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      in Elections

      New Taiwan President Lai Ching-te Faces Big Challenges

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      President Lai Ching-te has vowed to stay on his predecessor’s narrow path of resisting Beijing without provoking it. It won’t be easy.Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te, was sworn into office on Monday, facing hard choices about how to secure the island democracy’s future in turbulent times — with wars flaring abroad, rifts in the United States over American security priorities, and divisions in Taiwan over how to preserve the brittle peace with China.Mr. Lai began his four-year term as Taiwan’s president in a morning ceremony, ahead of giving an inaugural speech laying out his priorities to an audience outside the presidential office building in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital.He has said that he would keep strengthening ties with Washington and other Western partners while resisting Beijing’s threats and enhancing Taiwan’s defenses. Yet he may also extend a tentative olive branch to Beijing, welcoming renewed talks if China’s leader, Xi Jinping, sets aside his key precondition: that Taiwan accept that it is a part of China.“We’ll see an emphasis on continuity in national security, cross-strait issues and foreign policy,” said Lii Wen, an incoming spokesman for the new leader, whose Democratic Progressive Party promotes Taiwan’s separate status from China.But Mr. Lai, 64, faces hurdles in trying to hold to the course set by his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen.Unlike Ms. Tsai, Mr. Lai is less seasoned in foreign policy negotiations, and has a record of combative remarks that can come back to haunt him. He also must deal with two emboldened opposition parties that early this year won a majority of seats in the legislature — a challenge that Ms. Tsai did not face in her eight years as president.Preparations for the inauguration at the presidential office building in Taipei on Friday.Yasuyoshi Chiba/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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 Serbia, Xi Underlines Close Ties With Ally That Shares Wariness of U.S.

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      Visiting friendly leaders in Eastern Europe, the Chinese president commemorated the 25th anniversary of a misdirected U.S. airstrike that destroyed China’s embassy in Belgrade.China and Serbia on Wednesday proclaimed an “ironclad friendship” during a visit to Belgrade by the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, underlining the close political and economic ties between two countries that share a wariness of the United States.Mr. Xi arrived in Serbia late Tuesday — the 25th anniversary of a mistaken 1999 airstrike involving the U.S. Air Force during the Kosovo war that destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Three Chinese journalists were killed in the strike.“This we should never forget,” Mr. Xi said in a statement published on Tuesday by Politika, a Serbian newspaper, recalling that “25 years ago today, NATO flagrantly bombed the Chinese Embassy.” He said that China’s friendship with Serbia had been “forged with the blood of our compatriots” and “will stay in the shared memory of the Chinese and Serbian peoples.”Mr. Xi appeared briefly on Wednesday morning with the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, before a cheering crowd gathered in front of the Palace of Serbia, the former headquarters of the now defunct government of Yugoslavia that now houses Serbian government offices.In contrast to Mr. Xi’s last visit to Eastern and Central Europe in 2016, during which he faced noisy protests in the Czech Republic, he received a uniformly friendly reception in Belgrade, with the authorities mobilizing state workers to cheer him.China is Serbia’s largest foreign investor and increasingly close economic relations have helped expand a relationship forged before the collapse of Yugoslavia, whose capital was Belgrade, in the early 1990s by shared wariness of Western and Soviet power.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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      Podesta Meets With China’s Climate Envoy Amid Deep Economic Tensions

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      Beijing’s dominance raises economic and security concerns, and tensions will be on full display as top climate diplomats meet this week.The world’s two most powerful countries, the United States and China, are meeting this week in Washington to talk about climate change. And also their relationship issues.In an ideal world, where the clean energy transition was the top priority, they would be on friendlier terms. Maybe affordable Chinese-made electric vehicles would be widely sold in America, instead of being viewed as an economic threat. Or there would be less need to dig a lithium mine at an environmentally sensitive site in Nevada, because lithium, which is essential for batteries, could be bought worry-free from China, which controls the world’s supply.Instead, in the not-ideal real world, the United States is balancing two competing goals. The Biden administration wants to cut planet-warming emissions by encouraging people to buy things like EVs and solar panels, but it also wants people to buy American, not Chinese. Its concern is that Chinese dominance of the global market for these essential technologies would harm the U.S. economy and national security.Those competing goals will be on vivid display this week, as the Biden Administration’s top climate envoy, John Podesta, meets for the first time with his counterpart from Beijing, Liu Zhenmin, in Washington.Trade tensions are likely to loom over their talks.The flood of Chinese exports, particularly in solar panels and other green-energy technology, has become a real sore spot for the Biden administration as it tries to spur the same industries on American soil. Mr. Podesta has sharply criticized China for having “distorted the global market for clean energy products like solar, batteries and critical minerals.”Not only that, he has set up a task force to explore how to limit exports from countries that have high carbon footprints, a practice that he called “carbon dumping.” That was considered a veiled reference to China.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 Meeting With Xi, E.U. Leader Takes Tough Line on Ukraine War

