Taiwan election: global leaders draw Beijing’s ire for congratulating new president

Global leaders have congratulated Lai Ching-te for winning Taiwan’s presidential election, praising the high turnout and democratic process – drawing ire from Beijing, which had hoped to see Taiwan’s ruling party ousted. Lai won an unprecedented third term in power for the pro-sovereignty Democratic Progressive party (DPP) in Saturday’s election, with more than 40% of the vote. Lai is taking over from the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen, who has been president since 2016, promising to continue her foreign policy efforts in resisting China’s plans to annex Taiwan. The US, the UK,…

The global economy is poised for another tumultuous year in 2024 | Kenneth Rogoff

The global economy was full of surprises in 2023. Despite the sharp rise in interest rates, the US successfully avoided a recession, and major emerging markets did not spiral into a debt crisis. Even Japan’s geriatric economy exhibited stunning vitality. By contrast, the EU fell behind, as its German growth engine sputtered after China’s four-decade era of hypergrowth abruptly ended. Looking ahead to 2024, several questions loom large. What will happen to long-term inflation-adjusted interest rates? Can China avoid a more dramatic slowdown, given the turmoil in its real estate…

China, Japan and South Korea, amid regional rivalries, line up leaders’ summit

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will meet, possibly next year, in the latest attempt to ease regional tensions heightened by North Korea’s weapons programme and a more visible US military presence. During a meeting in the South Korean port city of Busan on Sunday, the three Asian countries’ foreign ministers agreed to step up cooperation in key areas, including security, and to lay the groundwork for what would be the first leaders’ summit in four years. The weekend’s trilateral meeting – the first between the neighbours’ foreign…

Can the U.S. Handle China While Supporting Israel and Ukraine Wars?

For some countries, the rekindled conflict over the Palestinian issue has also inflamed old beliefs that the United States is anti-Muslim, or at least too biased toward Israel. After years of watching Washington avoid confronting the often harsh mistreatment of Palestinians by both the Israeli government and extremist Israeli settlers, some no longer trust the United States to be a fair broker. When Mr. Austin, the defense secretary, gets to Indonesia, he is likely to face an angry public, if not anti-U.S. protests, despite his efforts to advise Israel’s military…

Power up: will Chinese financing be the saviour of the Japanese video game industry?

In September, a quarter of a million people journeyed through Japan’s punishing late-summer heat to the cavernous expanse of the Makuhari Messe convention centre in the industrial hinterlands west of Tokyo. They came for the 27th Tokyo Game Show, which was back in full ostentatious form this year after a pandemic hiatus and a timorous return in 2022. Most came hoping for the chance to play one of the hundreds of as-yet-unreleased video games on display within the show’s 11 hangars. Others hoped to broker deals to have their video…

Japan and Philippines, Wary of China, Look to Expand Military Ties

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan said on Friday that his country would start formal talks with the Philippines to allow the deployment of Japanese troops to the Southeast Asian country, further strengthening ties between two countries that have embraced each other as bulwarks against China. “We share serious concerns on the situation in the East China Sea and South China Sea,” Mr. Kishida said, referring to Beijing’s increasingly assertive actions in the region. “The attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force is unacceptable.” Mr. Kishida’s announcement came…

The Multimillion-Dollar Machines at the Center of the U.S.-China Rivalry

They are smooth white boxes, roughly the size of large cargo vans, and they are now at the heart of the U.S.-Chinese technology conflict. As the United States tries to slow China’s progress toward technological advances that could help its military, the complex lithography machines that print intricate circuitry on computer chips have become a key choke point. The machines are central to China’s efforts to develop its own chip-making industry, but China does not yet have the technology to make them, at least in their most advanced forms. This…

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

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…

Japan to release second batch of wastewater from Fukushima nuclear plant next week

Japan will begin releasing a second batch of wastewater from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant from next week, its operator has said, an exercise that angered China and others when it began in August. On 24 August, Japan began discharging into the Pacific some of the 1.34m tonnes of wastewater that has collected since a tsunami crippled the facility in 2011. “The inspections following the first release have been completed … The (second) discharge will start on 5 October,” Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) said on Thursday. China banned all Japanese…

China, Japan and South Korea agree talks to calm fears over US ties

The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea will hold three-way talks “as soon as possible” after a meeting intended to ease Chinese concerns over Washington’s stronger security presence in the region. Official said on Tuesday that the three countries’ deputy foreign ministers had agreed to revive trilateral talks after a four-year hiatus during which tensions have risen over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme and Chinese military activity. Lim Soo-suk, a spokesperson for South Korea’s foreign ministry, said the leaders’ summit would be held at the “earliest mutually convenient time”,…