Category: NYT

The Maldives Is a Tiny Paradise. Why Are China and India Fighting Over It?

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Between a few flecks of coral in the Indian Ocean, a ribbon of highway more than a mile long swoops up from the blue. Since 2018, the China-Maldives Friendship Bridge has connected this archipelago’s hyper-dense capital, Malé, and the international airport — expanded by Chinese companies — one island to the east. But China is not alone in chasing friendship with the Maldives. A 20-minute walk across the capital, next to Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital, an even longer sea bridge will link Malé with islands to the west. This one…

China Sets Economic Growth Target of About 5%

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China’s top leaders on Tuesday set an ambitious target for growth as its economy is laboring under a steep slide in the housing market, consumer malaise and investor wariness. Premier Li Qiang, the country’s No. 2 official after Xi Jinping, said in his report to the annual session of the legislature that the government would seek economic growth of around 5 percent. That is the same target that China’s leadership set for last year, when official statistics ended up showing that the country’s gross domestic product grew 5.2 percent. Some…

China Scraps Premier’s Annual News Conference in Surprise Move

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China’s premier will no longer hold a news conference after the country’s annual legislative meeting, Beijing announced on Monday, ending a three-decades-long practice that had been an exceedingly rare opportunity for journalists to interact with top Chinese leaders. The decision, announced a day before the opening of this year’s legislative conclave, was to many observers a sign of the country’s increasing information opacity, even as the government has declared its commitment to transparency and fostering a friendly business environment. It also reinforced how China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has consolidated…

These Downtown Los Angeles Towers Became a Graffiti Skyline

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It was a billion-dollar aspiration meant to transform a neighborhood. A trio of shimmering skyscrapers would feature luxury condos, a five-star hotel and an open-air galleria with retailers and restaurants. Among the amenities: private screening rooms, a two-acre park, pet grooming services and a rooftop pool. A celebrity fitness trainer would help curate a wellness lifestyle for residents. The vision was called Oceanwide Plaza, and the chief executive said it would “redefine the Los Angeles skyline.” An executive for the design firm said it would create “a vibrant streetscape.” The…

A Writer’s To-Do List: Learn History. Learn Chinese. Learn to Draw Comics.

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When Tessa Hulls set out to write a book about three generations of women in her family, she had few illusions about how hard the task would be. The tale was geographically sprawling, and spanned a century: Her grandmother Sun Yi, a journalist in Shanghai, fled China for Hong Kong in 1957, then slowly went mad; her mother, Rose, attended an elite boarding school in Hong Kong founded in part for the mixed-race children of European expatriates, then moved to the United States in 1970. Much of her family’s story…

Murder and Magic Realism: A Rising Literary Star Mines China’s Rust Belt

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For a long time during Shuang Xuetao’s early teenage years, he wondered what hidden disaster had befallen his family. His parents, proud workers at a tractor factory in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, stopped going to work, and the family moved into an empty factory storage room to save money on rent. But they rarely talked about what had happened, and Mr. Shuang worried that some special shame had struck his family alone. It was not until later that he learned about the mass layoffs that swept northeastern China…

Judge Fines Ex-Fox News Reporter, Catherine Herridge, for Not Revealing Sources

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A federal judge held a veteran investigative reporter in contempt of court on Thursday for not revealing her sources for articles she wrote about a scientist who was investigated by the F.B.I. The journalist, Catherine Herridge, formerly of CBS News and Fox News, was ordered to pay $800 a day until she divulged the information. The judge, Christopher Cooper of U.S. District Court in Washington, stayed the fine for 30 days to give Ms. Herridge time to appeal. The case, which has alarmed First Amendment advocates, relates to a series…

Scientists in Canada Passed Secrets to China, Investigations Find

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Two scientists who worked at Canada’s top microbiology lab passed on secret scientific information to China, and one of them was a “realistic and credible threat to Canada’s economic security,” documents from the national intelligence agency and a security investigation show. The hundreds of pages of reports about the two researchers, Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng, who were married and born in China, were released to the House of Commons late Wednesday after a national security review by a special parliamentary committee and a panel of three retired senior judges.…

Biden Calls Chinese Electric Vehicles a Security Threat

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President Biden took steps on Thursday toward blocking internet-connected Chinese cars and trucks from entry to the American auto market, including electric vehicles, saying they posed risks to national security because their operating systems could send sensitive information to Beijing. The immediate action was the opening of a Commerce Department investigation into security threats, which could lead to new regulations or restrictions on Chinese vehicles. But administration officials made clear it was the first step in what could be a wide range of policy responses meant to stop low-cost Chinese…

China Has Thousands of Navalnys, Hidden From the Public

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After watching “Navalny,” the documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, a Chinese businesswoman messaged me, “Ren Zhiqiang is China’s Navalny.” She was talking about the retired real estate tycoon who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for criticizing China’s leader, Xi Jinping. After Mr. Navalny’s tragic death this month, a young dissident living in Berlin posted on X, “Teacher Li is closest to the Chinese version of Navalny.” He was referring to the rebel influencer known as Teacher Li, who used social media to share information…