Tag: International Trade and World Market

China’s Economic Stake in the Middle East: Its Thirst for Oil

Media Library

China has cast itself as a neutral geopolitical player in the Middle East. It brokered a deal in March to help Iran and Saudi Arabia restore relations. And in the days since Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, China has tried to keep its distance, with a government spokesman calling the country “a common friend of both Israel and Palestine.” Yet China’s stakes in the Middle East are high, particularly if the war now being fought in Israel and Gaza were to broaden through the region. One big reason: Oil. No…

Fragile Global Economy Faces New Crisis in Israel-Gaza War

Media Library

The International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday that the pace of the global economic recovery is slowing, a warning that came as a new war in the Middle East threatened to upend a world economy already reeling from several years of overlapping crises. The eruption of fighting between Israel and Hamas over the weekend, which could sow disruption across the region, reflects how challenging it has become to shield economies from increasingly frequent and unpredictable global shocks. The conflict has cast a cloud over a gathering of top economic policymakers…

How the Big Chip Makers Are Pushing Back on Biden’s China Agenda

Media Library

A year after the Biden administration took its first major step toward restricting the sale of semiconductors to China, it has begun drafting additional limits aimed at denying Beijing the technology critical to modern-day weapons. But in recent months, its progress has been slowed as American chip companies have pushed back with a blunt warning: Cutting sales to China would gut their businesses and derail the administration’s plan to build new semiconductor factories in the United States. Since July, Nvidia, Intel and Qualcomm, three of the world’s largest chip makers,…

Diesel Prices Could Keep Inflation High

Media Library

Inflation has been easing around the world. But what happens next could depend partly on the cost of diesel, a wild card that few analysts have been able to predict well. Higher gasoline prices — lit up on giant signs on streets and highways — are typically the most visible, visceral reminder of inflation to consumers. But analysts say diesel can have a bigger impact on inflation because the fuel powers trucks, industrial machinery and agricultural equipment. The prices of heating oil and jet fuel are also closely connected to…

Liu Yiqian, China’s Top Art Collector, Is Selling a Modigliani

Media Library

Few Chinese art collectors have made a bigger splash at global auctions in the past decade than Liu Yiqian, a former Shanghai taxi driver who amassed a fortune through big bets on Chinese real estate and pharmaceutical stocks. He was a profligate purchaser of Chinese antiquities and other artworks. In 2014, Mr. Liu paid a record $36.3 million for an ancient Chinese porcelain cup, and $45 million for a 600-year-old silk wall hanging. He paid $170.4 million for Amedeo Modigliani’s risqué “Nu Couché” painting a year later. One Shanghai museum…

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

Media Library

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…

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

Media Library

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…

Slowing, Graying and in Debt, Can China’s Industrial Heartland Be Revived?

Media Library

Hundreds of workers at a factory in Shenyang in northeastern China weld automated machines, 95 yards long, that are used to bore subway tunnels. At another factory there, employees assemble robots that China’s solar panel makers will use to streamline their production. Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning Province, one of three large provinces in the northeast that constitute the cradle of China’s heavy industry. Now the central government, confronting a national economy that has slowed because of a real estate crisis that defies easy fixes, is turning to cities…

China’s Import Curbs on Cosmetics Face Pushback in Europe

Media Library

In the gloom of China’s economy, one area of business is booming: cosmetics. After enduring nearly three years of mandatory masks and frequent lockdowns during the pandemic, many Chinese consumers, wary of big-ticket purchases like apartments, are now splurging on lipstick, perfume, moisturizers and other personal care products. But cosmetics companies from France, Japan, South Korea and the United States, which have invested heavily in China, are missing out on a lot of the action. As China’s cosmetics companies are booming, imports of cosmetics are wilting under regulations that the…

European Union Will Investigate Chinese Subsidies of Electric Cars

Media Library

The European Union will begin an investigation into Chinese subsidies of electric vehicles, the bloc’s top official announced Wednesday, in a move that highlights Europe’s growing industrial and geopolitical competition with China. Chinese automakers have gained a dominant position in the world’s electric vehicles industry and see Europe as a big potential market. Automakers in Europe, who are racing to expand their battery-powered lineups, have expressed concern that they face tough competition against low-priced models from China. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced the initiative…