Category Archives: China

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 23 of the invasion

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Food supply fears as Biden plans to warn Chinese president against providing military support for Russia

Russia’s bombardment in the east of Ukraine continued on Friday. In the streets of Mariupol, where 350,000 civilians have been stranded with little food or water, Russia’s armed forces were “tightening the noose” around the city, a spokesperson for the Russian defence ministry said. In the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s state emergency service said a multistorey teaching building had been shelled on Friday morning, killing one person, wounding 11 and trapping one other in the rubble.

Russian missiles struck an aircraft repair plant in Ukraine’s western city of Lviv, 50 miles from the border with Poland and a safe haven for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Ukrainians. Blasts were heard at about 6am on Friday, preceded by the sound of air raid sirens, and a mushroom-shaped plume of smoke could be seen rising in the sky.

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China’s decisive turning point: will it side with Russia and divide the world?

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Analysis: the world faces the possibility of a dramatic shift in the geopolitical balance of power as Beijing mulls support for Russia over the Ukraine war

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.

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China property shares soar on Beijing stimulus, despite continued debt crisis

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Plans to shore up real estate and tech sectors welcomed by investors, but downgrade of third-biggest developer Sunac shows problems persist

Chinese property shares have soared for a second day thanks to a decision by Beijing’s leadership to throw the country’s struggling real estate sector a lifeline amid growing pressures at home and abroad.

Despite a downgrade for China’s third-biggest property developer Sunac on Thursday, stocks in the sector lifted again in Hong Kong and the mainland thanks to an announcement by vice premier Liu He, China’s economic tsar, on Wednesday that the government needed to reduce risks in the industry.

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Prosecutors accuse China of campaign to spy on and harass dissidents in US

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Prosecutors have launched a series of criminal cases including one involving an alleged attempt to smear a congressional candidate

US prosecutors have accused Chinese government agents of trying to spy on and intimidate dissidents living in the United States, including a congressional candidate, according to a criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in New York.

The US justice department convened a Washington news conference to detail the accusations in a series of criminal cases.

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‘An abomination’: Morrison signals sanctions against China if it helps arm Russia

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PM says Australia ‘will move in lockstep’ with allies on sanctioning the country’s largest trading partner

Scott Morrison has left the door open to introducing sanctions against China, Australia’s largest trading partner, if Chinese president Xi Jinping’s regime were to provide military equipment to Russia.

The prime minister said his government would move in lockstep with its allies and partners in response to what he called Beijing’s “chilling silence” on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said any move by China to arm Russia would be “an abomination”.

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US Federal Reserve raises interest rates for first time since 2018

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Fed raises rates by a quarter percentage point from near zero as central bank struggles with inflation, the war in Ukraine and Covid

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates for the first time since 2018, as the central bank struggles with soaring US inflation, the impact of the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus crisis.

The Fed raised rates by a quarter percentage point from near zero, in what is expected to be the first in a series of raises in the coming months.

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Rising US isolationism means Australia must become more resilient and autonomous, thinktank warns

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United States Studies Centre finds Americans are not convinced the Indo-Pacific should be a priority region for the Biden administration

Voters in the US are not convinced the Indo-Pacific should be a priority region for the Biden administration, and isolationist sentiment in the country continues to rise, according to a new analysis by the United States Studies Centre.

The new USSC State of the United States report, to be launched in Canberra at an event on Wednesday with the defence minister, Peter Dutton, Labor frontbenchers Penny Wong and Brendan O’Connor, and US congressman Joe Courtney, finds support for the US alliance with Canberra remains strong.

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Oil price falls below $100 amid Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks

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Drop in price comes as Covid-19 infections rise in China, which could hit demand for energy supplies

Global oil prices have fallen back below $100 (£77) a barrel amid ceasefire talks between Russia and Ukraine and concerns over the rapid growth in Covid infections in China.

The price of a barrel of oil slid to $99 on energy markets on Tuesday, before rising back to just above $100 in early afternoon trading. It comes amid a decline from a 14-year high of close to $130 reached earlier this month after Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine.

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: More than 3m have now fled Ukraine, says UN, as Czech, Polish and Slovenian leaders arrive for Zelenskiy meeting – live

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The UN says it expects the number of Ukrainian refugees to reach at least four million, while Poland’s PM announced he and his counterparts from the Czech Republic and Slovenia are now in Kyiv

More explosions have been heard in Kyiv on Tuesday morning as Russian bombardment continues.

An apartment bulding was reportedly hit and set on fire, according to the state emergency service. The fire was put out and one person has been hospitalised.

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China Covid cases hit two-year high with millions in lockdown as outbreak spreads

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Nearly 90% of new infections in Jilin province, while tens of millions of people across the country remain confined to their homes

China has posted a steep jump in daily Covid-19 infections with new cases more than doubling from a day earlier to a two-year high as a virus outbreak expanded rapidly in the north-east.

A total of 3,507 domestically transmitted cases with confirmed symptoms were reported on Monday across more than a dozen provinces and municipalities, the National Health Commission said, up from 1,337 a day earlier.

