Joe Biden is due to make a phone call to Xi Jinping on Friday at a potential tipping point in China’s role in the world as it decides how far to go in backing Russia’s war on Ukraine. While China has abstained on United Nations security council resolutions on the invasion, it has sided with Moscow rhetorically, echoing Russian talking points blaming Nato, and recycling conspiracy theories, and the Biden administration believes it has already decided to bail Russia out economically. At a meeting in Rome on Monday between the…
Tag: United Nations
Diplomacy Quickens to Halt Ukraine War or Stop Its Expansion
LONDON — Diplomatic activity quickened on multiple fronts Monday as Russia’s war on Ukraine entered an uncertain new phase, with President Vladimir V. Putin’s forces widening their bombardment of Kyiv and other cities, hundreds of civilians escaping the devastated port of Mariupol, and the United States warning China over its deepening alignment with an isolated Russia. There were no breakthroughs, either at the negotiating tables or on the battlefield. But as the human cost of the war continued to mount, the flurry of developments suggested that people were groping for…
Hospitals under fire and hard-won abortion rights: human rights this fortnight – in pictures
Rama, a 16-year-old Syrian refugee, holds a smiley face as she sits in the office of an organisation that cares for girls who have been forced into early marriage in Saadnayel, Lebanon. Rama was married at 14, divorced a year later and is a mother to an 18-month-old baby. Photograph: Marwan Naamani/DPA The Guardian
Ukraine: what will China do? There are signs it is uneasy about Putin’s methods
China’s decision to abstain on Friday night at the end of the UN security council vote condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be a source of deep frustration in the west, but it will also send a nervous tremor through the Russian ministry of foreign affairs that China’s protection is not unconditional. UK-based diplomats, looking at the stance adopted by China in the middle of the week, were expecting Beijing to join Russia in voting against the US-sponsored motion, but in common with the United Arab Emirates and India,…
Your Monday Briefing: The Olympics Begin
Good morning. We’re covering the start of the Winter Olympics, tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and Afghanistan’s crumbling health care system. The Winter Olympics begin China’s leader, Xi Jinping, opened the Beijing Games on Friday with a clear intent to celebrate his country’s increasingly assured global status. Xi stood defiantly with Vladimir Putin, the leader of Russia, a calculated display of solidarity to show their partnership and project their growing impatience with Western censure. (President Biden and other democratic leaders critical of China’s human rights record stayed home.) China also…
China anger after space station forced to move to avoid Elon Musk Starlink satellites
Beijing has called on the UN to remind the US to abide by the treaty regulating outer space after space satellites launched by tech tycoon Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX almost collided with its space station twice in the past year. China said its space station deployed prevention collision avoidance control measures in July and October to avoid colliding with Starlink satellites in a recent report submitted by Beijing to the UN’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space earlier this month. “China wishes to request the secretary general…
How Many People Have Escaped Poverty?
How Many People Have Escaped Poverty? Lucy Tompkins⏳ Reporting on futures past Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images China, the most populous country, accounted for the vast majority of the reduction. As China’s economy grew at a staggering rate, incomes and living standards rose with it. But extreme poverty also declined in much of the world. NYT
Governments Must Invest in Jobs in Green Economy, Ban Ki-moon Says.
Global leaders must create jobs in the renewable energy sector so that the costs of transitioning from fossil fuels do not exacerbate economic inequalities, Ban Ki-moon, the former United Nations secretary general, said on Wednesday on the sidelines of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. “What is absolutely necessary at this time — it is critical now — is for governments to increase their ambition level, not only in clean energy, but creating millions of new green jobs for the people,” Mr. Ban, the U.N. leader from 2007 to 2016,…
China’s New Climate Pledge Changes Little, in Bad Omen for COP26
China formalized the pledges its leader announced last year, but the country went no further, in an official update of its targets to fight climate change, which were submitted on Thursday with the United Nations climate change agency. It foreshadows a grim start to the international climate talks in Glasgow next week, considering that China’s emissions account for the largest share in the world right now. It reflects the political and economic challenges within China in pivoting away from fossil fuels. China burns more coal than every other country combined…
US wants to help Taiwan participate ‘meaningfully’ in UN, as China prepares to mark key anniversary
Taiwanese and US officials have discussed how Taiwan can “meaningfully” participate at the United Nations just days before Chinese president Xi Jinping will give a speech to mark his country’s half century since accession to the global body. Taiwan, using its formal name the Republic of China, held the Chinese seat at the UN until 25 October 1971, when it was voted out as representative of the country in favour of the People’s Republic of China, whose communist forces had won a civil war in 1949 and forced the republican…