I’m for the first time including Hong Kong as well.”

Watch the full discussion below: