Tag: Great Britain

A Former Insider on What’s Happening in China

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Desmond Shum was one of China’s most well-connected businessmen. He and his former wife, Duan Weihong, used their relationships with top government officials to build a multibillion-dollar property development company during a golden age for entrepreneurs starting in the mid-1990s. Now, tensions with the West dominate discussion, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sharply criticizing China’s treatment of American companies on a trip to Beijing this week. Mr. Shum left China in 2015 as Xi Jinping, the country’s leader, asserted greater state control over the country and its businesses. Duan, also…

Russia Denounces West Over Drone Strike on Moscow

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A day after a drone strike on Moscow, Kremlin officials jumped on the refusal of Ukrainian allies to denounce the attack as proof that Russia’s real war was with the West. The Kremlin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said Russia “would have preferred to hear at least some words of condemnation” from Western capitals. “We will calmly and deliberately think how to deal with this,” he said. While none of Ukraine’s allies went so far as to endorse the drone attack, Britain’s foreign secretary said on Tuesday that Kyiv had “the…

Born in Asia but Based in Britain, HSBC Fights to Stay in One Piece

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For many investors, HSBC, Europe’s largest lender with a venerable place in Britain’s banking industry, offers little to critique: It is performing well and has focused on its most profitable and fastest-growing operations, those in Asia. But for the firm’s largest investor, the sprawling Chinese insurance giant Ping An, that isn’t enough. Over the past year, Ping An has waged a campaign to convince HSBC to spin off its Hong Kong-based operations in some way, cracking open the bank’s global empire to improve its financial performance. It’s a move that…

U.K. Bans TikTok on Government Devices

Chin@Strategy

Britain on Thursday became the latest Western country to prohibit the use of TikTok on “government devices,” citing security fears linked to the video-sharing app’s ownership by a Chinese company. Speaking in Parliament, Oliver Dowden, a senior cabinet minister, announced the ban with immediate effect, describing it as “precautionary,” even though the United States, the European Union’s executive arm, Canada and India have already taken similar steps. Social media apps collect and store “huge amounts of user data including contacts, user content and geolocation data on government devices that data…

Australia to Buy U.S. Nuclear-Powered Submarines in Deal to Counter China

Chin@Strategy

SYDNEY — Australia will buy up to five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the United States to be delivered in the 2030s, according to people briefed on the deal, which accelerates and deepens an ambitious defense agreement aimed at reinforcing American-led military dominance of the Asia-Pacific region to counter China’s military growth. Australia would then buy a new class of submarines with British designs and American technology in another stage of the deal. The arrangement — which would also include rotating American attack submarines through Perth, in Western Australia, by 2027…

China Withdraws 6 Diplomats From U.K. After Consulate Scuffle

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LONDON — China is withdrawing six diplomats from Britain after a police inquiry into a violent clash during a demonstration at China’s Consulate in Manchester led to a standoff between London and Beijing, Britain’s foreign secretary said on Wednesday. The British authorities had asked six Chinese officials to waive diplomatic immunity and allow an investigation into how a pro-democracy protester from Hong Kong was injured after being dragged onto the consulate grounds and beaten on Oct. 16. Instead, the Chinese authorities decided to repatriate six officials, including one of its…

Global Car Supply Chains Entangled With Abuses in Xinjiang, Report Says

Chin@Strategy

Many of those suppliers run through China, which has become increasingly vital to the global auto industry and the United States, the destination for about a quarter of the auto parts that China exports annually. Xinjiang is home to a variety of industries, but its ample coal reserves and lax environmental regulations have made it a prominent location for energy-intensive materials processing, like smelting metal, the report says. Chinese supply chains are complicated and opaque, which can make it difficult to trace certain individual products from Xinjiang to the United…

NATO Nations Grow More Receptive to U.S. Pleas to Confront China

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The discussion on China marked a shift toward a harder line on the challenges and threats it represents, especially among foreign ministers from previously more ambivalent countries, like Italy, Belgium, Spain and Portugal, some of whom called for less talk and more action to build a China strategy. Areas of concern included investment screening to protect key industries, infrastructure, cyber, technology and intellectual property, especially as countries are feeling the reach of China domestically and fear the West may be falling behind in important areas like artificial intelligence. The focus…

U.K. Backs Giant Nuclear Plant, Squeezing Out China

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The British government on Tuesday threw its weight behind nuclear power, saying it would back a major new generating plant on the coast of the North Sea northeast of London. The government said it would invest £700 million ($842 million) for a 50 percent stake in Sizewell C. EDF, the French state utility, which will construct the plant, will hold the rest. The deal squeezes out a Chinese state-owned company, China General Nuclear, which had owned 20 percent of the project. CGN received an undisclosed sum for its share, reflecting…

UK Sees Varied Domestic Threats, Mainly From Iran, Russia and China

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The scale of those expulsions, together with the rollout of Western economic sanctions designed to isolate Russia, had proved a surprisingly potent test for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, he added. Well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain was especially sensitive to the activities of Russian agents, and its pushback against Moscow’s spy networks intensified after the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian agent, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Since that episode prompted Britain to expel 23 Russian diplomats on espionage grounds,…