Browsing: International – China
Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watch a march-past as Kim holds a welcome ceremony for Xi at Kim Il Sung Square…
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. (AFP/File Photo) China said yesterday President Xi Jinping would visit North Korea on a two-day trip from June 8, his first in nearly seven years as Beijing looks to reassert ties with Pyongyang, its only formal treaty ally. Xi will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and exchange views on bilateral relations and issues of common concern, China’s foreign ministry said. “Both sides will use the visit as an opportunity to promote greater development of China-North Korea relations in keeping with the times,” spokesperson Mao Ning told a press briefing. Beijing has worked to draw Pyongyang back into its fold after the Covid-19 pandemic froze exchanges and Kim deepened ties with Moscow by sending troops and weapons to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The two countries signed a co-operation and mutual assistance treaty 65 years ago, legally binding each to provide the other with military support if they came under attack. “The message implicit from the Chinese side is… we are still the principal actor when it comes to North Korea,” said John Delury, a senior fellow of the Asia Society. “One of the audiences is Russia.”Yesterday’s announcement by the international department of the ruling Chinese Communist Party follows Xi’s summits in Beijing last month with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kim was a guest at a massive military parade in Beijing last September, travelling to the Chinese capital on his signature green armoured train. Passenger train services between the capitals resumed in March, after a six-year suspension ushered in by the pandemic, while Air China later restarted flights between them.Bookings, however, have been limited to some business travellers and exchange students, with Chinese tourists still excluded.Xi’s visit to Pyongyang will be his first overseas this year. The 72-year-old, who makes fewer trips abroad, last travelled internationally in late October to Republic of Korea, where he also met Trump. Trump met Kim three times in his first term and has previously said he would be open to meeting the North Korean leader again.“At the symbolic level it is important for Xi to keep tabs on what’s going on in Pyongyang,” said Delury, who said Xi visiting both Koreas within a year would be a “big win” for the peninsula. “There’s a kind of symmetry that the Chinese like to keep up” regarding the two Koreas, he added. Republic of Korea views the trip solely as high-level bilateral exchanges unaligned to Moscow, an official from the presidential Blue House said. “We do not interpret this as a co-ordinated move by the three countries, nor are we sure how it would be linked to the US-China summit,” the official said.Seoul expects Beijing to continue its constructive role on peninsula issues, the Blue House said. Since Xi became China’s top leader in 2012, he has visited North Korea once, and its southern neighbour twice. He also visited Pyongyang in 2008 as vice-president, meeting its then leader Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader. Kim called for an “exponential” expansion of Pyongyang’s atomic arsenal this week when he visited a new factory to make nuclear material, KCNA said.Experts have linked Kim’s site visit to the impending meeting with Xi. Before his September visit to Beijing, Kim inspected plans for a new intercontinental ballistic missile, the “Hwasong-20”. Source link
China and the US held “candid and constructive” exchanges at a meeting in Hawaii on air and maritime safety last week, agreeing that improved communication could reduce miscalculations and enhance professionalism, the Chinese Navy said.The May 28-29 meeting was attended by representatives from both sides’ militaries, it said in a statement late on Monday.A separate statement from the US Indo-Pacific Command said that it hosted representatives from the People’s Liberation Army in Honolulu for discussions focused on reducing the risk of unsafe and unprofessional encounters.The meeting follows a high-profile summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump last month and could ease concerns about a lack of communication after the absence of top Chinese military officials at the Shangri-La Dialogue, a regional defence forum, in Singapore over the weekend.At last month’s summit, Xi and Trump agreed to pursue a “constructive relationship of strategic stability”, which analysts say could set practical boundaries for how the two powers interact.”This shared strategic framing shifts the bilateral dynamic beyond reactive crisis management toward more deliberate, forward-looking stability-building,” said Wang Dong, an international studies professor at Peking University.At the Shangri-La Dialogue, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned of China’s historic military build-up and urged Asian countries to boost their defence spending and capabilities.But he also said relations between the US and China are better than they’ve been in many years and unlike in his address at the forum last year, did not mention Taiwan, suggesting Washington was adopting a measured tone on the contentious issue.China views democratically run Taiwan as its own territory, and has never renounced the use of force against the island. The US is bound by law to arm Taipei, which Beijing has long been opposed to.In addition to stressing the importance of communication, the statement by the Chinese Navy also said that China “firmly opposes any action that undermines China’s sovereignty and security.” Related Story Source link
China expressed strong opposition yesterday to a decision by Japan and the Philippines to start maritime border negotiations, calling the talks ‘illegal’ and claiming exclusive control over the waters concerned.The two island nations announced on Thursday they would start formal talks ‘to delimit the maritime boundary’ of an economic zone and continental shelf between them, as Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos met Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on a visit to Tokyo.But Beijing again asserted yesterday that it has an ‘exclusive economic zone and continental shelf’ in the waters to the east of Taiwan.’China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to this,’ foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news conference when asked about the delimitation talks between Tokyo and Manila.’China solemnly declares that the so-called delimitation negotiations between Japan and the Philippines are entirely illegal and invalid,’ Mao said.Beijing has ‘lodged solemn representations’ with both countries, she added.Manila and Tokyo's shared grievances over Chinese maritime territorial claims have seen them draw increasingly close in recent years.Japan and China are in territorial and economic disputes in the East China Sea, where coastguard ships from both sides routinely stage dangerous standoffs.Beijing has meanwhile deployed navy and coast guard vessels in the South China Sea, in a bid to bar the Philippines from strategically important reefs and islands, leading to a string of confrontations. Source link
