Month: July 2025

US firms consider China market critical despite fraying relations, other issues, survey says

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A new survey of American companies operating in China indicated that most of them consider the country’s market critical despite fraying bilateral relations, tariffs, economic weakness and lost market share. Advertisement Nearly all respondents participating in an annual US-China Business Council survey said they cannot remain globally competitive without their business in the world’s second-largest economy, according to a report about the survey published by the advocacy group on Wednesday. This is despite the fact that a growing number of US firms report dropping sales, reputational damage and pressure on…

‘Confusion’ reigns over cost of UK’s Afghan rescue scheme, says spending watchdog

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Ministers must urgently clarify the costs of the UK’s secret resettlement programme for thousands of Afghan nationals following a disastrous data leak, the head of parliament’s spending watchdog has said. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, head of the House of Commons public accounts committee, told the Financial Times on Wednesday there is “confusion” over the costs of the policy, which was kept secret until this week. He said he was “concerned about the cost,” after the courts and parliament heard seemingly different cost estimates for the government’s response to the data breach,…

China Maritime Report #48: Great Inspectations: PRC Maritime Law Enforcement Operations in the Taiwan Strait

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Main Findings People’s Republic of China (PRC) law enforcement operations function as forms of cognitive and legal warfare. They represent a clear effort to undermine international maritime law as well as Taiwan’s sovereignty. The PRC asserts that the Taiwan Strait comprises multiple “zones,” to include “internal waters, territorial sea, [the] contiguous zone, and the Exclusive Economic Zone.” While China does not explicitly claim that the waters of the Taiwan Strait wholly constitute PRC sovereign territory, it clearly implies that it has the self-defined right to exercise distinct forms of control…

US set to ban Chinese technology in submarine cables

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The US Federal Communications Commission is poised to introduce a measure that would bar companies from connecting submarine communication cables to America that include any Chinese technology or equipment. The US telecoms regulator will next month vote on a new rule aimed at tackling potential Chinese espionage by ensuring any new communication cables that land in the US were less vulnerable to threats from Beijing and other adversaries. “Submarine cables…

Innovative Chinese dissident uses cryptocurrency to fund his activism

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To skeptics, a meme coin is a fast way to make a cheap buck. For exiled activist Li Ying, it’s been a way to bankroll a pro-democracy community that’s challenging Chinese censorship and authoritarian rule. Li, 32, is better known by his handle on the social media platform X: “Teacher Li is not your teacher.” He’s built a following of more than 2 million by posting news that Chinese authorities don’t want people to see. Last December, he branched out to launch $Li, a form of cryptocurrency modeled after his…

What the Afghan ‘super-injunction’ tells us about the UK

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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The writer, a former government lawyer, is an FT contributing editor For a court in the UK to grant a so-called “super-injunction” is supposedly an extraordinary event. These court orders where disclosure of the existence of the injunction itself is forbidden are exceptionally rare. Indeed, after a spate of such orders over ten years ago resulted in immense political criticism, super-injunctions were thought by many to no longer exist. But…

Albanese’s warm welcome in Beijing shows icy tensions are a thing of the past – at least for now | Tom McIlroy

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Anthony Albanese may be humming Paul Kelly and Powderfinger when his plane lands back in Australia from China on Friday. After more than two hours of talks with the country’s president, Xi Jinping, a series of successful business events, and a retracing of Gough Whitlam’s steps at the Great Wall, the prime minister is likely to view his six-day visit as a diplomatic home run. A trip designed to capitalise on the increasingly warm relations between Beijing and Canberra showed all signs of success, with a special lunch organised to…

G-2 style reset? How US-China trade talks may shift after AI chip curbs eased

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The United States’ decision to ease export restrictions on certain advanced chips – part of a broader package of trade agreements with China – is seen by experts as an early sign that high-level negotiations have steered bilateral relations in the right direction. Advertisement Washington’s move to resume license application reviews for Nvidia’s H20 AI and Advanced Micro Devices’s MI308 AI chips comes ahead of talks between senior officials from both nations in the coming weeks, despite a protracted strategic stand-off over tech and export controls. Zhuang Bo, global macro…

US companies in China decry overproduction as price war hits profits

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Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the US-China relations myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. Almost half of the big US companies operating in China have been adversely affected by overcapacity in the country, according to a new survey, underscoring deepening concerns about sluggish demand and rising deflationary pressures in the world’s second-largest economy. An annual survey by the US-China Business Council found that overcapacity had hit 42 per cent of respondents, up significantly from the 25 per cent that reported an impact last year.…

China joins US in hunt for ripples in spacetime with new telescope in Tibet

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High on the Tibetan Plateau, China has completed a cutting-edge telescope designed to detect ripples in spacetime from the dawn of the universe with the help of the United States – strengthening a global effort to probe how everything began. Advertisement The Ali Cosmic Microwave Background Polarisation Telescope (AliCPT), perched at 5,250 metres (17,220 ft) in Tibet’s remote Ali prefecture, was finished this month after eight years of construction involving 16 institutions worldwide, including Stanford University, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Led by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP)…