Chinese President Hu Jintao warned today that imitating Western political systems would lead his nation to “a dead end”.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek, famous for using her beauty, charm and fluent English to lobby Washington to help China fight the Japanese and later the Chinese Communists, has died in New York at the age of 105, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said today.

Hong Kong officials who are considering swapping a statue of King George VI for one of a Chinese revolutionary were today accused of making a misguided attempt to erase the past.