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China has already decided to send economic aid to Russia in Ukraine conflict, US officials fear

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Jake Sullivan’s Rome meeting with Chinese counterpart left US officials pessimistic about steering Beijing away from backing Moscow

China has already decided to provide Russia with economic and financial support during its war on Ukraine and is contemplating sending military supplies such as armed drones, US officials fear.

The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, laid out the US case against Russia’s invasion in an “intense” seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, pointing out that Moscow had feigned interest in diplomacy while preparing for invasion, and also that the Russian military was clearly showing signs of frailty.

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US urged China not to supply arms to Russia at ‘intense’ Rome meeting

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China had denounced reports that Moscow asked for military equipment as ‘malicious disinformation’

The United States has held “intense” high-level talks with China in an effort to try to dissuade Beijing from supplying arms to Russia, at a meeting in Rome which the White House sees as critically important not just for the war in Ukraine but also for the future of the global balance of power.

Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, met his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, for all-day talks in the Italian capital on Monday amid reports that Russia has asked China for weapons to bolster its faltering invasion of Ukraine.

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Hong Kong demands UK-based rights group shut down website

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‘We will not be silenced,’ says CEO after government accuses Hong Kong Watch of endangering China’s national security

A UK-based rights group has pledged not to remain silent after Hong Kong’s government demanded it shut its website and accused it of endangering China’s national security.

While China heavily restricts the internet on the mainland, Hong Kong does not generally censor the web, allowing residents to access sites and content that might be critical of Beijing.

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China shuts down city of 17.5m people in bid to halt Covid outbreak

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Authorities adopt a zero tolerance policy in Shenzhen, imposing a lockdown and testing every resident three times

China’s government has locked down Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million people, as it tries to contain its worst ever Covid-19 outbreak across multiple provinces, with case numbers tripling from Saturday to Sunday.

A government notice on Sunday said all residential communities were now under “closed management”, meaning they would be locked down. Every resident would undergo three rounds of testing, for which they were allowed to leave their homes, and all buses and subways were suspended.

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China battles worst Covid outbreak for two years as cases double in 24 hours

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Nearly 3,400 cases were reported on Sunday, forcing shutdowns for millions of people and closure of schools in Shanghai

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China reported nearly 3,400 daily Covid-19 cases on Sunday, double the previous day, forcing lockdowns on virus hotspots as the country contends with its gravest outbreak in two years.

A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several north-eastern cities, as almost 19 provinces battle clusters of the Omicron and Delta variants.

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How Ukraine has become the crucible of the new world order

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From Russia’s threat of nuclear weapons to the patriotic courage of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, an A to Z of how the world has changed

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been described by politicians and commentators as a watershed moment in modern history, a turning point comparable in importance to the 9/11 attacks in the US in 2001, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and even the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.

Whether this portentous view of the war turns out to be justified, only time – and future historians – will tell. But there’s no doubt that in the violent, tumultuous days after 24 February, the established international order has been shaken and, in some respects, upended in extraordinary, unexpected and often unwelcome ways.

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Penny Wong says better relationship with China possible if Coalition stops ‘playing politics’

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Labor would not take ‘a backward step’ on China disagreements, Wong says, after foreign minister meets new Chinese ambassador

Labor’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, says it may be possible for Australia to achieve a diplomatic thaw with China despite the substantial differences between the two countries – if Scott Morrison abandons his “desperate” pre-election weaponisation of national security.

The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, this week met China’s new ambassador to Australia who has made several overtures for dialogue since arriving in Canberra in January.

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Hong Kong protests documentary breaks Taiwan box office record in opening weeks

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Revolution of Our Times looks at the 2019 demonstrations, which some Taiwanese saw as a warning sign about their own future

A film on the pro-democracy protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019 has broken a box office record in Taiwan for an overseas Chinese-language documentary within the first fortnight of its release.

Revolution of Our Times, directed by Hong Kong film-maker Kiwi Chow and which premiered at the Cannes film festival last year, has grossed around $17m NTD (US$600,000) as of Wednesday, the film’s distributor said.

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Narendra Modi walks diplomacy tightrope with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine

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Analysis: Indian PM is reliant on Putin’s nation for arms and is conscious of shifting relations between Russia and its foe, China

As the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, picked up the phone to Vladimir Putin this week – the latest in several phone calls between the two leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine – he put forward a suggestion.

Modi’s push, according to an Indian government statement, was that Putin should have a “direct conversation” with the Ukrainian prime minister, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in order to “greatly assist ongoing peace efforts”.

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China builds new bridge to Hong Kong to rush in workers as Covid cases surge

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The temporary bridge will aid work on a makeshift hospital as the city’s Covid death rate reaches world’s highest per 1m people

A temporary bridge linking Shenzhen and Hong Kong has been erected to help workers and materials from the mainland to enter the city as work began on a Covid-19 makeshift hospital to relieve pressure on the city’s overwhelmed medical system.

Almost 2,000 Chinese contractors from the China State Construction Engineering are in Hong Kong this week to build the makeshift facility near Hong Kong’s border with the mainland, which is expected to provide 1,000 more hospital beds and quarantine rooms for up to 10,000 people.

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