Brussels continues to fine-tune a planned EU instrument against economic pressure from third countries. Details of this have now been debated in the European Parliament Committee on International Trade: A dedicated body, a proposed “EU Resilience Office”, which should keep an eye on and evaluate possible economic coercion attempts from China, will not be necessary, […]
Lithuania wants to open its long-planned trade office in Taiwan in the fall. The opening is planned for September, said Lithuania’s Vice Minister of Economy and Innovation, Jovita Neliupšiene, during a visit to Taipei. She has already looked at various possible sites for the trade office, Neliupšiene said during a four-day trip to Taiwan. Its […]
Former Deputy Foreign Minister Le Yucheng has been appointed deputy director of the National Radio and Television Administration. Le had frequently deputized for Foreign Minister Wang Yi in recent months. With the move from the Foreign Ministry, Le, who speaks Russian, is dropping out of the race to succeed Wang. Catherine So is to become […]
China claims to have picked up signals of extraterrestrial life, according to a now-deleted report. The Sky Eye radio telescope in Guizhou province has detected narrow-band electromagnetic signals, the report said, citing Zhang Tonjie, chief scientist of a Chinese team searching for extraterrestrial civilizations. However, the suspicious signals could also be some kind of radio […]
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, surprised everyone on Tuesday with an announcement: She will not seek a second term, the Chilean announced. She is not the first High Commissioner to quit after just one term. But the timing Bachelet chose for her announcement raises questions. Is there a connection to the […]
A new study suggests that private creditors, not Chinese loans, dominate African debt. In their paper, Harry Verhoeven of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University and Nicolas Lippolis of the University of Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations object to the “debt trap diplomacy” narrative (China.Table reported). “What keeps African leaders […]
It was Finance Minister Christian Lindner who, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calledrenewable energies “freedom energies” in the media. But at least for the solar industry, this is simply a misleading label: The dependence on China, which dominates the entire solar supply chain, is too great in this area. And Beijing has set massive expansion […]
Hong Kong investigative news site Factwire announced its immediate shutdown on Friday. “In recent years, the media has contended with great change. Despite having wrestled many times with the difficult decision as to whether to continue our journalistic work, we had always come to the same affirmative conclusion: to stand fast to our core values […]
According to EU figures, around 25 million people worldwide work in conditions that can be classified as forced labor. In countries such as China, these modern-day slaves pick cotton for clothing, harvest fruit and vegetables, or assemble electrical components. These goods then end up with consumers in Europe. This should change. The European Parliament is […]
The European Parliament has given the green light to a regulation with which the EU wants to open China’s public procurement market to European firms. The “International Procurement Instrument” (IPI) received the necessary votes on Thursday. “This will significantly strengthen the EU in the harsh international trade environment,” said Daniel Caspary (CDU), the MEP in […]