Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Videos released on eve of 70th anniversary festivities feature Americans and Canadians
The Chinese state broadcaster has released videos of foreign nationals praising the country on the eve of celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, as research showed worsening perceptions in many western countries.
The videos posted over the weekend show foreign citizens, identified by country, singing patriotic ballads and praising China’s culture and development. “I love you China … I love your homegrown sugar cane, that quenches my heart like milk,” sing participants, who include Canadians, Germans and Americans, in a video filmed in the eastern city of Nanjing.
As Beijing prepares to mark founding of PRC with a massive military parade, the Chinese leadership faces its most difficult chapter since 1989
Kites. Balloons. Pigeons. Drones. Alcohol. The list of things that have been banned in the run up to the 70th anniversary of the founding of China keeps growing.
As Beijing seeks to ensure the special day on 1 October goes off without a hint of a hitch, motorists have been told they must not refuel their cars or motorbikes on their own. There must be no use of walkie-talkies and other devices using radio waves. During rehearsals for a military parade to mark the day, those living near Tiananmen Square have been instructed “not to approach the windows” and to keep their curtains closed. In neighbouring Shanxi province, police and other public security staff have been forbidden from drinking spirits since 15 September.
Chun Han Wong, who covered Xi Jinping extensively, is in effect expelled from country
Chinese authorities have declined to renew the press credentials of a Beijing-based Wall Street Journal reporter, in effect expelling a journalist who extensively covered President Xi Jinping and Communist party politics.
The foreign ministry said on Friday in response to a faxed question about the Singaporean reporter Chun Han Wong’s visa that some foreign journalists with the “evil intention to smear and attack China” were not welcome.
This documentary dared to do what politicians the world over would not, asking tough questions of Xi Jinping’s hardline rule
The drink Mihrigul Tursun’s captors offered her was strangely cloudy. It resembled, she said, water after washing rice. After drinking it, the young mother recalled in China: A New World Order (BBC Two), her period stopped. “It didn’t come back until five months after I left prison. So my period stopped seven months in total. Now it’s back, but it’s abnormal.”
We never learned why Tursun was detained – along with an estimated one million other Uighurs of Xinjiang province, in what the authorities euphemistically call re-education centres – but we heard clearly her claims of being tortured. “They cut off my hair and electrocuted my head,” Tursun said. “I couldn’t stand it any more. I can only say please just kill me.”
The US president’s talk of a ‘large real estate deal’ says a lot about his view of the world
Greenland, and more specifically its purchase by the US, is being actively discussed in Donald Trump’s Oval Office. But what exactly is it that makes one of the world’s most desolate places such an attractive proposition?
For the president, it is the real estate deal of a lifetime, one that would secure a land mass a quarter the size of the US and cement his place in US history alongside President Andrew Johnson, who bought Alaska from Russia in 1867, and Thomas Jefferson, who secured Louisiana from the French in 1803.
Hundreds of demonstrators stage new rally a day after shutdown at key transport hub
Hong Kong’s airport authority has suspended flights for a second day as thousands of protesters staged another rally at the busy international travel hub.
Tuesday’s action marked the fifth consecutive day of protests at the airport, as pro-democracy demonstrations in the Chinese territory entered their 10th week, with both sides showing few signs of backing down.
Much of modern China’s epic growth was driven by private enterprise – but under Xi Jinping, the Communist party has returned to being the ultimate authority in business as well as politics. By Richard McGregor
When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, he extolled the importance of the state economy at every turn, while all around him watched as China’s high-speed economy was driven by private entrepreneurs. Since then, Xi has engineered an unmistakable shift in policy. At the time he took office, private firms were responsible for about 50% of all investment in China and about 75% of economic output. But as Nicholas Lardy, a US economist who has long studied the Chinese economy, concluded in a recent study, “Since 2012, private, market-driven growth has given way to a resurgence of the role of the state.”
From the Mao era onwards, Chinese state firms have always had a predominant role in the economy, and the Communist party has always maintained direct control over state firms. For more than a decade, the party has also tried to ensure it played a role inside private businesses. But in his first term in office, Xi has overseen a sea change in how the party approaches the economy, dramatically strengthening the party’s role in both government and private businesses.
Jeremy Hunt’s support for the Hong Kong protests has released old resentments long suppressed
Last week’s sudden outbreak of verbal hostilities with China, triggered by violent clashes in Hong Kong, provided a disturbing glimpse of post-Brexit Britain’s isolated and impotent future in a world of more muscular adversaries. It also underlined a dilemma facing all the western democracies in their dealings with Beijing: what matters most – liberal values or money-making?
Like bullies sensing weakness, Chinese officials let rip after Britain dared defend the demonstrators’ right to protest against the erosion of Hong Kong’s freedoms. The row released tensions largely suppressed since the former colony was handed back in 1997. The depth of China’s pent-up fury was cautionary.
