John Paulson, a hedge fund billionaire and one of Donald Trump’s earliest Wall Street backers, is planning to offshore an Ohio manufacturing plant to China despite heavy pushback from employees. Workers at the plant call the move “a slap in our face”, after Paulson vocally defended domestic manufacturing, and are fighting to keep the plan open. Conn Selmer, the largest US manufacturer of brass and orchestra instruments, told the union it planned to offshore most work at its East Lake, Ohio, plant to China by the end of June 2026,…
Category: The Guardian
TikTok creator ByteDance vows to curb AI video tool after Disney threat
ByteDance, the Chinese technology company behind TikTok, has said it will restrain its AI video-making tool, after threats of legal action from Disney and a backlash from other media businesses, according to reports. The AI video generator Seedance 2.0, released last week, has spooked Hollywood as users create realistic clips of movie stars and superheroes with just a short text prompt. Several big Hollywood studios have accused the tool of copyright infringement. On Friday, Walt Disney reportedly sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance which accused it of supplying Seedance with…
China hopes for a bumper lunar new year as world’s biggest migration begins
Chinese officials are hoping that this year’s extra long lunar new year holiday will provide a boost to the country’s economy, where increasing domestic spending has been identified as a key priority for the year ahead. The government expects a record 9.5 billion passenger trips to be made across China during the 40-day spring festival period, up from 9 billion trips last year. Hundreds of millions of people will be crisscrossing the country to make what is often their only trip home to see their families for the Chinese new…
The Guardian view on Donald Trump and the climate crisis: the US is in reverse while China ploughs ahead | Editorial
Devastating wildfires, flooding and winter storms were among the 23 extreme weather and climate-related disasters in the US which cost more than a billion dollars last year – at an estimated total loss of $115bn. The last three years have shattered previous records for such events. Last Wednesday, scientists said that we are closer than ever to the point after which global heating cannot be stopped. Just one day later, Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin, the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, announced the elimination of the Obama-era endangerment…
Sir Nick White obituary
The idea that a traditional Chinese herbal treatment could be the answer to drug-resistant malaria was tough to swallow for many policymakers in global health. With a combination of dogged persistence, commitment to communities in affected countries and impeccable research design, Nick White changed their minds. He led a campaign to make antimalarial drug combinations containing artemisinin, extracted in China from a common plant, the globally recommended treatment for the most common form of malaria. Millions of lives have been saved as a result. White, who has died aged 74,…
Andrew aide advised Epstein to omit conviction on China visa form, files suggest
An aide to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor advised Jeffrey Epstein to illegally hide his child sexual abuse conviction to obtain a visa to China, according to the latest Epstein files release. David Stern, who was a close associate of both Epstein and the then prince, was asked for his help after the disgraced financier’s initial application for a visa was rejected. Stern advised Epstein’s assistant to make the application at the Chinese embassy in Paris and “in addition it will be better not to tick the boxes re being denied previously or…
University expels student who called for accountability over Hong Kong fire
A Hong Kong university student who had called for accountability over a deadly fire at an apartment complex in the city has been expelled by the school for disciplinary offences. Miles Kwan, a politics student, was detained for two nights by the city’s national security police last year for “seditious intent” after handing out flyers calling for an independent investigation into a fire that killed 168 people in November. After he was released on bail, his school, the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), conducted a disciplinary review and referred…
Beijing pastry shop overrun by shoppers after Xi Jinping’s visit
A Beijing pastry shop visited by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, on a lunar new year tour this week has been swarmed by customers hoping to get their hands on Xi-approved sweet treats. Traffic was brought to a standstill in Beijing’s capital as the president took a tour around the city on Monday and Tuesday. As well as visiting technology parks and business leaders, Xi dropped by a Chinese new year market in central Beijing’s Dongcheng district. The nine-day celebrations, the biggest holiday in China’s calendar, officially start on Sunday.…
CIA publishes recruitment video aimed at disaffected Chinese soldiers
The CIA (the US’s Central Intelligence Agency) has published a Mandarin-language recruitment video aimed at Chinese soldiers, in an apparent attempt to capitalise on the recent instability in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) after a series of high-level purges. The video, published on the CIA’s YouTube channel on Thursday, is titled The Reason for Stepping Forward: To Save the Future. It depicts a fictional Chinese military officer who contacts the CIA after becoming disillusioned with his own leaders. The voiceover of the video says: “This is the world I know,…
These charts show how Trump is isolating the US on the world stage
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has accelerated a profound shift in the global order, according to new analysis. A report from Focal Data, which analyses UN voting records, reveals how Washington’s “America First” agenda has started to redraw the geopolitical map in favour of China. In 2026, the world is now diplomatically closer to Beijing than it has been in recent memory, with significant shifts in alignments taking place during the start of Trump’s second presidential term. Focal Data’s analysis used UN general assembly votes act as a…