There’s something interesting about these Bond films from the End of History. Wai Lin (Michelle Yeoh) refers to Bond as a “decadent agent of a corrupt Western power” and it’s a joke but a joke that the film feels no need to seriously repudiate or counter. There’s no later scene where Wai Lin is shown the importance of the West or capitalist democracy: there’s just an ironic acceptance that this is how China perceives the UK. It expresses a sense of confidence and security in capitalist liberal democracy that simply doesn’t exist anymore. Similarly, it’s interesting that the villain is a recognisable capitalist entity—Rupert Murdoch’s press—rather than a vaguely ideologically-motivated terrorist or a disgruntled agent of a ‘rogue state’.