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      in Elections

      Ukraine Presses China to Help Seek End to War With Russia

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      A visit by the foreign minister of Ukraine to Guangzhou this week signals Kyiv’s desire to involve Beijing in peace talks that China has thus far largely snubbed.Ukraine’s top diplomat met with China’s foreign minister on Wednesday in talks that signaled Kyiv’s increased willingness to pursue a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia and to have China play a more central role in the effort.“I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,” Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement after a meeting with Wang Yi, the Chinese official, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “China’s role as a global force for peace is important.”Mr. Kuleba made clear that Ukraine attached conditions to such negotiations, saying it would only engage Russia when Moscow was “ready to negotiate in good faith.” He added: “No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side.”Mr. Kuleba is visiting China for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His trip comes as Ukraine is slowly losing ground in the war and faces growing uncertainty about the level of support it will have from the West. Moscow and Kyiv briefly held peace talks in the spring of 2022 but they quickly broke down over critical issues.For China, hosting Mr. Kuleba reflects the country’s ambition to play a bigger role in global security challenges as a counterweight to the United States. It also serves to rebut Western criticism of Beijing’s close alignment with Russia.Mr. Wang said China was committed to finding a political solution to the crisis, adding that while the timing was not yet right, Moscow and Kyiv had “sent signals of their willingness to negotiate to varying degrees,” according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Elections

      China Shows Few Signs of Tilting Economy Toward Consumers in New Plan

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      The Communist Party rebuffed calls from economists to shift away from investment-led growth and toward consumer spending.China engaged in a monthslong drumbeat of anticipation that a Communist Party leaders’ meeting would show the way to a new era of growth for the slowing economy.The outcome was a plan released on Sunday offering more than 300 steps on everything from taxes to religion. It echoed many familiar themes, like an emphasis on government investments in high-tech manufacturing and scientific innovation. There was little mention of anything that would directly address China’s plunging real estate prices or the millions of unfinished apartments left behind by failed developers.Many economists had called for a comprehensive effort to rebalance the Chinese economy away from investment and toward consumer spending. But the document — roughly 15,000 words in the English translation — made a brief and cautious call to “refine long-term mechanisms for expanding consumption.”The Communist Party’s Central Committee doubled down on industrial policy. The party promised to “promote the development of strategic industries” in eight sectors, from renewable energy to aerospace. Those were essentially the same industries as in the country’s decade-old Made in China 2025 plan to replace imports of high-tech goods with locally produced products, as part of a national push for self-reliance.A similar plan in 2013 had many provisions that have never been put into effect, such as a plan to roll out a nationwide property tax to raise money for local governments.Many of these local governments have fallen far into debt since then. Sunday’s plan proposed a different solution: The central government should become responsible for more of the country’s spending. It also called for expanding local tax revenues, but had only a bare mention of a real estate tax.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump says Xi Jinping wrote him a ‘beautiful note’ after rally shooting

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      Donald Trump has said China’s president wrote him a “beautiful note” after the assassination attempt a week ago, as he continued to court leaders whom Joe Biden has criticised as dictators.In his first campaign rally since narrowly escaping the attempt on his life in Pennsylvania, Trump told a crowd in Michigan on Saturday: “[President Xi Jinping] wrote me a beautiful note the other day when he heard about what happened.”The Republican presidential nominee recalled how he described Xi as “a brilliant man, he controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist”, adding that the Chinese leader makes people like Biden look like “babies”.As well as familiar attacks on Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump also used the rally in Grand Rapids to hail Xi and Vladimir Putin as “smart, tough” figures who “love their country”, echoing praise he gave in 2022 of the Russian president’s strategy to invade Ukraine. In that same 2022 speech, at a rally in Georgia, Trump called North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un “tough”, and said of Kim and Xi: “The smartest one gets to the top.” On Saturday, Trump said he “got along very well” with both leaders.Still wearing a small wound dressing a week after the shooting, Trump also publicly supported the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, saying he was right in saying that “we have to have somebody that can protect us”. Orbán was this week accused by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, of betraying European leaders after he travelled to Moscow for what he called a “peace mission”, holding a joint press conference with Putin in which the Russian leader told Kyiv to give up more land, pull back its troops and drop its efforts to join Nato.After meeting Trump recently in Florida, Orbán flagged the likelihood of a Trump victory, and urged European leaders to reopen “direct lines of diplomatic communication” with Russia and “high-level political talks” with China.Trump’s reference to a “beautiful note” from Xi echoes the now-famous “love letters” he received from North Korea’s Kim. In September 2018, Trump told a rally in West Virginia: “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”The Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward later obtained 25 letters between Trump and Kim for his second book on the Trump presidency, Rage.In one letter, about a meeting in Singapore in June 2018, Kim wrote: “Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched.”After a summit in Vietnam in February 2019, Kim wrote that “every minute we shared 103 days ago in Hanoi was also a moment of glory that remains a precious memory”.The summits did not reduce tensions with North Korea.With Reuters More

