China’s suspension of sweeping rare earth export controls has lent “new stability” to its ties with the European Union, the bloc’s ambassador to China has said, suggesting that the two sides now have a window to improve frosty relations. Speaking at a forum in Beijing on Thursday, Jorge Toledo initially offered a bleak assessment of…
A former French diplomat has urged Europe and China to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, describing the issue as “the major challenge” facing the two sides. “The Ukraine war is fracturing the dialogue between two parts of the world,” Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, France’s ambassador to China between 2014 and 2017, said in an interview. “It shouldn’t…
A leading advisory panel on China policy urged Congress on Tuesday to establish a “consolidated economic statecraft entity” to handle technological and other national security challenges posed by China’s “systematic and persistent evasion” of American export controls and sanctions. “This recommendation addresses the critical gap between export controls and sanctions as written and their actual…
Tokyo — Japan said Monday that it had scrambled aircraft after detecting a suspected Chinese drone near its southern island of Yonaguni, which is close to Taiwan, on Saturday, as tension between the Asian adversaries spiked. On Sunday, Chinese coast guard vessels spent several hours in Japan’s territorial waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands, known as…
The most important outcome of the Communist Party of China’s fourth plenum, held last month in Beijing, was the review and adoption of the “Recommendations of the CPC Central Committee on Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development”. Leading the drafting team in person, Communist Party General Secretary and Chinese President…
China’s ambassador to the United States has come to the defence of the country’s students and academics, saying they have been “smeared” as a threat to national security. “A few individuals in the United States have seen Chinese students, scholars, and friendly organisations … as national security threats through a biased lens and have tried…
When Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump met in Busan, South Korea, on October 30, they spent nearly two hours discussing rare earths, fentanyl and trade. Taiwan, the one issue most likely to bring the world’s two largest powers into direct conflict, never came up. That silence was the message. It revealed…
“The assertions and innuendos in the article are completely false,” an Alibaba representative said. “We question the motivation behind the anonymous leak, which the FT admits that they cannot verify.” The Alibaba representative called the article a “malicious PR operation” that appears to “undermine President Trump’s recent trade deal with China”. Hangzhou-based Alibaba owns the…
A top secret White House memo alleges that Chinese e-commerce titan Alibaba is supporting Beijing’s military in cyber operations targeting the US, the Financial Times reported. The document, which the FT said it reviewed, claims that Alibaba has provided the People’s Liberation Army with access to its customer data and shared information on critical software…
Each week, Food Tank is rounding up a few news stories that inspire excitement, infuriation, or curiosity. The Federal Government Shutdown Ends Earlier this week, eight members of the Senate Democratic Caucus sided with Republican colleagues by voting to reopen the government and end the longest shutdown in U.S. history. On Wednesday, the House passed…