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      Ursula Von der Leyen, the European Commission president, pushed Beijing to help rein in Russia’s war in Ukraine after meeting with the Chinese and French leaders in Paris.Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, put pressure Monday on China to help resolve the war in Ukraine, saying Beijing should “use all its influence on Russia to end its war of aggression against Ukraine.”She spoke after accompanying President Emmanuel Macron of France in a meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, who began his first visit to Europe in five years on Sunday. Ms. von der Leyen has persistently taken a stronger line toward China than has Mr. Macron.With President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia again suggesting he might be prepared to use nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine, she said Mr. Xi had played “an important role in de-escalating Russia’s irresponsible nuclear threats.” She was confident, Ms. von der Leyen said, that Mr. Xi would “continue to do so against the backdrop of ongoing nuclear threats by Russia.”Whether her appeal would have any impact on Mr. Xi was unclear, and describing the conflict as Russia’s “war of aggression” in Ukraine seemed likely to irk the Chinese leader. Beijing has forged a “no limits” friendship with Russia and provided Moscow with critical support for its military effort, including jet fighter parts, microchips and other dual-use equipment.“More effort is needed to curtail delivery of dual-use goods to Russia that find their way to the battlefield,” Ms. von der Leyen said of China. “And given the existential nature of the threats stemming from this war for both Ukraine and Europe, this does affect E.U.-China relations.”It is relatively unusual for a top European official to describe the war in Ukraine as an “existential threat” to the European continent. Doing so may reflect Mr. Putin’s renewed talk of the use of nuclear weapons.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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      The Death of a Treaty Could Be a Lifesaver for Taiwan

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      Since pulling out of an arms-limitation agreement with Russia in 2019, the U.S. has quickly developed new weapons that could be used to stop a Chinese invasion force.During a military exercise with the Philippines that began last month, the U.S. Army deployed a new type of covert weapon that is designed to be hidden in plain sight.Called Typhon, it consists of a modified 40-foot shipping container that conceals up to four missiles that rotate upward to fire. It can be loaded with weapons including the Tomahawk — a cruise missile that can hit targets on land and ships at sea more than 1,150 miles away.The weapon, and other small mobile launchers like it, would have been illegal just five years ago under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibited U.S. and Russian forces from having land-based cruise or ballistic missiles with ranges between about 300 miles and 3,400 miles.In 2019, President Donald J. Trump abandoned the treaty, in part because the United States believed Russia had violated the terms of the pact for years. But U.S. officials said that China, with its growing long-range missile arsenal, was also a reason the Trump administration decided to withdraw.The decision freed the Pentagon to build the weapons that are now poised to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion. It also coincided with a rethinking of modern war by U.S. Marine Corps leaders. They recommended retiring certain heavyweight and cumbersome weapons like 155-millimeter howitzers and tanks — which they thought would be of little use against Chinese forces in the Pacific — and replacing them with lighter and more flexible arms like truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.At the time, the Pentagon had no land-based anti-ship weapons. Other militaries, however, already did. Then in April 2022, Ukrainian ground troops used a similar weapon, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles launched from trucks, to sink the Russian cruiser Moskva in the Black Sea.A New Pacific Arsenal to Counter ChinaWith missiles, submarines and alliances, the Biden administration has built a presence in the region to rein in Beijing’s expansionist goals.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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      The Prevalence of Standing Ovations

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      More from our inbox:China, America and the Climate ChallengeKids’ Reactions to the ‘Cringe-Worthy’ News TodayDebate Conditions Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:Re “Bravo! Hurray! Wahoo! (Meh.),” by John McWhorter (Opinion, April 16):The currency of the standing ovation is indeed seriously debased. The impulse to stand up during the ovation following a performance may in some cases represent a kind of unconscious one-upmanship. “I’m more sensitized than most people to the sublimity of what we all have just witnessed, and it is imperative that I separate myself from the underappreciative herd.”Needless to say, if other audience members follow suit by rising from their seats, then you can raise the ante by hoisting your clapping hands up from the standard mid-torso level to over your head — signifying that the artistry one is acknowledging is not just merely great, but really most sincerely great.I confess that although I invariably applaud performances, I usually “sit out” the competitive appreciation derby, and haul myself to my feet only if I feel particularly inspired. I avoid the over-the-head clapping mode at all times. Maybe this marks me as a philistine; I’ve been called worse.David EnglishActon, Mass.To the Editor:I admit that I’m often among the first to give a standing ovation. I always wondered why the holdouts would deny something so simple to these hardworking actors.You have to walk out of the theater a few minutes later anyway, so why not stretch your legs and participate with your fellow theatergoers in the shared joy of theater? Perhaps it’s generational, cultural or regional, or maybe it’s a combination.Jumping to my feet in appreciation of the actors’ hard work is my way of giving back, and it feels really good! I’m sure the actors like to feel the good will as well.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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      Why Beijing Stands to Gain from Elon Musk’s Visit