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      in US Politics

      China suspends nuclear talks with US over arms sales to Taiwan

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      China has suspended talks over arms control and nuclear proliferation with the US in protest against arms sales to Taiwan, the democratically governed island aligned with Washington that China claims as its own territory.The decision, announced by China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday, halts the early nuclear-arms talks in a period of growing tensions between China and the US, with both US presidential candidates calling for increased trade restrictions and efforts to contain Chinese influence in east Asia.The US is Taiwan’s main international partner and largest arms supplier. The House of Representatives in June approved $500m in foreign military financing for Taiwan to strengthen military deterrence against China, along with $2bn in loans and loan guarantees. The US also approved $300m in spare and repair parts for Taiwan’s F-16 fighter jets.China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said that the US had continued to sell arms to Taiwan despite “strong Chinese opposition and repeated negotiations”.He added: “Consequently, the Chinese side has decided to hold off discussion with the US on a new round of consultations on arms control and nonproliferation. The responsibility fully lies with the US.”Lin said China was willing to maintain communication on international arms control, but that the US “must respect China’s core interests and create necessary conditions for dialogue and exchange”.In response, the US state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, accused China of “following Russia’s lead” by holding arms control negotiations hostage to other conflicts in the bilateral relationship.“We think this approach undermines strategic stability, it increases the risk of arms-race dynamics,” Miller told reporters.“Unfortunately, by suspending these consultations, China has chosen not to pursue efforts that would manage strategic risks and prevent costly arms races, but we, the United States, will remain open to developing and implementing concrete risk-reduction measures with China.”China is estimated to have 500 nuclear warheads, but the US department of defence expects Beijing to produce more than 1,000 by 2030. The US and China held arms talks in November for the first time in five years and discussed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and other nuclear security issues, as well as compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and outer space security and regular arms control, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.Donald Trump has signalled that US support for Taiwan may come with a higher price tag in the future, and has dodged questions on whether the US would defend Taiwan in the case of an invasion by China.“Taiwan should pay us for defence,” Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek. “You know we’re no different than an insurance company.”The Republican vice-presidential candidate, JD Vance, has signalled strong support for Taiwan, saying that US backing of Ukraine has diverted Washington’s attention from providing arms to Taiwan in case of a conflict. More

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      in Elections

      China’s Economy Slows Sharply as Housing Troubles Squeeze Spending

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      After a strong start to the year, spending has slumped as a real estate downturn weighs on consumers. Communist Party leaders are meeting this week to discuss what to do about it.Economic growth slumped in China through the spring after a strong start this year, according to data released on Monday, as a real estate crash caused consumers to spend more cautiously.The latest growth statistics for the world’s second-largest economy, covering April through June, put further pressure on the Communist Party as its leaders gathered on Monday in Beijing for a four-day conclave to set a course for the country’s economic future.In a country known for strict controls on the flow of information, the Chinese government is maintaining a particularly tight grip ahead of the party gathering, known as the Third Plenum, which typically takes place every five years. China’s statistical bureau canceled its usual news conference that accompanies the release of economic data and Chinese companies are mostly avoiding the release of earnings reports this week.China’s National Bureau of Statistics said that the economy grew 0.7 percent in the second quarter over the previous three months, a little below the expectations of most economists in the West. When projected out for the entire year, the data indicates that China’s economy grew during the spring at an annual rate of about 2.8 percent — a little less than half its growth rate in the first three months of this year.The statistical bureau also revised down its estimate of growth in the first quarter. That growth rate, projected out for the full year, was about 6.1 percent, not the 6.6 percent rate that was disclosed in April.Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, is trying to win confidence in his policies at home and abroad as growth falters and the property market suffers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Anne Applebaum on autocracies and signs of America’s move to join them – podcast

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      Back in December Donald Trump said the quiet bit out loud when he announced he wanted to be a dictator – if only on day one. Looking around the world in the 21st century, autocracy is getting a new lease of life – authoritarian regimes are working together, and the danger to democracies like the United States is getting closer to home.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland is joined by the political commentator and author Anne Applebaum to look at what the US should be doing to tackle the growing threat of autocracy

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      in Elections

      U.S. Creates High-Tech Global Supply Chains to Blunt Risks Tied to China

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      The Biden administration is trying to get foreign companies to invest in chip-making in the United States and more countries to set up factories to do final assembly and packaging.If the Biden administration had its way, far more electronic chips would be made in factories in, say, Texas or Arizona.They would then be shipped to partner countries, like Costa Rica or Vietnam or Kenya, for final assembly and sent out into the world to run everything from refrigerators to supercomputers.Those places may not be the first that come to mind when people think of semiconductors. But administration officials are trying to transform the world’s chip supply chain and are negotiating intensely to do so.The core elements of the plan include getting foreign companies to invest in chip-making in the United States and finding other countries to set up factories to finish the work. Officials and researchers in Washington call it part of the new “chip diplomacy.”The Biden administration argues that producing more of the tiny brains of electronic devices in the United States will help make the country more prosperous and secure. President Biden boasted about his efforts in his interview on Friday with ABC News, during which he said he had gotten South Korea to invest billions of dollars in chip-making in the United States.But a key part of the strategy is unfolding outside America’s borders, where the administration is trying to work with partners to ensure that investments in the United States are more durable.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More