Does Vladimir Putin know exactly how to play Donald Trump? The history of chummy phone calls, high-profile meetings and attempts to bring Russia in from the cold certainly suggests that Moscow’s thuggish ruler has a hold on this American president. If Mr Trump agrees to negotiate Ukraine’s future with Mr Putin and China’s Xi Jinping without Ukraine at the table, he will have handed the Russian leader a victory before talks begin. The message will be that strongmen are ruling the world and determining the fate of weaker nations. Ukraine has the right to…
Tag: China
China’s economy grows faster than forecast after AI boom boosts exports
Roaring exports lifted China’s economic growth in the third quarter of this year, with factory output growing much faster than consumer spending. China’s GDP grew by 4.5% year-on-year between July and September, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported on Monday. The figures were better than economists had expected and up from the second quarter’s growth rate of 4.3%. China’s economy has now grown by 4.6% in the first nine months of the year, putting it on track to hit the government’s 2026 target of 4.5%-5% growth without extra…
The Guardian view on plague in Russia: what is most worrying is the lack of information | Editorial
Is there a plague outbreak in Russia? If the answer were a clear yes, there shouldn’t be much reason to worry. With swift medical intervention, plague is treatable. But in the nearly three weeks since a worker at a Siberian plague research unit died of a mysterious respiratory illness, state officials have been consistently tight-lipped about what happened and whether there were any further cases. It is this uncertainty that has the World Health Organization (WHO) and international community worried: partly because there is a – very small – risk of…
Why Britain should reject the lure of cheap – and scary – Chinese AI
There is much to fear from artificial intelligence developed in China and handed to businesses and governments in the west almost free of charge. Every month Chinese AI developers such as DeepSeek and Xiaomi dispatch the latest versions of their “open-weight” models that allow users to take the core software and use it without paying an expensive ongoing licence. In Britain, we love cheap Chinese kit, usually setting aside any concerns about how it was made and who by. The row over whether to allow Chinese electric cars unfettered access…
China’s tourists flock to experience a pretend typhoon as ‘dark tourism’ flourishes
When Leon Lv was looking for somewhere to travel last year, she turned to the Chinese social media app RedNote for ideas. The algorithm took her to videos of people struggling to survive typhoon-strength winds and flash floods. “I never experienced a typhoon. I don’t know how it will feel and what will happen. I just have seen it on the news,” says the 28-year-old from Chongqing in south-west China. “So that’s why I want to go there to have a safe place to experience it and learn something.” She…
No 10 leaves option open to impose Chinese EV tariffs if UK joins EU scheme
No 10 has left the door open to imposing tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles as part of the Made in Europe package, prompting a warning from Beijing that such a move would be “discriminatory”. Downing Street said on Friday that it would “welcome the objective to have the UK included in the Industrial Accelerator Act” after France dropped its opposition to Britain joining the scheme. The aim of the rules is to curb subsidised Chinese imports by giving EU-made products preferential treatment, but the UK and others such as Norway…
Like dinosaur eggs in the sand: the pterosaur museum built to thrive in the Gobi desert
Viewed from afar, the silver-hued Hami Pterosaur Museum almost looks like a space base on Mars. Viewed from above, it resembles a collection of dinosaur eggs in the sand. Nestled in the Gobi desert, in north-west China, the new tourist attraction showcases hundreds of impressive fossils of pterosaurs, ancient flying reptiles related to dinosaurs. But far from reflecting its prehistoric exhibits, the building itself is a modern-day architectural specimen. Designed with underground exhibition halls, giant light funnels and sprawling solar farms, the museum is able to operate sustainably while withstanding…
Meta releases Muse Spark Open, a new ‘open-weight’ AI model
Meta on Thursday launched a new open-weight AI model which it claims rivals, and in some cases outperforms, similar products from leading Chinese developers. Muse Spark Open “is the most capable US open-weight model to date,” Meta’s chief of AI Alexandr Wang wrote on X. Unlike so-called closed models – such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT – developers can download the parameters, known as weights and biases, of an open-weight model and modify them. Chinese developers have emerged as dominant players in the open-weight market for AI models over…
France drops opposition to UK being included in ‘Made in Europe’ legislation
France has dropped its opposition to the UK being included in the EU’s “Made in Europe” legislation as long as the British government aligns with the bloc’s position over tariffs on Chinese EVs. In a breakthrough for Andy Burnham, France on Thursday came round to backing Germany, which has always supported the UK’s calls to be designated European for the purposes of the Industrial Accelerator Act. The legislation, which is in its draft stage, is designed to protect domestic manufacturing from cheap Chinese competition. According to a joint Franco-German paper…
The global economy is muddling through against the odds. But a storm is coming | Larry Elliott
Finance ministers gathering for the IMF annual meeting know the need for multilateral cooperation to deal with many crises. There is little chance of that Not much has gone right for the global economy this year, and plenty has gone wrong. Two big regional wars are destabilising prices and supply chains everywhere. Businesses and consumers are feeling the effects of a serious energy shock. Rising inflation has made it a lot more expensive for governments to finance their debts. China and the US are at loggerheads over trade. Yet, so…