The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington. “I had interaction with my Chinese counterparts, but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings,” Bessent told ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, explaining that he spoke to the Chinese during International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” he added. On Friday, President…
Tag: Xi Jinping
Trump Is Breaking the Rule That Every Barroom Brawler Knows
Provoking your enemies, alienating your friends and actively sabotaging your own defenses is no one’s idea of a sound national security plan. And yet, this is the playbook that President Trump has apparently followed over the first 100 days of his second term. You can see it most clearly in the global fight he kicked off with China. He’s been scrapping for this showdown since before he entered politics, so you’d think that before taking on such a global powerhouse, he’d strengthen every alliance, game out every possible countermeasure and…
Xi announces plan for Chinese economy to counter impact of US trade war
Xi Jinping has announced a plan to counter China’s continuing economic problems and the impact of the US trade war, as reports swirl that it could drop tariffs on some US products, including semiconductors. Friday’s meeting of the politburo was convened to discuss China’s economic situation, which since the pandemic has faced difficulties fuelled by a housing sector crisis, youth unemployment, and Donald Trump’s tariffs on all Chinese exports. A readout of the meeting published by the official state media outlet, Xinhua, said China’s economy had showed a “positive trend”…
Xi contrasts China’s clean energy promises with Trump turmoil
China will continue to push forward on the climate crisis, Xi Jinping has said while appearing to criticise the “protectionism” of Donald Trump’s tariff policies. The Chinese president was attending a closed-door virtual meeting with the UN secretary general, António Guterres, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and about a dozen other heads of state and government to discuss the climate crisis. Xi told the meeting that China would “not slow down its climate actions”, according a draft of his remarks.…
‘Why would he take such a risk?’ How a famous Chinese author befriended his censor
It is 2013. For four full months, Liu Lipeng engages in dereliction of duty. Every hour the system sends him a huge volume of posts, but he hardly ever deletes a single word. After three or four thousand posts accumulate, he lightly clicks his mouse and the whole lot is released. In the jargon of censors, this is a “total pass in one click” (一键全通), after which all the posts appear on China’s version of X, Sina Weibo, to be read by millions, then reposted and discussed. He logs on…
German chancellor urges Xi Jinping to press Russia to end Ukraine war, saying ‘China’s word carries weight’
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, says he has urged Xi Jinping to press Russia to end its “senseless” war in Ukraine and that the Chinese president has agreed to back a peace conference in Switzerland. Scholz said after a meeting with Xi in Beijing on Tuesday that “China’s word carries weight in Russia”. “I have therefore asked President Xi to influence Russia so that Putin finally calls off his senseless campaign, withdraw his troops and ends this terrible war,” he said on social media platform X. Scholz said Xi had agreed…
German chancellor urges Chinese industry bosses to play fair in EU market
The chancellor of Germany has urged industry bosses in China to play fair by not overproducing cheap goods or infringing copyright rules. Speaking on a three-day visit to China, where he is travelling with leading business representatives and three government ministers, Olaf Scholz said he, in turn, would encourage the European Union not to be driven by self-interested protectionism, in which governments restrict international trade to help domestic companies. Scholz was seen to be treading a careful path, driven by European concerns that Chinese goods are being dumped on the…
China and Taiwan are destined for ‘reunification’, Xi tells former president
Xi Jinping has met the former Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou, in what analysts said was an attempt to promote peaceful unification as the only alternative to military annexation of Taiwan. Ma, who was leading a student delegation to China, met Xi in Beijing at the Great Hall of the People, a venue typically reserved for foreign leaders meeting with senior Chinese officials. Xi used the meeting to emphasise his belief that Taiwan and China were destined for what he terms “reunification”. “External interference cannot stop the historical trend of reunion…
‘I will not dance’: Olaf Scholz joins TikTok with a promise
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has opened a TikTok account, promising he will not be seen dancing on the social media platform popular with young people. The newest official government channel “increases the information offer to citizens, who increasingly inform themselves and discuss politics on TikTok”, Scholz’s spokesperson, Steffen Hebestreit, said in a statement. The account will offer “a look behind the scenes of everyday government life”, Hebestreit said. Known for his sober style of leadership, the chancellor himself made light of the new outreach, on another social media channel.…
Biden and Xi seek to manage tensions in phone call as US officials head to China
Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have clashed in a telephone call about Taiwan and US trade restrictions on technology, but sought to manage their tensions, as two top US officials prepare to visit Beijing. The nearly two-hour telephone conversation on Tuesday was the two leaders’ first direct interaction since a summit in November in California that saw a marked thaw in tone, if not the long-term rivalry, between the world’s two largest economies. The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, will leave Wednesday and visit both Guangzhou, the southern city emblematic of…