Exports to the US from Chinese online shops such as Temu and Shein have plunged in the face of Donald Trump’s trade war, as shipping from China to the EU has increased. Official Chinese data showed its total e-commerce shipping dropped 65% by volume in the first three months of the year, but rose 28% in Europe. The sharp fall comes amid reports that the fast-fashion discount platform Shein is considering a restructuring in the US to circumnavigate tariffs. According to the Financial Times, one workaround would be for Shein…
Category: The Guardian
China manufacturing activity plummets amid Trump tariff war
China’s factory activity slowed in April, with Beijing blaming “sharp changes” in the global economy as it fights a mounting trade war with the United States. Punishing US tariffs that reached 145% on many Chinese products came into force in April, and Beijing responded with 125% duties on imports from the US. Chinese exports soared more than 12% last month as businesses rushed to get ahead of the punishing tariffs. The impact of the measures began to show in official data on Wednesday, with the Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) –…
Hedging our bets: the existential questions facing Australia’s next government in unpredictable times
The world is a more dangerous place. Global conflicts have doubled over the past five years, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (Acled). In 2024 alone, one person in eight across the world was exposed to conflict: political violence increased by a quarter, by factors worse in countries that held elections. Australian political leaders of all stripes couch it in shared aphorism: the most “challenging strategic circumstances since WWII”. Violence, of course, never went away. It ebbed in some periods, but the myth of the triumph of liberal…
Why Chinese Australian voters could be key in a close race between teals and Liberals
Bradfield in Sydney’s affluent north shore is shaping up as the scene of one of the federal election’s most fiercely fought teal v Liberal battles. Nicolette Boele, a community independent, is taking on the star Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian. It’s Boele’s second shot at winning the seat, having run against the Liberal MP, Paul Fletcher – who is now retiring – and reducing his margin to just 4.2%. In a contest this tight every vote matters. That’s why the decision by another independent, Andy Yin, a former Liberal party insider,…
The ‘rat person’ trend is here – and I thoroughly approve | Arwa Mahdawi
Somewhere in Zhejiang province, China, a woman is living my dream. She gets up in the morning and then, almost immediately, goes back to bed. She lies prostrate all day long, scrolling, eating some food, opening some packages, showering at 2am, then snoozing again. As a longtime sleep enthusiast – and the mother of a child who thinks that 5am is a good time to start the day, all systems go – I think this sounds like bliss. The woman in Zhejiang is known as @jiawensishi – and also “rat…
‘Source of data’: are electric cars vulnerable to cyber spies and hackers?
Mobile phones and desktop computers are longstanding targets for cyber spies – but how vulnerable are electric cars? On Monday the i newspaper claimed that British defence firms working for the UK government have warned staff against connecting or pairing their phones with Chinese-made electric cars, due to fears that Beijing could extract sensitive data from the devices. Here we look at whether there are problems with electric cars and security. Could an electric car snoop on you? Security experts spoken to by the Guardian say electric cars – the…
Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma implicated in intimidation campaign by Chinese regime
The Chinese regime enlisted Jack Ma, the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, in an intimidation campaign to press a businessman to help in the purge of a top official, documents seen by the Guardian suggest. The businessman, who can be named only as “H” for fear of reprisals against his family still in China, faced a series of threats from the Chinese state, in an attempt to get him to return home from France, where he was living. They included a barrage of phone calls, the arrest of his sister, and…
‘The eighth wonder of the world’: China’s terracotta warriors to march on Australia for blockbuster show
Two thousand years ago, in a bid to conquer death itself, China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang commissioned a city of the dead: a 49 sq km mausoleum guarded by an army of clay warriors, built to defend his tomb for eternity. When farmers near Xi’an unearthed the first clay head in 1974, they cracked open one of humanity’s greatest archaeological mysteries, with more than 8,000 Terracotta Warriors discovered over the last 50 years. Now, fragments of that dream of immortality rise again – this time in Perth, where the…
Four pro-democracy lawmakers from ‘Hong Kong 47’ group freed after four years in jail
A group of pro-democracy lawmakers jailed in a landmark Hong Kong national security trial have been freed after spending four years in prison. Local media had reported that the group, Claudia Mo, Kwok Ka-ki, Jeremy Tam and Gary Fan, would be freed on Tuesday from three separate prisons across Hong Kong. A Reuters witness outside Stanley prison, where Kwok and Tam were held, saw several vehicles leave just before dawn. A police officer told reporters they had left. Vehicles were also seen leaving the more remote Shek Pik prison on…
No recent Xi-Trump call, says China despite US president’s claims – US politics live
<gu-island name="KeyEventsCarousel" priority="feature" deferuntil="visible" props="{"keyEvents":[{"id":"680f4a848f0848f8750655f2","elements":[{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":" President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday directing the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to identify within a month the cities and states that are not complying with federal immigration laws, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. ","elementId":"f04b8b7a-8c00-45f8-ac69-6d131a8fcd7f"},{"_type":"model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement","html":" Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown. ","elementId":"c671dcab-2006-4f0a-a7f5-401fef012542"}],"attributes":{"pinned":false,"keyEvent":true,"summary":false},"blockCreatedOn":1745834607000,"blockCreatedOnDisplay":"06.03 EDT","blockLastUpdated":1745835317000,"blockLastUpdatedDisplay":"06.15 EDT","blockFirstPublished":1745834948000,"blockFirstPublishedDisplay":"06.09 EDT","blockFirstPublishedDisplayNoTimezone":"06.09","title":"Trump to step up crackdown on ‘sanctuary cities’ –…