Rescuers work at the site following a gas explosion at Liushenyu coal mine in Qinyuan county, Shanxi province. (Reuters/File Photo) Unmarked tunnels, missing trackers and fake doors have been uncovered during an initial probe into the deadliest mining tragedy in China in over 15 years, with the government vowing to leave no stone unturned, state media reported yesterday.At least 82 people were killed by a gas explosion late on Friday at the Liushenyu mine in the coal-rich province of Shanxi in northern China. Two remained unaccounted for with a further 128 hospitalised, state media said.The blast is the deadliest mining accident in China since 2009, when a gas explosion at the Xinxing Mine in Heilongjiang province killed 108 people.While the cause of Friday’s incident remains under investigation, the official Xinhua news agency yesterday said concealed mining tunnels, falsified drawings and outsourced and unregistered miners, who had not been provided with required life-saving location trackers, were contributing factors to the deadly incident.’YIN-YANG DRAWINGS’The mine, controlled by Shanxi Tongzhou Coal Coking Group, maintained two separate sets of plans and surveillance systems, Xinhua said. One set matched the actual operations while the other was used to deal with official inspections, with some mining areas hidden from regulatory oversight.Reuters was not able to contact officials from the company, as according to state media they have been detained.Coal mined from the concealed and unregulated tunnels is not included in the official production figures and went untaxed.The two sets of plans are known colloquially as “yin-yang drawings”: one kept in the open for inspectors to scrutinise and the other kept in the dark.Similar profit-driven practices are not uncommon in coal mines across China despite crackdowns, the national mine safety administration has said.The Liushenyu mine “used wire mesh and woven plastic sacks sprayed with mortar, to make fake doors that looked very much like the rock wall of the mine tunnel,” Xinhua said.Workers would be tipped off by someone outside whenever inspectors came, and they would shut the fake doors, smear coal ash to blend them in with the rest of the underground passage.MISSING TRACKERS, ALARMSIn order to evade detection, the mine operator hired subcontracted labour to work in the concealed tunnels without providing them with required identification-location trackers or logging them in the official entry record.Authorities would have been able to monitor where the miners were underground had they been equipped with trackers, including in emergency situations.When the blast occurred on Friday, the official log showed only 124 workers had gone underground, according to footage shown on state broadcaster CCTV on Monday. In fact a total of 247 workers were working in the mine, suggesting that 123 had been untracked in tunnels outside official purview.The lack of accurate maps and miners’ location information has severely hampered rescue operations, state media said.The Liushenyu mine — classified as a “high-gas mine” with elevated blast risk — also deliberately avoided installing gas-monitoring equipment to further evade authorities’ supervision, the state radio broadcaster said in a separate report yesterday.The issues were not unknown to authorities before Friday’s tragedy. In 2025, the mine operator was “fined after regulators discovered concealed working faces, but the penalty failed to serve as an effective deterrent, and the company continued illegal production,” Xinhua said.Some mines across China have halted or reduced production following the incident for safety inspections. Related Story Source link
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands as they pose for photos before a tea ceremony following their meeting at the Great…
Cars lie partially submerged in floodwaters after heavy rainfall in Duyun, Guizhou Province, Tuesday. (Reuters) Torrential rain continued across southern and central China Tuesday with at least 21 people killed in widespread flooding that also closed schools and businesses, and disrupted transport and power supplies, authorities said.China’s weather agency said areas of Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan, Hubei, Guizhou, Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan faced a high risk of rain-related disasters, including landslides, flash floods and severe urban flooding and waterlogging.Authorities said they have allocated 150mn yuan ($22.04mn) for disaster relief and launched emergency responses in several affected areas.Many residents in Jingzhou, a city in central Hubei, were knee-deep in water and able to catch fish swimming in the streets, according to images posted on Chinese video platform Douyin. Some cars were nearly completely submerged on roads surrounded by residential and commercial buildings.Ten people were confirmed dead after a pickup truck carrying 15 farm workers fell into a flooded river in China’s southwestern region of Guangxi amid heavy rain, state broadcaster CCTV reported.In separate incidents, heavy rain and flooding killed four people in southwestern Guizhou province, four others in southern Hunan province, and three in a low-lying village in central Hubei province, CCTV said. A number of people remain missing.Schools, businesses and transport services have been suspended, and authorities are relocating residents in some parts of Hubei and Hunan, state media reported.HEAVY RAIN EXPECTED ALONG YANGTZE RIVERThe unusually large area of intense rainfall — spanning more than 1,000km (621 miles) — was due to the convergence of abundant moisture from the Bay of Bengal, the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The slow-moving nature of the weather system also led to the high cumulative rainfall, according to Chinese meteorologists.China’s National Meteorological Centre said severe weather would gradually move east and south across China over the next two days. From today, the heaviest rainfall is expected along the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.China’s southern Hainan island issued a geological disaster warning Tuesday, as a mountainside collapsed onto a highway in Lingshui, prompting authorities to close several major roads in that area of the island. Separately, authorities in Guangxi set up temporary shelters on 99 sites for more than 4,000 residents and relocated 7,000 people after a magnitude 5.2 earthquake on Monday, which sent tremors across multiple cities in the region. Related Story Source link