The scale of unrest may force the Chinese president to get involved. How will he respond?
The escalating protests in Hong Kong pose a personal challenge to the autocratic rule of Xi Jinping, whose implacable domination of Chinese public life since 2012 has drawn comparisons with Mao Zedong.
President says US will not impose further tariffs after meeting with Xi Jinping at G20
Donald Trump has declared US trade negotiations with China to be “right back on track” after a highly anticipated meeting with Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka.
Trump said the US would not impose further tariffs in a trade war that other world leaders have warned could threaten the global economy, and added that the world’s two biggest economies would restart negotiations on a trade deal.
PM says ‘substantial and difficult’ issues to be resolved in standoff after speaking with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 in Osaka
Scott Morrison says it is “unrealistic” to expect a quick resolution of the damaging trade dispute between the United States and China on Saturday at the G20 meeting in Osaka.
After conversations with Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, Morrison told travelling reporters on Friday there was a determination to resolve the standoff but he was not “naive” about how quickly the two countries would come to terms because there were “real, substantial and difficult issues to be resolved”.
Xi Jinping is greeted warmly in North Korea on his first state visit there as China’s president. He has backed North Korea’s new focus on economic development, saying in a speech in the capital that the nation under leader Kim Jong-un had ‘initiated a new strategic line of economic development and improving people’s livelihoods, raising socialist construction in the country to a new high tide.’ North Korea remains heavily dependent on aid, mainly from China and food security is a constant concern.
Beijing’s public support for Hong Kong leader likely hides private fury, but letting her go would be another humiliation
The most obvious casualty of Hong Kong’s extraordinary uprising against chief executive, Carrie Lam, and her campaign to tie the city more closely to China, will be the bureaucrat-turned-politician’s own career. If she stays on, it will only be as a lame duck leader.
But the city’s turmoil is also a major challenge to her boss and patron, Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Russian president helps Chinese counterpart celebrate 66th birthday in style on Sunday, giving him Russian ice cream and sharing champagne before a summit in Tajikistan. The two leaders reportedly consider each other to be close friends.
Discussion of senior leaders' private lives is extremely rare in China and their exact birth dates are considered a state secret.
Britain’s construction sector grew by 1% in the last quarter, as building firms got busier.
But Clive Docwra, managing director of construction consulting and design agency McBains, says Brexit is still hurting the sector.
“Today’s figures mark another increase in output, coming after last month’s statistics showed unexpected moderate growth during February.
“However, this was driven by repair and maintenance - there was no growth in new work across the first quarter of the year, including a decrease in private commercial and housing work.
Britain’s politicians are predictably split on whether the UK is romping along healthily, or simply scrambling to protect itself from Brexit.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, takes an upbeat view on today’s growth figures, pointing out that we’ve now enjoyed nine years of growth.
“Today’s figures show the economy remains robust, with growth of 0.5% in Q1 benefitting every major sector.
“The economy has grown for nine consecutive years, debt is falling, employment is at a record high and wages are rising at their fastest pace in over a decade.
“It’s not surprising to see households and businesses protecting themselves against a potentially disastrous Tory No Deal Brexit.
“With this government increasingly resembling a business entering administration it’s time they admitted the failure of their approach and stood aside for a General Election.
Raft of countries including Turkey have refused to attend latest summit amid growing concern about debt diplomacy
As China fetes its Belt and Road initiative at a summit this week, Chinese officials will be working hard to defend the flagship project from growing international criticism.
The three-day forum starting on Thursday is meant to promote Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s “project of the century”, a foreign policy initiative launched in 2013 to revive ancient trading routes between Asia and Europe, as well as build new links in the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
European leaders and China’s Xi Jinping put on a show of unity in the face of US tariffs
Donald Trump was not on the guest list for Emmanuel Macron’s mini-summit in Paris, but the presence of the US president was still very much felt as Europe’s leaders sat down to talk trade, business deals and geopolitics with China’s Xi Jinping.
At one level, the message from the meeting of China’s leader with Macron, the German chancellor Angela Merkel and the European commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was obvious: this was a show of unity in the face of Trump’s tariffs aimed across both the Atlantic and the Pacific.
French president invited Angela Merkel to talks with Chinese leader in Paris
Emmanuel Macron has launched a charm offensive towards his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, talking of multilateralism and cooperation while tiptoeing around subjects such as human rights.
In a meeting during a bilateral three-day state visit to France, the French president took the unprecedented step of inviting the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, to Paris for the talks.
Xi Jinping visits Rome as Italy becomes first G7 country to back Belt and Road initiative
Italy has become the first G7 country to endorse a contentious plan by China to build a Silk Road-style global trade network, irking its EU and US allies.
The prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, and the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, have signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding (MoU) that could lead to Italy’s participation in China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI), an ambitious project that envisages Chinese investment in a network of infrastructure projects connecting Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe.