China Watch
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Fox Business correspondent Lydia Hu reports live on Taiwan’s top diplomat, Alexander Yui, sharing a warning about China as President Donald Trump weighs a proposed $14 billion arms package for the island. Yui stresses that Taiwan acts as a front-line defense, preventing China’s wider ambitions. Taiwan’s semiconductor production, 90% of the world’s advanced chips, makes US support critical.
China has deployed over 100 vessels in the waters surrounding Taiwan in the week following President Donald Trump’s Beijing summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the secretary general of Taiwan’s National Security Council said Saturday.
“Our ISR/intel shows that the PRC has deployed over 100 vessels around the 1st Island Chain over the past few days, so soon after the Beijing summit,” Secretary General Joseph Wu wrote on X.
“In this part of the world, China is the one & only PROBLEM wrecking the Status Quo & threatening regional peace & stability,” Wu concluded.
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BEIJING: China imposed export controls on Friday (May 22) on three precursor chemicals shipped to North America, as Washington and Beijing step up cooperation against drug trafficking following US leader Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing.
The chemicals will now require licences from government agencies to be exported to the United States, Canada and Mexico, China’s commerce ministry wrote in a statement.
China is the primary origin of precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl, a highly potent opioid underpinning a deadly drug epidemic in the United States.
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China has launched a national programme that will assign every humanoid robot manufactured in the country a unique digital identity code, effectively a citizen ID, but for bipedal machines (those that can balance and walk/run on two legs).
The initiative, called the Humanoid Full Lifecycle Management Service Platform, was announced on Friday. It is led by the Humanoid Robotics and Embodied Intelligence Standardization committee, which is under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (via South China Morning Post).
The Trump-Xi summit saw Chairman Xi claim the U.S. and China should be working together; while making it clear recognizing Taiwan was off the table. President Trump hinted at major business deals, and the progressive press largely covered the event as a victory for China over Trump.
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U.S. President Donald Trump entered his final talks with Xi Jinping on Friday touting economic wins that gave markets little to cheer, while Beijing warned Washington about mishandling Taiwan and said its war with Iran should never have started.
Trump is making the first visit by a U.S. president to China, America’s main strategic and economic rival, since his last in 2017, and has been seeking tangible results to beef up his dented approval ratings ahead of crucial midterm elections.
“We’ve made some fantastic trade deals, great for both countries,” Trump said, seated beside Xi in a decorative red armchair at the opulent Zhongnanhai complex, a former imperial garden that houses the offices of Chinese leaders.
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President Donald Trump said Thursday that China plans to pour “hundreds of billions of dollars” into American companies led by executives who joined him during high-level meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Speaking during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump said the executives accompanying him to China were there to secure economic opportunities that could ultimately bring jobs back to the United States.
“Those business people are here to make deals and to bring back jobs,” Trump said. “China’s going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars with those people that were in that room today.”
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In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Thursday from Beijing, President Trump said that during their summit, Chinese President Xi Jinping assured him that China would not provide military equipment to Iran for its war in the Middle East.
Asked by Hannity how big of a discussion the two leaders had regarding China’s support for Iran, Mr. Trump responded, “We discussed it. When you say support, they’re [China] not fighting a war with us or anything.”
According to Mr. Trump, Xi told him that he’s “not going to give [Iran] military equipment. That’s a big statement. He said that today. That’s a big statement. He said that strongly.”
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As Donald Trump and Xi Jinping came face to face outside China’s Great Hall of the People, the pair exchanged a historic handshake, with this opening moment laying bare the nature of their relationship — a body language expert asserting that Xi holds the upper hand.
The two leaders sat down for two hours of talks on Thursday, May 14, with the entire world looking on as Xi hailed US-China relations as the world’s “most important” and Trump declared the discussions “extremely positive”.
From the very beginning of the visit, the power dynamic between the two men has been unmistakable, according to body language expert Louise Mahler, who argued “if life is a competition, for me, Xi won.”
Trump says China ‘impressed’ by Iran war, hints at Beijing buying US oil– www.washingtonexaminer.com
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President Donald Trump claimed that Chinese President Xi Jinping was “impressed” by the U.S.’s performance in its war with Iran and that it may soon resume imports of oil from the United States.
Speaking with Fox News’s Sean Hannity after his meeting with the Chinese leader, Trump expressed his belief that a good relationship with the other superpower was a good thing and that positive relationships with “very powerful” countries are desirable. He then suggested the view was mutual vis-a-vis China and that Beijing gained further respect for the U.S. during the war with Iran.
After boasting of successes in Venezuela and Iran, Trump said he and Xi spoke about the matter at their meeting.
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The Trump/Xi meetings in China were private. It appears that there were no big breakthroughs and “wins” for Trump to bring back to the United States.
Trump tried to flatter the Chinese leader, who responded with threats about Taiwan.
The Trump trip, where he took a bunch of the world’s richest CEOs with him, appears to have been a total bust on all fronts. Republicans were hoping that Trump would have another one of his fake deals with China to announce that would help to get farmers who are being devastated by the president’s toxic combo of war and tariffs off their backs, but there was no big announcement.
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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent did not say when these talks would happen. There are fears in the United States and China about the threats from A.I., but neither side is willing to slow down its development.
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President Trump said Friday that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping made some “fantastic trade deals” and both want the Iran conflict to end during this week’s summit in Beijing, as both countries look to claim the visit as a win — and aim to keep their relationship on a stable footing after last year’s trade war.
The leaders of the two superpowers are holding a bilateral meeting and lunch at China’s seat of power — the Zhongnanhai Garden compound — late Friday morning local time, before Mr. Trump leaves China and heads back to Washington. They met for tea and walked around the centuries-old gardens, mostly out of earshot of reporters.
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“It was sort of like a statement but I think it was a commitment,” Trump said, describing his conversation with President Xi Jinping in a Fox News interview.
“That’s a lot of jobs,” Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity in excerpts released by the broadcaster.
Shares fell after the spots were released.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – President Trump is in Beijing for high-stakes talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The president is expected to confront Xi over China’s support of Iran.
The Chinese leader is sending a strong message of his own, challenging U.S. policies on Taiwan.
But the war with Iran especially looms large as the two leaders meet, with President Trump expected to press Xi over China’s support for Tehran.
“You’ve got to remember, China is supporting everything to Iran that it needs in this war except combat personnel. It is a comrade in arms. It is an enemy combatant,” said Gordon Chang, with Gatestone Institute.
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Xi Jinping warned Donald Trump that tensions over Taiwan could push the US and China towards “clashes and even conflicts”, according to Chinese state media reports on their closed-door meeting in Beijing.
According to a readout published by Xinhua, Xi told Trump that if the Taiwan issue is “handled well”, relations between the two countries could maintain “overall stability”.
But he cautioned that mishandling the issue would place the wider US–China relationship in “great jeopardy”.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping had stern words for President Trump on Taiwan as they met in Beijing on Thursday, warning of potential “clashes and even conflicts” if the issue isn’t “handled properly,” according to Chinese state media.
During their summit, the two leaders are seen as aiming to stabilize their trading relationship after last year’s trade war. They’re also grappling with uncertainty over the United States’ war with Iran. But the issue of Taiwan loomed large.
The closed-door session lasted roughly two hours and 15 minutes. The White House characterized the meeting as “good.”
Canadians are asking questions after learning in a foreign interference trial that the Canadian Royal Mounted Police have a secret security agreement with the Chinese Communist Party. The suspicion is that Canada’s cops are enforcing CCP laws against CCP dissidents living in Canada.
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The White House is escalating pressure on China over what U.S. officials describe as Beijing’s economic and material support for Iran and Russia ahead of President Donald Trump’s upcoming summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Senior administration officials said President Trump has already confronted Xi multiple times over China’s role in helping sustain adversarial regimes through oil purchases, dual-use exports, and sensitive technologies tied to military programs.
A senior administration official told reporters Sunday that Trump has discussed with Xi “the revenue that China provides to both those regimes and therefore as well as dual use goods, components and parts, not to mention the potential of weapons exports.”
“I expect that conversation to continue,” the official added during a White House briefing previewing Trump’s trip to Beijing.
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WASHINGTON: The United States government on Monday (May 11) announced sanctions against three people and nine companies, including four based in Hong Kong and four in the United Arab Emirates, for aiding Iran’s shipment of oil to China.
The ninth company is based in Oman.
The Treasury move follows sanctions announced on Friday on individuals and companies aiding Iranian purchases of weapons and components used to make drones and ballistic missiles.
It comes days before US President Donald Trump’s planned meeting with Xi Jinping, where he is expected to press the Chinese leader to help resolve the standoff with Iran and reopen the critical Strait of Hormuz.
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What happens when the Arctic starts to look like the South China Sea?
Historically, a neutral region where cooperation prevailed, the Arctic is quickly becoming a contested space. This is no more evident than in the increasing scope and volume of Russian and Chinese lawfare affecting the region. Through excessive maritime regulations, coordinated challenges to Western continental shelf claims, and the use of shadow fleets to avoid accountability, Russia and China are increasingly coordinating their efforts to exert influence and challenge Western claims to Arctic resources and freedom of navigation. As these tactics continue to converge, the United States and its partners — Arctic and non-Arctic — should establish clear strategies to respond and counter or risk ceding control of this critical region to those who seek to reshape the law in their favor.
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Chinese researchers have made a significant advancement in circular resource recovery by creating a new way to turn nitrate-laden wastewater into valuable ammonia for fertilisers. They used artificial intelligence to find a super-effective dual-atom catalyst, which led them to a process that tackles two major global issues: water pollution and the heavy energy use of traditional industrial ammonia production. Their findings, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, show that this method achieves almost three times the conversion efficiency of earlier technologies. By converting runoff from farms and factories, this approach provides an eco-friendly solution to lessen environmental ‘dead zones’ and cuts down on the agricultural sector’s dependence on energy-heavy chemical methods.
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When Donald Trump visits Beijing this week, the focus of think tankers and pundits will largely be on what the policy outcomes will be, and there is a tendency to lean towards the negative. Will China deepen the trade war? Will Trump bristle at Xi’s stance on the war against Iran?
But for the trajectory of the relationship between China and the United States, the summit could play a constructive role, facilitating a peaceful recognition of the shift in power dynamics between the two countries and globally. Perceptions in both countries of one another, and of the role each seeks to play in the world, will be shaped by the art of the summitry and what the meeting between the two leaders conveys.
Historically, high-profile summits have proven to be important turning points in U.S. foreign policy by mediating enduring tensions in bilateral relations. The 1959 US-Soviet summit humanized the Soviet Union and Nikita Khrushchev in the eyes of some Americans. The 1972 Nixon visit to China allowed pro-rapprochement sentiment to emerge and circulate in American public discourse, contributing to ongoing discussions and debates on diplomatic normalization for years following the summit. The 1985-87 US-Soviet summits between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were crucial for transforming bilateral distrust into trust.
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- Confident in China’s power, Xi is ready to host an unpredictable Trump The Washington Post
- As Trump Heads to Beijing, China Is ‘Locked and Loaded’ for a Fight The New York Times
- US standoff with Iran deepens and strait remains closed after Trump rejects latest proposal AP News
- Trump and China’s Xi set for talks spanning Iran, nuclear, trade and AI Reuters
- Iran, China and AI collide in Trump’s legacy-defining week Axios