US President Donald Trump landed in Beijing on Wednesday for a high-stakes summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping aimed at easing deep tensions between the rival superpowers.Beginning the first visit to China by a US president in nearly a decade, Trump touched down on Air Force One at Beijing Capital International Airport at 7:50 pm (1150 GMT) after the long flight from Washington. Ructions over Iran, trade and Taiwan loom over the highly anticipated meeting between the leaders of the world’s largest economies, which Trump had already delayed from March because of the war in the Middle East. But Trump appeared firmly focused on business deals, with Nvidia chief Jensen Huang boarding the plane at the last minute in Alaska and Tesla’s Elon Musk also travelling on the presidential jet.As the global AI race hots up, China is currently banned from purchasing the cutting-edge chips that Huang’s company produces under US export rules that Washington says are to protect national security. Trump said in a social media post en route that he would be “be asking President Xi, a Leader of extraordinary distinction, to ‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic”.Visiting China for the first time since 2017 during his first term, Trump is expected to receive a lavish welcome from Chinese authorities and will have a packed itinerary.Trump and Xi will hold talks at 10:00 am (0200 GMT) on Thursday in Beijing’s opulent Great Hall of the People, where they will also enjoy a state banquet in the evening. On Friday, they are set to have tea and a working lunch before the US president heads home. As he departed the White House, Trump said he expected a “long talk” with Xi about the joint US-Israeli war with Iran, which sells most of its US-sanctioned oil to China. But he also downplayed disagreements, telling reporters that “I don’t think we need any help with Iran” from China and that Xi had been “relatively good” on the topic.The Chinese foreign ministry said Wednesday it “welcomes” Trump’s visit and that “China stands ready to work with the United States… to expand cooperation and manage differences”. Yet Beijing is growing impatient for peace, with Foreign Minister Wang Yi urging his Pakistani counterpart on Tuesday to step up mediation efforts between Iran and the United States. Related Story Source link
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on Pakistan to intensify its mediation efforts between the United States and Iran, and to contribute to effectively addressing issues related to the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. This came during a phone call between Wang, who is also a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan Mohammad Ishaq Dar. Dar briefed Wang on Pakistan’s recent mediation efforts to facilitate talks between Iran and the US. He also expressed hope to strengthen coordination with China to play a joint positive role in maintaining regional peace and stability, extending his appreciation for China’s support for Pakistan’s efforts to promote dialogue. Wang reaffirmed China’s principled position, praising Pakistan’s role in facilitating US-Iran talks and extending the temporary ceasefire. He expressed hope that Pakistan would maintain its confidence and contribute to restoring regional peace as soon as possible, which is also what the international community aspires to. China will continue to support Pakistan’s mediation efforts and will make its own contributions in this regard, Wang added. Source link
China yesterday denied again that a ship intercepted by the United States contained a “gift” from Beijing for Iran, a day after US President Donald Trump made the accusation.Trump had said that an Iranian-flagged ship seized by US forces in the Gulf of Oman on Sunday contained “a gift from China”, which “wasn’t very nice”. His comments came after former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley wrote on X that the ship was travelling from China to Iran and was linked to chemical shipments for missiles. Responding to Haley’s accusations at a regular news briefing on Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said the ship was “a foreign container ship”, and that China opposed “any malicious association and speculation”. Asked about Trump’s comments yesterday, Guo said China had already stated its position.“As a responsible major country, China has always set a good example in fulfilling its due international obligation,” he added. Trump had said on Tuesday that he was “a little surprised”, given he thought he had an “understanding” with China’s President Xi Jinping.A week ago, Trump announced that Xi had assured him there would be no Chinese weapons deliveries to Iran. Beijing is a close partner of Tehran and has called the US-Israeli strikes on Iran illegal, but it has also criticised attacks on Gulf countries and called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened.The seized vessel, Touska, had been sailing towards the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, US Central Command (CENTCOM) said on Sunday. The guided missile destroyer USS Spruance fired several rounds from a five-inch calibre gun to disable the Iranian ship’s propulsion after directing it “to evacuate its engine room”, CENTCOM said in a post on X.The incident comes with tensions high in the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit for the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, which has been virtually closed since the start of the Middle East war.Iran briefly reopened the strait on Friday in recognition of an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire in Lebanon, but closed it again the following day in response to the US maintaining its blockade on ships travelling to and from Iranian ports. Source link