Donald Trump will meet Xi Jinping in May during the US president’s first visit to China in eight years, a closely watched trip that had been postponed due to the Iran war. Trump was initially slated to travel next week, but will now visit Beijing on 14 and 15 May, he wrote in a post on Truth Social on Wednesday. Trump said he would host the Chinese leader in a reciprocal visit in Washington later this year. Trump wrote: “Our Representatives are finalizing preparations for these Historic Visits. I look…
Tag: China
Australia refuses to say how many Chinese nationals are arriving by boat, saying it may damage bilateral relations
Exclusive: Indonesia reports growing number of attempts by Chinese nationals to organise boat journeys, as Australian authorities refuse to reveal details Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast The Australian government has refused to reveal how many Chinese nationals have arrived in Australia by boat since 2024, saying that disclosing the figure may harm relations with other countries. However, reports by Indonesian police show that there has been a consistent trend of Chinese nationals attempting to reach…
‘They can reach me wherever’: China using financial tactics to coerce people who flee, says report
UK urged to tackle transnational repression, as dissidents say Beijing has targeted them with tax letters and other threats “I didn’t feel safe, even though I’m not based in Hong Kong any more,” said Christopher Mung Siu-tat after getting tax bills from Hong Kong authorities. “The regime can reach me by their long arms wherever I am.” Siu-tat, the executive director at the Hong Kong Labour Rights Monitor, a UK-based NGO, fled Beijing’s sweeping national security laws years ago. The letters are the latest example of a series of transnational…
Hong Kong bookstore staff arrested for allegedly selling ‘seditious’ Jimmy Lai biography, broadcaster reports
Hong Kong police arrested a bookstore owner and three shopkeepers on Tuesday for allegedly selling “seditious” publications including a biography of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai, broadcaster TVB reported. The owner of the Book Punch store, Pong Yat-ming, and three staff were accused of selling copies of The Troublemaker, a biography of Lai by one of his former business directors, Mark Clifford, TVB reported. Lai, the founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was sentenced to a 20-year jail term in February for collusion with foreign forces and sedition…
‘It smells like a rancid fish and chip shop’: at sea with the Antarctic’s krill supertrawlers
It is bitterly cold on the deck of the Allankay and the bosun, Luca Massari, is checking that none of us are wearing contact lenses before we descend into Antarctic waters. There is a risk, he warns, that lenses will freeze solid over the eyes. Massari himself is prepared for his surroundings. He is wearing thick goggles that make him look like an Olympic ski jumper. Massari is a burly, heavily tattooed veteran of the environmental organisation Sea Shepherd, which campaigns against exploitating the oceans. His deck team are preparing…
Group of dogs that went missing in China go viral after walking 17km home
A group of seven dogs that went missing in China have gone viral after a video emerged of them walking more than 17km back home to their village, reuniting with owners who had been searching for them for days. The video, first posted online on 15 March, shows the dogs – including a golden retriever, labrador, German shepherd and Pekinese – walking along the highway in Changchun, the capital of China’s north-east Jilin province, where temperatures are dropping below 0C overnight. Leading the pack is a corgi, later identified in…
Tuesday briefing: With the horror of conflict throughout the globe, how likely is world war three?
Good morning. The world is at war. From the trenches of eastern Ukraine to the missile-streaked skies of the Gulf, a growing proportion of humanity is living under the horror of conflict. For some observers, there are gnawing fears that the worst is yet to come. The apparent collapse of the rules-based international order, the irrelevance of institutions designed to uphold it, and the interconnectedness of the fighting have sparked warnings that we could be at the beginning of a third world war. Indeed, half of Britons polled in a…
Police in Hong Kong can now demand phone and computer passwords under amended national security law
Hong Kong police can now demand that people suspected of breaching the city’s national security law provide mobile phone or computer passwords in a further crackdown on dissent. The new amendments to the law also empower customs officers to seize items that are deemed to have “seditious intention”, regardless of whether any person has been arrested for an offence endangering national security because of the items. Refusing to comply could lead to up to one year’s jail and a fine of up to HK$100,000 ($12,773) while providing false or misleading…
Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China review – Trump vomits all over Norma Percy’s film
It’s not normal to view documentaries about international trade negotiations as light relief, but we are where we are. Clash of the Superpowers: America vs China is a two-parter produced by film-maker Norma Percy, whose signature style – on series including The Iraq War, Putin vs the West and Inside Europe: Ten Years of Turmoil – is to use first-hand testimonies to revisit diplomatic flashpoints from a decade or so ago: sufficiently soon after the events for everyone who was there to still be alive, but late enough for them…
When your culture becomes a meme: the ‘jarring’ effect of Chinamaxxing
I have been Chinese my whole life. Lately, many online have also found their Chinese roots, but not through traditional ancestry tests. Creators are drinking hot water, wearing slippers around the house, using chopsticks, eating Chinese food, and wearing red. Taking off in popularity from mid-2025, these videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, finding virality first on TikTok, then later Instagram and X. Put simply, “people are trying to be more Chinese regardless of what their heritage is,” says Michelle She, a London-based fashion label owner. Chinamaxxing…