The EU is “pulling out all the stops” to fend off an imminent potential trade crisis with China, the industry commissioner, Stéphane Séjourné, has said, as the bloc announced its backing for a string of critical materials projects. Séjourné said on Friday that the EU would support 46 new strategic projects to accelerate supplies of critical raw materials by 2030 across the bloc. “We could face a crisis in the coming months,” he said. “We may face trade tensions that could also trigger a crisis in a number of sectors.…
Tag: China
‘It gave me a superpower – question everything’: as punk turns 50, bands from China to Greenland explain how it fires up their lives
Ukraine: ‘I was lucky not to die. I had guitars with me on the frontline’ Andriy Zholob, vocalist/guitarist, Beton: When MTV arrived in Ukraine, I heard Nirvana, the Offspring, Bad Brains, Social Distortion and thrash metal, and realised that all this started from punk rock. Our drummer and I were in a ska-punk band first, but when our vocalist became pregnant we started Beton in 2017 and played lots of festivals. Everything changed with the invasion. In 2022, I started military service as a surgeon on the frontline. We were…
Russia’s Silence on Possible Plague Outbreak Stokes Fears of a Cover-Up
As rumors swirled this week that a woman working in a Siberian lab may have died of the plague, news programs on Russian state television paid scant attention. The authorities in Moscow released little information. Faced with this potential new threat, the Kremlin seems to be resorting to a familiar playbook: avoiding bad news. The lack of information has caused unease around the world, particularly given the memory of China’s effort to withhold information about Covid-19. The Kremlin has a history of hiding bad news In Russia, federal officials are…
America’s Naval Power Is Waning. That Could Change.
The United States might be losing another war — one that could define the country’s security into the next century. Military and commercial power are intertwined. Maritime power, in particular, has always played a crucial part in establishing and maintaining commercial power. America is learning this lesson the hard way. For hundreds of years, the countries that have ruled the waves have ruled the world, as the 19th-century American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan put it. In an age of drones, we can be forgiven for thinking this time has…
China’s succession crisis: a generation of entrepreneurs is retiring, but are their children ready to take over?
Growing up, Ayu would watch his parents put together hand made leather shoes on the ground floor of their three storey home in the Chinese city of Wenzhou. Their relatives in Europe would send photographs of designer products from Italy for the workers to base their designs on, and in the decades that followed, the tiny family-run workshop transformed into a 700 person factory. “The factory and the home were the same place. I watched them make shoes by hand, piece by piece, using small machines,” Ayu recalls of watching…
China’s ‘Self-Reliance’ Drive Is Upending Trade With Europe
To understand Europe’s growing alarm over its trade deficit with China, consider a striking statistic: China now sends six containers of goods to Europe for every one it gets back. That ratio has more than doubled in China’s favor over the last five years as Beijing’s drive for greater economic self-reliance has expanded the range of goods China produces at home instead of buying from abroad. Jens Eskelund, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, cited those figures last month and provided a simple explanation for why. “China…
Satellite images show attack jets at Chinese military facility in Laos
Satellite images show attack jets stationed at a new Chinese military facility in Laos, which opened last week and gives Beijing’s air force its first foothold in mainland south-east Asia. Images provided by the commercial satellite provider Vantor show eight light attack aircraft positioned at Ban Keun airport alongside what appear to be more than a dozen military vehicles lined up in rows. The planes’ shape matches that of the Chinese-made Hongdu JL-8 jet, a two-seat trainer that can be deployed in combat to carry bombs. Laos is reported to…
EU negotiators head to China hoping to curb cheap imports of hybrid electric cars
Mood in trade talks said to have changed as EU member states harden demands for protection against Chinese imports EU trade negotiators are heading to China for two days of crunch talks aimed at sealing a breakthrough deal tackling Beijing’s record £1bn-a-day trade surplus by curbing its exports of cheap hybrid electric cars into Europe. Trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič and his team fly out on Wednesday and will be negotiating up to the wire in talks scheduled to start the following day and continue late into Friday. Continue reading… The…
In Race With U.S., China Struggles to Recruit Foreign A.I. Researchers
As the United States and China vie for A.I. dominance, the Trump administration has made it more difficult for companies to hire foreign researchers, while China has made recruiting the world’s best scientists a national priority. Over the past two years, China has flung open its doors to international researchers, introducing a visa for scientists and offering lucrative research grants. Despite those efforts, foreigners are not coming. Worse still for China’s ambitions, the number of Chinese scientists working in the United States has risen rather than declined, according to a…
The Hidden Policies That Power China’s Export Boom
China has kept its export engine roaring with a combination of tax rebates and a weak currency, helping sustain economic growth at home while sending a surge of Chinese goods into markets abroad. But that strategy is fueling tension with its trading partners. And this week, officials from Brussels arriving in Beijing are preparing to press Chinese officials about a European trade deficit with China that exceeds $1.1 billion a day. Europe’s leaders say China tilts the scale with government subsidies and low-interest loans to its manufacturers, flooding European markets…