WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Thursday that the United States would punish China if President Xi Jinping chose to give military aid to Russia for the war in Ukraine, where Russian forces have killed thousands of civilians. “We’re concerned that they’re considering directly assisting Russia with military equipment to use in Ukraine,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference in Washington. “President Biden will be speaking to President Xi tomorrow and will make clear that China will bear responsibility for any actions it takes to…
Day: March 17, 2022
Why Do Many Chinese Sympathize With Russia in the Ukraine Conflict?
Advertisement The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has caused a cyber war among Chinese netizens. In polls on several Chinese websites, generally about 40 percent of Chinese people remain neutral, about 30 percent support Russia, and about 20 percent support Ukraine. These sentiments reflect the social basis for the Chinese government’s abstention in the U.N. General Assembly vote on a resolution condemning Russia. Those Chinese who support Ukraine, and see Russia as an invader, have strong legal reasons to do so. They recognize Ukraine as a sovereign state, and that…
Federal Reserve Walks a Tightrope Between Inflation and Recession
In an interview, James D. Hamilton, professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, and a leading expert on the economic effects of oil shocks, said they had “made major contributions to recessions over many decades.” At current oil price and supply levels, the effects of the Russian war “are fairly manageable for the American economy.” But Professor Hamilton pointed out that Russia’s oil, which amounts to about 10 percent of world production, could not be easily replaced if totally cut off — an outcome that he does…
What Doomed China’s Much-Anticipated Property Market Reform Plan?
Advertisement The 2022 National People’s Congress surprised many China observers – not because of what happened, but because of what did not happen. The Chinese government failed to approve a property tax. The Government Work Report did not even mention property market reform. After the real estate sector’s structural crisis in 2021, reforming the property market seems inevitable, and implementing a property tax is the first step toward property market reform. In an essay in Qiushi, the official theoretical journal of the Chinese Communist Party, top leader Xi Jinping singled…
China property shares soar on Beijing stimulus, despite continued debt crisis
Chinese property shares have soared for a second day thanks to a decision by Beijing’s leadership to throw the country’s struggling real estate sector a lifeline amid growing pressures at home and abroad. Despite a downgrade for China’s third-biggest property developer Sunac on Thursday, stocks in the sector lifted again in Hong Kong and the mainland thanks to an announcement by vice premier Liu He, China’s economic tsar, on Wednesday that the government needed to reduce risks in the industry. In a sign of the heightened concern inside China’s Communist…