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      Tesla’s C.E.O. appears to have landed a deal that moves the company closer to bringing fully autonomous driving to a giant market. But Beijing is keen to exploit the visit for its own purposes.Elon Musk meeting with Premier Li Qiang, China’s second-highest official, on a weekend visit to Beijing that boosted Tesla stock.Wang Ye/Xinhua, via Associated PressWhy Elon Musk went to China Just days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Beijing and warned China about unfair trade practices, Elon Musk landed in the Chinese capital. The Tesla boss’s meeting with China’s No. 2 official may have paid off: Musk reportedly cleared two obstacles to introducing a fully autonomous driving system in the world’s biggest car market.The split screen again reveals the gap between Western diplomacy and corporate imperatives. Tesla has to stay committed to China even as it faces big headwinds — a conundrum that other multinationals also face, and one that Beijing is eager to exploit.Musk is betting big on self-driving, and China is key. Tesla last week reported its worst quarter in two years as a price war hurts profit. Tesla shares have plummeted (though they’ve rebounded in recent days, and are up more than 8 percent in premarket trading) amid plans for big layoffs.Musk has tried to reassure the market by pushing ahead with a low-cost model. Fully autonomous driving is also crucial. Musk told analysts last week that if investors don’t believe Tesla would “solve” the technological challenge that is autonomous driving, “I think they should not be an investor in the company.”The carmaker faces challenges in its second biggest market. Heavily subsidized Chinese rivals are eating into sales, led by the Warren Buffett-backed BYD, which is vying with Tesla for the crown of world’s biggest E.V. maker.Teslas are banned from many Chinese government sites because of concern about what data the American company collects. President Biden’s move to declare Chinese E.V.s a security threat probably won’t have made it any easier for Tesla in China.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

      Biden and Xi seek to manage tensions in phone call as US officials head to China

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      Joe Biden and Xi Jinping have clashed in a telephone call about Taiwan and US trade restrictions on technology, but sought to manage their tensions as two top US officials prepare to visit Beijing.The nearly two-hour telephone conversation on Tuesday was the two leaders’ first direct interaction since a summit in November in California that saw a marked thaw in tone, if not the long-term rivalry, between the world’s two largest economies.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, will leave Wednesday and visit both Guangzhou, the southern city emblematic of China’s manufacturing power, and Beijing, with secretary of state, Antony Blinken, due in China in the coming weeks, officials said.“We believe that there is no substitute for regular communication at the leader level to effectively manage this complex and often tense bilateral relationship,” national security council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters after the call.US officials said the talks were not aimed at managing but rather than resolving differences, and the two leaders were open about heated disagreements.Xi accused the United States of creating economic risks through Biden’s sweeping ban on high-tech exports to China.“If the United States insists on suppressing China’s high-tech development and depriving China of its legitimate right to development, we will not sit idly by,” Xi warned, according to Chinese state media.Biden rebuffed his appeal, with the White House saying he told him “the United States will continue to take necessary actions to prevent advanced US technologies from being used to undermine our national security, without unduly limiting trade and investment.”Biden also refused to back down on TikTok, the blockbuster Chinese-owned app that Congress is threatening to ban unless it changes hands, with Kirby saying Biden insisted he wanted to protect Americans’ data security.Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, has solidified power at home and taken a tough approach in Asia, with a crackdown on freedoms in Hong Kong and assertive confrontations in recent weeks with the Philippines on the South China Sea.But US observers see Xi as eager to temper the friction with the US as China weathers rough economic headwinds.At the California summit, he agreed to two key asks by the United States – curbs on precursor chemicals for making fentanyl, the synthetic painkiller behind a US overdose epidemic, and restoring dialogue between the two militaries to manage crises.Xi may also believe there is more opportunity to work with Biden, who faces a rematch in November’s presidential election with Donald Trump, who has cast China as an arch-enemy.Biden has preserved or even accelerated some of Trump’s tough measures, but has also identified areas of common interest, such as fighting climate change.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe White House said Biden pressed Xi to ensure “peace and stability” across the Taiwan Strait ahead of the inauguration on 20 May of president-elect Lai Ching-te.China has denounced Lai, a longtime supporter of a separate identity for the self-ruling democracy claimed by Beijing, but US officials have been cautiously optimistic that China’s military moves ahead of the inauguration will not go beyond past practice.In the phone call, Xi told Biden that Taiwan remains an “uncrossable red line” for China, according to state media.The United States has voiced growing alarm over rising Chinese moves against the Philippines in the dispute-rife South China Sea.The Biden administration, while maintaining dialogue with China, has put a strong focus on supporting allies.In the midst of the diplomatic flurry with China, the Japanese prime minister, Fumio Kishida, will pay a state visit to Washington next week, with the Philippine president, Ferdinand Marcos, joining for three-way talks.Blinken and Yellen will both be paying their second visits to China in less than a year, marking a return to more routine interaction following the Covid-19 pandemic and soaring tensions under Trump. More