Day: May 14, 2026

From Confucius to Tsinghua: Trump invokes history to anchor China-US future

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Against the backdrop of ceremonial grandeur at the Great Hall of the People on Thursday, US President Donald Trump leaned on centuries of shared history to set the stage for the future of China-US relations. In his state banquet address capping a long day of talks, tourism and toasts, Trump blended calculated callbacks with personal touches – carefully crafted to appeal to the hosts, including President Xi Jinping. He framed the relationship as “one of the most consequential” in world history, drawing a thread from the Confucian values admired by…

Former China critic Matthew Wale elected Solomon Islands prime minister

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Solomon Islands parliament on Friday elected opposition leader Matthew Wale as prime minister, after incumbent Jeremiah Manele was ousted from power last week in a no-confidence vote. Wale defeated Peter Shanel Agovaka by 26 votes to 22 in a ballot of the country’s members of parliament, governor general David Tiva Kapu, told a news conference. Opposition leader since 2019, when Solomons switched ties from Taiwan to China, Wale has campaigned for greater government transparency in dealings with foreign mining and logging businesses. The former accountant hails from Malaita, the most…

What is the Thucydides Trap and why did Xi Jinping mention it in his meeting with Donald Trump?

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A messy war in the Middle East. Tensions in Taiwan. When the leaders of the world’s two superpowers met in Beijing this week, these were the flashpoints everyone expected they would talk about. Instead, Chinese leader Xi Jinping threw another, ancient war, into the mix. In his opening remarks on Thursday, Xi made reference to the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece, a decades long conflict that erupted between Athens and Sparta in 431BC. In a shot across the bow of hegemonic rivalry, Xi asked: “Can China and the United States…

Trump China visit live: Rubio hoping for ‘positive response’ to appeal for release of Hong Kong activist Jimmy Lai

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Does China’s Jiuzhang 4.0 computer herald the age of quantum supremacy?

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China has unveiled its latest photonic quantum computer, Jiuzhang 4.0, with researchers saying it can outperform the world’s fastest classical supercomputer by a vast margin, further strengthening Beijing’s push towards quantum supremacy. The results, published on May 13 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature, mark the latest milestone in China’s rapidly advancing quantum programme led by a team of scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China headed by renowned Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei. Quantum physicist Pan Jianwei leads the University of Science and Technology of China team…

Xi-Trump summit live: Trump says Xi wants to assist US on Iran

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This live article is freely available to our registered users. Please log in or create an account below. Unrivalled Xi-Trump summit analysis: get real-time updates and exclusive boots-on-the-ground reporting from our Beijing and Washington bureaus. Subscribe now with great savings to stay ahead. On Friday, the final day of his Beijing trip, US President Donald Trump will again meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, this time over tea and a working lunch. The two leaders are expected to continue discussions on critical bilateral and global issues, with Xi framing the…

Why China Fears the ‘A.I. Girlfriend’

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China has a bigger problem than the U.S. with falling birthrates, falling marriage rates. Are China’s leaders looking at A.I. through that lens and worrying about the A.I. girlfriend, A.I. boyfriend future? Definitely. They are very worried about that. And, in fact, they are already rolling out policies and regulations around A.I. boyfriends and A.I. girlfriends. It’s so funny — they have a very negative view of wasting time, basically of what they see, the folks in Beijing, what they see as nonproductive activity. And in that earlier era of…

China Is Worried About A.I. Too

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new video loaded: China Is Worried About A.I. Too transcript Back transcript China Is Worried About A.I. Too What if you weren’t worried about A.I. taking your job? That seems to be closer to the reality in China, where keeping pace with the new technology is a much bigger focus than economic disruption. On “Interesting Times,” Kyle Chan, a foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Institution, explains how the countries differ in their anxieties over artificial intelligence. If you are going to try to distill the mood in China, the…

What Brics lacks in unity, it makes up for in flexibility

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In recent years, the Brics grouping has attracted attention as it adds members and positions itself as the voice of the Global South. At a Brics forum held in Beijing last month, officials discussed expanding trade within the grouping. Such initiatives reflect both an impulse to reduce exposure to external shocks linked to the US dollar and a long-term ambition to reshape global finance. These gatherings are as much about signalling intent as delivering substance. Brics wants to be seen as a platform through which emerging economies can reshape global…

Photo of US-China delegation criticized over absence of women: ‘masculine, militarized and exclusionary’

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By the time Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday, the bilateral had featured all the expected pomp and pageantry: a meticulously choreographed display of Chinese soldiers, children waving American and Chinese flags, and rows of senior officials and the US’s top business executives. Conspicuously absent at the table, however, were women from either delegation – a stark visual that quickly drew criticism from observers who saw it as an unmistakable display of patriarchal power. In a tweet that has attracted over…