Tag: International Relations

Athens Democracy Forum: The Disunited States of South America

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This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which gathered experts last week in the Greek capital to discuss global issues. Moderator: Serge Schmemann, editorial board, The New York Times Participants: Natalia Herbst, social impact consultant and Obama Foundation Scholar alumnus; Jorge Fernando Quiroga, former president, Bolivia; and Adriana Mejía Hernández, executive director, Fundación Innovación para el Desarrollo Excerpts from the panel Disunited States of South America have been edited and condensed. SERGE SCHMEMANN In my preparatory reading, I found a dual image of the continent.…

China Is Suffering a Brain Drain. The U.S. Isn’t Exploiting It.

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They went to the best universities in China and in the West. They lived middle-class lives in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen and worked for technology companies at the center of China’s tech rivalry with the United States. Now they are living and working in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia — and just about any developed country. Chinese — from young people to entrepreneurs — are voting with their feet to escape political oppression, bleak economic prospects and often grueling work cultures. Increasingly, the exodus includes tech professionals and other well-educated…

Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China

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Surrounded by rooms filled with stacks of cluster munitions and half-made thermobaric bombs, a soldier from Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade recently worked on the final part of a deadly supply chain that stretches from China’s factories to a basement five miles from the front lines of the war with Russia. This is where Ukrainian soldiers turn hobbyist drones into combat weapons. At a cluttered desk, the soldier attached a modified battery to a quadcopter so it could fly farther. Pilots would later zip tie a homemade shell to the bottom…

How China’s Property Crisis Is Testing Its Too-Big-to-Fail Banks

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China’s giant banking system, the world’s largest, is heavily exposed to the real estate crisis: Nearly 40 percent of all bank loans are related to property. And pressure is building on those banks as dozens of real estate developers have defaulted or missed payments on overseas bonds, led by China Evergrande, the world’s most indebted developer. The scale of China’s property problems — enormous levels of debt, an oversupply of apartments and consumers increasingly wary of buying — means the government could be forced in the coming years to spend…

China Uses ‘Deceptive’ Methods to Sow Disinformation, U.S. Says

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The State Department accused China on Thursday of using “deceptive and coercive methods” to shape the global information environment, by acquiring stakes in foreign newspapers and television networks, using major social media platforms to promote its views and exerting pressure on international organizations and media outlets to silence critics of Beijing. The accusations, detailed in a report by the department’s Global Engagement Center, reflect worry in Washington that China’s information operations pose a growing security challenge to the United States and to democratic principles around the world by promoting “digital…

Gifts, Gadgets and Greece: Inside a Huawei Lobbying Campaign

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In November 2020, executives at Huawei, the Chinese telecom-equipment maker, exchanged messages about holding a meeting with a “friend” and an “adviser” in Greece. The contacts, identified as Greek government advisers, were set to provide Huawei with something valuable: a document outlining government contracts and “first priority projects” that the company might want to work on in the country. Huawei managers discussed giving the advisers a Huawei Mate XS smartphone, the company’s GT 2 smartwatch and wine, according to internal text messages and other documents reviewed by The New York…

Chinese Activist Camps Out at Airport in Taiwan in Bid for Asylum

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Chen Siming, an activist who fled China, has been camped out at an airport in Taiwan for nearly a week, hoping to gain asylum in the West. He is willing to wait for much longer, as long as he is not forced to board a plane back to China. Mr. Chen, 60, is among a wave of activists and human rights defenders who have recently attempted bold and hazardous escapes from the country as a crackdown on civil society has widened. In July, a Chinese human rights lawyer fled to…

What the U.S.-China Chip War Means for a Critical American Ally

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Samsung and SK Hynix, the semiconductor titans of South Korea, have spent over $52 billion to build up their operations in China. Business with China has long made up a sizable portion of their sales. But the ties between South Korea’s chip companies and China are under strain from geopolitics. South Korea, which relies heavily on its semiconductor sector for jobs and revenue, is wedged between China and the United States, South Korea’s longstanding ally, in their trade war over technology. To curb China’s access to advanced chips that could…

The Philippines’ Tension With China Crosses New Line in South China Sea

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The video may seem too simple, too understated to mark a serious international incident in the South China Sea: a quick clip of a diver using a knife to cut a section of rope underwater. But that diver was with the Philippine Coast Guard, and the rope was part of a sea barrier placed by Chinese forces to keep Philippine boats away from an area they had a legal right to fish in. In that moment, the Philippines took one of the most forceful steps yet in contesting China’s unrelenting…

Behind China-U.S. Tensions Are Misunderstandings, Author Says.

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This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum in association with The New York Times. Keyu Jin was a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Beijing when she transferred as an exchange student to New York. She moved in with an American host family, and attended Horace Mann, a private high school in the Bronx. She was accepted to Harvard University, where she picked up economics degrees, including a Ph.D., and is now an associate professor at the London School of Economics. Steeped in the two cultures — she…