The lobby of Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry contains just 13 flags—one for each of the self-ruling island’s diplomatic allies. Since 1990, the building’s janitors have hauled away 15 more belonging to nations that have been persuaded to jettison Taipei and instead recognize Beijing, as the world’s No. 2 economy flexes its geopolitical muscle to isolate what … Read more
Consumers shopping at a mall in Yantai, East China’s Shandong province, July 10, 2023. Future Publishing | Future Publishing | Getty Images Min Li doesn’t go to the mall often. But when she does, she heads straight for the basement, scurrying past the first floor flanked by Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and other luxury outlets. … Read more
Chinese yuan cash bills and chinese flag (money, economy, finance, inflation, crisis) Javier Ghersi | Moment | Getty Images Ratings agency Moody’s downgraded its outlook on China’s government credit ratings to negative from stable, expecting Beijing’s support and possible bailouts for distressed local governments and state-owned enterprises to diminish China’s fiscal, economic and institutional strength. … Read more
China’s current emissions reduction targets are not as strong as they need to be, U.S. Deputy Secretary for Energy David Turk said Monday. “I think every country needs to take a look at what it’s doing, especially in its implementation phase,” Turk told CNBC’s Steve Sedgwick at the COP28 summit. “I’ve looked at the numbers for … Read more
Comment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave To get a sense of the scale and severity of China’s addiction to coal, look no further than the scores of deep industrial mines and uncounted smaller pits dotted across the country’s north-central region, churning out more of the black rock than the rest of the world … Read more
In late October, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the National Women’s Congress that “We should actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture.” Such a statement is rich coming from a man, especially one who leads a party that for decades actively and sometimes brutally enforced family planning policies. It is also delusional: … Read more
China’s health-care system is once again in the spotlight as a wave of pneumonia cases sweeps through the country, hitting kids particularly hard. The sudden increase in sick children, and a report suggesting widespread clusters of undiagnosed respiratory illnesses, prompted the World Health Organization to ask for more details in order to allay concerns that … Read more
Well before Washington banned Nvidia’s exports of high-performance graphic processing units to China, the country’s tech giants had been hoarding them in anticipation of an escalating tech war between the two nations. Baidu, one of the tech firms building China’s counterparts to OpenAI, has secured enough AI chips to keep training its ChatGPT equivalent Ernie … Read more
EL ALTO, Bolivia — On a plateau 13,000 feet above sea level in the Bolivian Andes, llama herders and Indigenous farmers share the sparse landscape with an unusual neighbor: a towering cluster of Chinese-built satellite dishes. The Amachuma Ground Station exchanges data 24 hours a day with Bolivia’s only state-owned satellite, Tupac Katari I, which … Read more
Apartment blocks under construction in the Nanchuan area of Xining, Qinghai province, China. Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images BEIJING — China’s property market, which makes up a substantial chunk of the country’s economy, needs more government support to prevent it from deteriorating further, analysts said. Existing home prices fell in October by the … Read more