Month: August 2025

While US President Donald Trump this week said he would allow 600,000 Chinese students into the United States, members of Congress in his Republican Party are increasingly moving to dismantle many of the long-standing partnerships that would make their arrival possible. Advertisement On the day Trump said the US would welcome more Chinese students, Temple University in Philadelphia announced it was ending its partnership with the China Scholarship Council, the main Chinese government body funding study abroad for Chinese nationals. On Monday, Temple’s president, John Fry, said that the school…

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday signalled a further warming of ties with Beijing, urging the two Asian giants to collaborate in shaping a multipolar world, even as New Delhi remains wary of China’s growing military might and tries to finesse its own recent estrangement from the White House. Advertisement “Stable, predictable and amicable bilateral relations between India and China, the two largest nations on Earth, can have a positive impact on regional and global peace and prosperity,” he told the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, in an interview.…

The Spanish government has intervened at the eleventh hour to cancel a contract that would have boosted the use of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s fibre optic equipment across the country, citing “strategic autonomy”. Advertisement The €10 million (US$11.69 million) contract had been greenlit by the relevant public utility on Monday, only for Spain’s digital transformation ministry to move at the last minute to nix it, El País reported, for “reasons of digital strategy and strategic autonomy”. Madrid had been under fire from Brussels and Washington for doubling down on its…

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s coming visit to China – his first in over six years – for a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II could reinvigorate Beijing-Pyongyang ties and signal a broader strategic realignment, according to observers. Advertisement For the first time, Kim will appear alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on September 3, in what analysts said would be a rare show of unity and a calculated act of defiance against US-led pressure.…

The US government has drafted an expansion of its critical-minerals list to head off what an official said were potential “supply-chain disruptions”, in a move that experts say could help onshore more production of semiconductor chips, automotive systems and solar panels instead of relying on China. Advertisement The US Department of the Interior released the draft 2025 List of Critical Minerals on Tuesday, adding 51 mined commodities such as copper, lead, potash, silicon and silver. This marks the second update since 2017 to the list that guides government strategy, such…

China’s electric-vehicle (EV) king BYD reported a 30 per cent drop in profits in the second quarter as surging overseas sales failed to offset the negative impact of a brutal price war in the domestic market. Advertisement The Shenzhen-based company earned 6.4 billion yuan (US$894.6 million) in the three months to June, down 29.9 per cent from a year earlier. Revenue grew 14 per cent year on year to 201 billion yuan. The second-quarter numbers are derived by comparing BYD’s interim earnings to its results for the first three months,…

Beijing condemned a visit by two US Republican senators to Taiwan on Friday, saying it sent a “seriously wrong signal” to “separatist forces”. Advertisement The visit by Roger Wicker and Deb Fischer comes at a sensitive time, with the two countries locked in trade talks and discussions about a possible meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. “China has always firmly opposed any form of official exchanges between the United States and Taiwan,” Guo Jiakun, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said. He said the visit, which included a meeting with…

China has taken aim at Britain’s growing ties with Japan, warning it against any involvement in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea as a British aircraft carrier made a port call in Tokyo. Advertisement “We urge Britain and Japan to deeply reflect on their erroneous words and deeds regarding Taiwan- and maritime-related issues, stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, and refrain from stirring up trouble and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific region,” the Chinese embassy in Britain said on Thursday. The embassy was responding to a joint statement…