Tag: internal-open-access-from-nl

In Hungary, Voters Exposed the Limits of China’s Ties to Orban

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The gigantic Chinese lithium battery factory under construction for three years on the edge of Hungary’s second biggest city hasn’t started production yet. But it has already contributed to a political earthquake. As the biggest Chinese investment in Europe, the $8.5 billion project in the eastern city of Debrecen had been hailed by Hungary’s outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orban, as proof of the economic benefits of his close relations with China. Instead, the factory helped bring about his downfall. In the April 12 election, Mr. Orban’s Fidesz party lost all…

New NTSB Report Into Deadly China Eastern Crash Suggests Struggle in Cockpit

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For more than four years, the final moments of China Eastern Flight 5735 remained shrouded in secrecy, with few clues to a baffling descent from 29,000 feet that left no survivors. Now, new data from the Boeing 737 suggests the crash was no accident. The plane’s fatal dive was a deliberate act initiated from within the cockpit, aviation experts say, following what appears to have been a struggle for control of the aircraft. The plane, which was operated by highly experienced pilots, had been traveling from Kunming, in southwestern China,…

China’s Big Bet on Wind Power Is Paying Off

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As the war in Iran threatens to choke off oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf, China is seizing the moment to extend its dominance in wind power. Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast. Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s…

Fireworks Factory Explosion in China Kills at Least 26

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An explosion on Monday in a fireworks factory in southern China killed at least 26 people and injured dozens more, prompting the nation’s leader, Xi Jinping, to demand a rapid investigation and punishment for those responsible. The explosion erupted in a factory in Liuyang, Hunan Province, on Monday afternoon, but the scale of destruction only started to become clear a day later. Video from the aftermath showed rescuers with searchlights looking through smoldering rubble, as well as shattered windows of homes some 300 yards from the explosion. The Chinese government…

The Rising Chinese Automaker Not Named BYD

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Each April, the world’s top auto executives and engineers fly to China’s main auto show to take stock of BYD, the electric car powerhouse that passed Tesla in global sales last year. But at the Auto China event now happening in Beijing, another name is commanding attention: Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. In an unexpected development, Geely beat BYD in sales in the first two months of the year and is rapidly broadening its lineup. Geely is now pushing overseas, more than doubling exports to Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere…

What Questions Do You Have About the Trump-Xi Summit?

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President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, are set to meet for a summit in Beijing in mid-May, a meeting that was first scheduled for March but postponed by Trump because of the war in Iran. The world looks a lot different from when Trump and Xi first agreed to the meeting last October. Then, one of the biggest issues for the two leaders was extending a newly announced yearlong trade truce. Now, the U.S. and Israel are at war with Iran, China’s closest partner in the Middle East. The…

Xi Calls for Hormuz to Reopen as China Balances Its Gulf Interests

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China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, called this week for the Strait of Hormuz to reopen, his first such comments since Iran effectively closed the strategic waterway last month in response to U.S.-Israeli attacks on its territory. Mr. Xi made the comments in a call with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia on Monday, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency. “The Strait of Hormuz should remain open to normal navigation, which is in the common interest of regional countries and the international community,” Mr. Xi told Prince Mohammed,…

Japan to Sell More Weapons Abroad, Breaking With Postwar Pacifism

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The Japanese government moved on Tuesday to allow the sale of more weapons abroad, in the latest shift away from pacifist policies imposed after World War II, as it grapples with rising security threats from China and a rapidly changing global order. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her top officials, at a meeting in Tokyo, reversed longstanding limits on the sale of Japan-made weapons overseas. The move comes days after Japan welcomed more than 30 NATO envoys for a visit meant to show stronger ties, and after Tokyo sealed a…

What the Iran War Means for the U.S.-China Relationship

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The war in Iran is threatening a fragile détente between China and the United States, with the two powers now moving to postpone a much anticipated summit meeting after President Trump demanded that China send warships to the Gulf. Mr. Trump on Monday said that he had requested that his visit to Beijing at the end of the month be postponed because of the war. Just a day earlier, he threatened to delay the meeting if China did not contribute warships to end Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait…

Seiichi Morimura, 90, Who Exposed Japanese Wartime Atrocities, Dies

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Seiichi Morimura, who wrote a searing exposé of the Japanese Army’s secret biological warfare program in occupied China, describing how it forcibly infected thousands of prisoners with deadly pathogens, died on July 24 in Tokyo. He was 90. The announcement of his death by his publisher, Kadokawa, was cited in Japanese media. Mr. Morimura detailed the atrocities committed by the Japanese program — called Unit 731 — in a widely sold book, “Akuma no Hoshoku,” or “The Devil’s Gluttony” (1981). Among the horrors he described were vivisections performed without anesthesia…