Day: April 6, 2024

“As the world’s two largest economies, we have a duty to our own countries and to the world to responsibly manage our complex relationship and to cooperate and show leadership on addressing pressing global challenges,” Yellen said ahead of the meeting with Li, according to the department. “While we have more to do, I believe that, over the past year, we have put our bilateral relationship on more stable footing. This has not meant ignoring our differences or avoiding tough conversations. It has meant understanding that we can only make…

No one ever told me how to learn to accept peacefully the loss of a life, especially of a loved one. I lost my elder brother to heart disease in June 2021. After 10 hours of a scheduled surgery, he ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) for 30 days, unconscious. That was a month full of anxiety, worry and fear, driving the family to the brink. The Covid-19 quarantine policy made everything more complicated. We couldn’t visit. All we could do was wait at home for the hospital’s…

A two-decade pursuit of vanity projects has left many local authorities in China in a deep morass of debt, with their status as “the largest local defaulters” not only having a knock-on effect on private businesses, but also adding to a grass-roots governance crisis, an academic has warned. Feng Chuan, an associate professor at Wuhan University’s School of Political Science and Public Administration, called for greater efforts to rebuild social trust and business confidence after finding that officials, residents, local government financing vehicles (LGFVs), contractors and banks had been caught…

“Micrometeorite impacts have been known to play a key role in altering the lunar landscape, but how those transformations actually happened remained elusive,” the researchers wrote in a release on the institute’s website. “Our study provided new clues to the weathering processes on the moon as well as on other airless planetary bodies in the solar system, such as Mercury and asteroids,” they wrote. The titanium compounds were found on a 9-micrometer-diameter meteorite impact crater on the surface of a Chang’e 5 glass bead. Photo: Handout The team said that…

“They come to me for all kinds of business, some are looking for warehouses, some for stores, some wishing to join the company, some asking how to come to Mexico. All kinds of questions,” said Lin, 45. “If I don’t look at my phone for an hour, there will be 100 unread messages.” Entrepreneur Lin Yun, who is originally from Fujian province, stands at the entrance of his office in Mexico City. Photo: Siqi Ji For many small Chinese merchants, Mexico has become a new gold rush destination, contrary to…

Fresh talks this week between Chinese and US military officials were “candid and constructive”, but Beijing will continue to respond to sovereignty threats in the Indo-Pacific, China’s defence ministry warned on Saturday. The talks in Hawaii on Wednesday and Thursday were the first in more than two years under the banner of the US-China Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) working group and brought together officials from the People’s Liberation Army and the US Indo-Pacific Command, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Air Forces. The ministry said the meeting was held to “promote…

The Philippines and China traded accusations on Saturday over an encounter in disputed waters of the South China Sea, in an escalating row over a key waterway. Manila said two Chinese coastguard vessels “harassed” Filipino fishing vessels within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, while Beijing said its vessels responded appropriately to illegal activities. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a conduit for more than US$3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. The Permanent Court of Arbitration said in…