Day: October 14, 2025

The real risks from China’s rare earths curbs

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This article is an on-site version of our Unhedged newsletter. Premium subscribers can sign up here to get the newsletter delivered every weekday. Standard subscribers can upgrade to Premium here, or explore all FT newsletters Good morning. Yesterday, in news that rightfully overshadowed the markets, the first stage of the Gaza peace plan commenced. As we’ve said before, this is better news than anything that the markets could possibly produce. In other good news, the Nobel Prize for economics was awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt for…

Ancient 1,600-year-old love writing restored by Chinese scientists

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Passionate about science? Dive deeper with the Dark Matters newsletter, a weekly in-depth analysis on China’s rise in science, technology and military that goes beneath the surface. Sign up for free now. Advertisement A Chinese research team has fully restored a 1,600-year-old romantic poetry scroll with the help of artificial intelligence, showcasing how centuries-old art can be given a digital rebirth and regain its charm in the present day. The celebrated masterpiece Rhapsody on the Luo River Goddess, or Luoshen Fu, was recently restored by Peking University. The work was…

Scott Bessent accuses China of trying to damage global economy

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US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent has accused China of trying to hurt the world’s economy after Beijing imposed sweeping export controls on rare earths and critical minerals, hitting global supply chains. Bessent told the Financial Times that China’s introduction of the controls — three weeks before US President Donald Trump is expected to meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in South Korea — reflected problems in its own economy. “This is a sign of how weak their economy is, and they want to pull everybody else down with them,” Bessent…

China-US shipping dispute escalates as Beijing sanctions South Korean giant units

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Beijing has announced sanctions against a US ally over its alleged role in constraining China’s maritime and shipbuilding industries – marking an escalation in tensions in the strategic sector. Advertisement The move came as Washington enforced port fees targeting China-built or operated vessels on Tuesday, and follows a commitment made in a previous regulatory update. China placed five US-based subsidiaries of the South Korean shipping giant Hanwha Ocean on a countermeasures list, accusing them of cooperating with Washington in its curbs on China’s maritime sector, according to a statement from…

‘Americans are democracy’s equivalent of second-generation wealth’: a Chinese journalist on the US under Trump

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On a Friday night in late May, Wang Jian was getting ready to broadcast. It was pouring outside, and he was sitting in the garage apartment behind his house, just outside Boston, eating dinner. “I am very sensitive to what Trump does,” Wang was telling me, in Mandarin, waving a fork. “When Trump holds a cabinet meeting, he sits there and the people next to him start to flatter him. And I think, isn’t this the same as Mao Zedong? Trump sells the same thing: a little bit of populism,…

Why aren’t Chinese collectors paying for their art?

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At 6ft 2in, former bodybuilding champion Jiao Qinghua cuts an impressive figure as he peruses the lots on offer at the Shanghai sale of auction house Council. The midsummer sun beams through the Shanghai Grand Theatre’s translucent roof; the plush blue carpets and the 20th-century Chinese ink works on display bake in the heat. But the avid collector of Modern, contemporary and classical art from China’s eastern Jiangsu province is downbeat. “The economy is declining and the pressure is high. A lot of bosses and entrepreneurs used to dare to…