Tag: International Relations

Lonely Cry for Action as China Locks Up Japanese Citizens on Spy Charges

Chin@Strategy

Hideji Suzuki served six years in a Chinese prison on spying charges — a sentence that stemmed, he said, from a dinner party where he did nothing more than try to make small talk with a Chinese academic about North Korea. Since returning to Japan in October, he has tried to raise the alarm about China’s seemingly arbitrary detentions of Japanese citizens. He is one of 17 Japanese nationals detained on similar charges since 2015, but the only one to speak out about his experience and what he describes as…

Macron Says France Backs Status Quo on Taiwan

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President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that France’s position toward Taiwan remained unchanged, but he stood by comments he made on the island’s security that dismayed some allies after he returned from a trip to China and insisted that Europe could not be a “vassal” of the United States. “France’s position and the European position on Taiwan is the same,” Mr. Macron said at a news conference in Amsterdam on the second day of a state visit to the Netherlands. “We are for the status quo. This policy is constant…

China’s Rise Relied on the West. Xi Jinping Is Turning Away.

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In late 1978, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping set in motion two major policy shifts that would change China and the world order in the decades to come. At a Communist Party meeting in December of that year, the leadership declared that China would turn its focus from political struggle to economic development. Within days, China and the United States announced that they would establish diplomatic relations. These two events marked the end of China as a hermit country where one billion people lived in extreme poverty and the start…

Zelensky Makes Morale-Boosting Trip to Bakhmut

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KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made a rare and defiant trip near the front line on Wednesday, personally thanking soldiers who have been fighting in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance. The trip to the Bakhmut area came on a day when air- and seaborne drones attacked the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea and a Russian missile ripped into a nine-story apartment complex in Zaporizhzhia, in the south, killing at least one person and injuring more than 30 others. At…

In a Brother Act with Putin, Xi Reveals China’s Fear of Containment

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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, flew into Moscow this week cast by Beijing as its emissary for peace in Ukraine. His summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, however, demonstrated that his priority remains shoring up ties with Moscow to gird against what he sees as a long campaign by the United States to hobble China’s ascent. Talk of Ukraine was overshadowed by Mr. Xi’s vow of ironclad solidarity with Russia as a political, diplomatic, economic and military partner: two superpowers aligned in countering American dominance and a Western-led world…

Xi and Putin Bind China and Russia’s Economies Further, Despite War in Ukraine

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MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, declared an enduring economic partnership on Tuesday, promising to bring more Russian energy to China and more Chinese companies to Russia as the two leaders sought to insulate their countries from Western sanctions and other consequences of the war in Ukraine. The economic pledges, trumpeted by the leaders on the second day of Mr. Xi’s state visit to Moscow, were a sign that China would continue to do business as normal with Russia and that Moscow…

China, Russia and the Risk of a New Cold War

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As War in Ukraine Grinds on, China Helps Refill Russian Drone Supplies

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The Biden administration vowed last month to crack down on companies that sell critical technologies to Russia as part of its efforts to curtail the country’s war against Ukraine. But the continued flow of Chinese drones to the country explains why that will be hard. While drone sales have slowed, American policies put in place after Russia’s invasion have failed to stanch exports of the unmanned aerial vehicles that work as eyes in the sky for frontline fighters. In the year since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China has sold more…

Putin and Xi Celebrate Ties Unbroken by Russia’s War in Ukraine

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Standing side by side in a show of partnership unshaken by Russia’s yearlong war in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, began talks in Moscow on Monday with boasts of their close ties and only understated mention of the conflict itself. Though the war and the schisms it has exposed hung over the meeting, the public comments about it from Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin were muted, notwithstanding the cascading consequences of the past year, including Western sanctions on Russia, energy crises in Europe and…

Some Details on the Agenda for Xi Jinping’s Visit to Russia

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Follow the latest news of the Putin-Xi summit in Russia. While Beijing has offered few details on the agenda for the two-day state visit to Moscow by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, Russia has shared some information about the agenda. Mr. Xi arrived in Moscow at 12:59 local time (5:59 a.m. Eastern) on Monday, the Russian state news agency Tass reported. A military band was waiting on the tarmac to greet him. President Vladimir V. Putin’s foreign policy adviser, Yuri V. Ushakov, said that key negotiations would take place on Tuesday,…