Category: NYT

China Lifts Punishing Tariffs on Australian Wine

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In a sign of easing tensions between Australia and China, China said Thursday it will lift the tariffs it placed on Australian wine more than three years ago. The tariffs, which were first imposed in 2020 amid a nasty diplomatic spat between Australia and China, had all but vaporized the country’s biggest overseas market, worth 1.2 billion Australian dollars or around $800 million at its peak. Australian winemakers faced desperate hardship and were stuck with a surfeit of big-bodied red wines. The decision to lift the tariffs was announced by…

As Space Threats Mount, U.S. Lags in Protecting GPS Services

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The United States and China are locked in a new race, in space and on Earth, over a fundamental resource: time itself. And the United States is losing. Global positioning satellites serve as clocks in the sky, and their signals have become fundamental to the global economy — as essential for telecommunications, 911 services and financial exchanges as they are for drivers and lost pedestrians. But those services are increasingly vulnerable as space is rapidly militarized and satellite signals are attacked on Earth. Yet, unlike China, the United States does…

A.I. Leaders Press Advantage With Congress as China Tensions Rise

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In recent weeks, American lawmakers have moved to ban the Chinese-owned app TikTok. President Biden reinforced his commitment to overcome China’s rise in tech. And the Chinese government added chips from Intel and AMD to a blacklist of imports. Now, as the tech and economic cold war between the United States and China accelerates, Silicon Valley’s leaders are capitalizing on the strife with a lobbying push for their interests in another promising field of technology: artificial intelligence. On May 1, more than 100 tech chiefs and investors, including Alex Karp,…

Yellen to Warn China Against Flood of Cheap Green Energy Exports

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The Biden administration is growing increasingly concerned that a glut of heavily subsidized green technology exports from China is distorting global markets and plans to confront Chinese officials about the problem during an upcoming round of economic talks in Beijing. The tension over industrial policy is flaring as the United States invests heavily in production of solar technology and electric vehicle batteries with funding from the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, while China pumps money into its factory sector to help stimulate its sluggish economy. President Biden and Xi Jinping,…

Why Elon Musk Needs China

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When Elon Musk first set up Tesla’s factory in China, he appeared to have the upper hand. He gained access to top leaders and secured policy changes that benefited Tesla. He also got workers accustomed to long hours and fewer protections, after clashing with U.S. regulators over labor conditions at his California plant. The Shanghai factory helped make Tesla the most valuable car company in the world and Mr. Musk ultrarich. But Tesla is now struggling. Mr. Musk helped create his competition, Chinese E.V. makers that are taking market share…

Tesla’s Pivot to China Saved Musk. It Also Binds Him to Beijing.

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When Elon Musk unveiled the first Chinese-made Teslas in Shanghai in 2020, he went off script and started dancing. Peeling off his jacket, he flung it across the stage in a partial striptease. Mr. Musk had reason to celebrate. A few years earlier, with Tesla on the brink of failure, he had bet on China, which offered cheap parts and capable workers — and which needed Tesla as an anchor to jump-start its fledgling electric vehicle industry. For Chinese leaders, the prize was a Tesla factory on domestic soil. Mr.…

Bridge Collapses in Baltimore and Guangzhou Raise Questions on Modern Shipping

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Tuesday’s crash was at least the second in just over a month in which a container ship hit a major road bridge, raising questions about the safety standards of increasingly large ships and the ability of bridges around the world to withstand crashes. On Feb. 22 in Guangzhou, a port in southern China, a much smaller vessel carrying stacks of containers hit the base of a two-lane bridge, causing vehicles to fall. Officials said that five people were killed. The crashes have also raised questions about whether more ships should…

TikTok Bill Would Complicate ByteDance Investments if Passed

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For years, the U.S. investors who backed ByteDance, the Chinese internet company that owns TikTok, have wrestled with the complexities of owning a piece of a geopolitically fraught social media app. Now it’s gotten even more complicated. A bill to force ByteDance to sell TikTok is winding its way through the Senate after sailing through the House this month. Questions about whether TikTok’s Chinese ties make it a national security threat are mounting. And U.S. investors including General Atlantic, Susquehanna International Group and Sequoia Capital — which collectively poured billions…

Why Are China’s Nationalists Attacking the Country’s Heroes?

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To get the economy back on track, China is trying to champion its domestic companies and reassure entrepreneurs that it’s ready for business. Its efforts are running into a problem: an online army of Chinese nationalists who have taken it upon themselves to punish perceived insults to the country — including from some of China’s leading business figures. In recent weeks, bloggers who usually rail against the United States have turned on China’s richest man, calling him unpatriotic, and encouraged boycotts that have wiped out billions from his beverage company’s…

U.S. and Britain Accuse China of Cyberespionage Campaign

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The United States and Britain imposed sanctions on China’s elite hacking units on Monday, accusing Beijing’s top spy agency of a yearslong effort to place malware in America’s electrical grids, defense systems and other critical infrastructure, and of stealing the voting rolls for 40 million British citizens. Taken together, the actions on both sides of the Atlantic underscored the escalation of cyberconflict between the Western allies and Beijing, in vastly different spheres. American intelligence agencies have warned that the malware found in U.S. infrastructure appeared to be intended for use…