It was a desperately needed moment of grandeur for Ron DeSantis: the Florida governor’s strongman act over China briefly lifting his stuttering presidential campaign during last week’s Republican primary debate in California. But what DeSantis left unsaid as he railed against China’s growing global influence, while promising a “hard power” approach to Beijing should he win the White House, was how his posturing was hurting students and families back in his home state. While their governor was speaking thousands of miles away, hundreds of distressed and bewildered parents in Florida…
Tag: US politics
Top US and Chinese diplomats meet in Malta to smooth strained relations
Top US and Chinese diplomats met in Malta over the weekend as the world’s two largest economies attempted to smooth strained relations and clear a path for their respective presidents – Joe Biden and Xi Jinping – to meet in November. According to both Beijing and Washington, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met multiple times with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, in Malta, where – according to separate statements – “candid, substantive and constructive” talks were held. A readout from the White House on Sunday said the two…
US behind more than a third of global oil and gas expansion plans, report finds
The US accounts for more than a third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, despite its claims of climate leadership, research has found. Canada and Russia have the next biggest expansion plans, calculated based on how much carbon dioxide is likely to be produced from new developments, followed by Iran, China and Brazil. The United Arab Emirates, which is to host the annual UN climate summit this year, Cop28 in Dubai in November, is seventh on the list. The data, in a report from…
Joe Biden calls for stable US-China relationship during south-east Asia tour
Joe Biden’s national security tour of south-east Asia reached Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sunday, where the president called for stability in the US-China relationship against an increasingly complex diplomatic picture in the region for his country. “I don’t want to contain China,” Biden said. “I just want to make sure that we have a relationship with China that is on the up and up, squared away, everybody knows what it’s all about.” Biden also said that China’s recent economic downturn may limit any inclination to invade Taiwan. “I don’t think it’s…
US seeks to extend longstanding scientific research agreement with China
The US is seeking a six-month extension to a decades-old science and technology agreement with China so that it can undergo negotiations with Beijing to “strengthen” the pact, the state department has said. The landmark deal, signed when Beijing and Washington established diplomatic ties in 1979 and renewed about every five years since, has led to the geopolitical rivals cooperating across a range of scientific and technical fields. But concerns about China’s growing military prowess and theft of US scientific and commercial achievements have prompted questions in Washington about whether…
The US and China must unite to fight climate change, not each other | Bernie Sanders
Climate change is a global crisis and cannot be solved by any one country alone. If the United States, China and other industrialized countries do not come together to dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world we leave our children and future generations will become increasingly unhealthy and uninhabitable. Tragically, the cooperation required to address this existential threat is being undermined by hawks in both the United States and China who are moving us toward a disastrous cold war. Now is the time for a radical rethinking of geopolitics to…
The Camp David summit signals a new cold war – this time with China | Observer editorial
If it sounds like a new cold war and looks like a new cold war, then it probably is a new cold war. For what other interpretation is to be placed on US president Joe Biden’s latest ramping up of diplomatic, economic and military pressure on China? Western officials tend to avoid the term, recalling as it does decades of hair-trigger confrontation with the former Soviet Union. They talk instead about enhanced security and defence cooperation and the importance of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. But such bland generalisations…
Biden’s China investment ban: who’s targeted and what does it mean for the 2024 US election?
Joe Biden has moved to restrict US investment in Chinese technology, signing an executive order which focuses on a few, sensitive hi-tech sectors including semiconductors, quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI). It is the latest in a series of measures taken by the US to restrict China’s access to the most advanced technology and comes as the president has embarked on a multi-state tour of the south-west to tout his plans to revive American manufacturing after decades of decline. The restrictions are expected to take effect next year – and…
US dispatches warships after China and Russia send naval patrol near Alaska
The US dispatched four navy warships as well as a reconnaissance airplane after multiple Chinese and Russian military vessels carried out a joint naval patrol near Alaska last week. The combined naval patrol, which the Wall Street Journal first reported, appeared to be the largest such flotilla to approach US territory, according to experts that spoke to the outlet. “It’s a historical first,” Brent Sadler, a retired Navy captain and senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Journal. He also said the flotilla’s proximity to Alaska was a…
Head of US-based thinktank charged with acting as China agent
The head of a US thinktank has been charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China, as well as seeking to broker the sale of weapons and Iranian oil, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Gal Luft, a citizen of the United States and Israel, is accused of recruiting and paying a former high-ranking US government official on behalf of principals based in China in 2016, without registering as a foreign agent as required by law. Prosecutors did not identify the former official, but said he was working as an…