China

China news — trade, technology, the Taiwan question, and US-China relations — covered without spin.

914 articles shownof 917 totalLast updated 2026-09-07 08:36 UTC

China Freezes New Battery Storage Factory Approvals, Reinstates Battery Tax as Overcapacity Fears Grow

Beijing has stopped approving new battery cell factories and brought back a lithium-ion consumption tax, the latest sign its central planners built too much industrial capacity again. Same playbook Beijing ran on steel, solar and EVs. Meanwhile Washington is separately locking Chinese-made grid inverters and battery systems out of parts of the U.S. market on national security grounds.

China's Oil Demand Rebound Pushes Up Crude Prices From Congo to Brazil

Chinese refiners are buying oil again, and that's spiking prices for crude out of Congo, Brazil and Canada as buyers avoid a Persian Gulf still squeezed by Strait of Hormuz disruptions and a US blockade that's nearly zeroed out Iranian exports. Congo's government is leaning on Chinese money to paper over a steep drop in oil output since its 2010 peak, while the bigger question of what this means for US pump prices remains unanswered by the reporting.

China Ends Presale Housing Model, Developer Stocks Sink and Goldman Sees 30% Land Revenue Hit

Beijing ordered developers to stop selling unfinished apartments and mortgages now only kick in after construction is done. Property stocks got crushed and Goldman Sachs says local government land sale revenue could drop 30%. The people already stuck paying mortgages on half-built towers get nothing from this.

Chinese Researchers Claim Seawater Uranium Extraction at 8 Times the US Benchmark

A team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences says its new PhosCage material pulled 50.4 milligrams of uranium per gram from seawater, more than eight times the US Department of Energy's 6mg target. It's a real lab result, not a working mine. The US tried this same idea for decades and walked away because the economics never worked.

China's Record $1.2 Trillion Trade Surplus Is Approaching a Breaking Point, Former U.S. Trade Chief Warns

Michael Froman, the ex-U.S. Trade Representative who now runs the Council on Foreign Relations, says China's export machine is running out of buyers and could trigger the next global economic crisis. Meanwhile China's own domestic numbers, from retail sales to real estate, are ugly. Trump's tariffs get the blame from the left for global heartburn, but the data says Beijing's export model was already breaking before Washington acted.

EU Steel Group Warns Chinese Imports Could Cost 300,000 Manufacturing Jobs This Year

Eurometal, the European steel trade body, says Chinese component imports could wipe out 300,000 EU manufacturing jobs before the end of 2026 and is staging a coffin protest outside the European Commission on Monday. The numbers come from an industry group pushing for more protectionism, and the EU's own analysis points to a mix of causes, including energy costs and carbon taxes that Brussels imposed on itself.

India and China Hold First-Ever Corps Commander Talks in Arunachal Pradesh as Border Diplomacy Widens

Since NSA Ajit Doval met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on August 25-26, India and China have pushed to open new military channels along the disputed border. Sunday's Corps Commander meeting at Wacha in Arunachal Pradesh is the first of its kind outside Ladakh, but reports of Chinese activity near Taksing and Beijing's ongoing PLA purge are reasons to keep expectations in check.

Nepal-Tibet Glacier Collapse Death Toll Passes 1,300 as Beijing Faces Unverified Warning-Failure Claims

Eleven days after a glacial collapse sent a wall of ice and mud across the China-Nepal border, the confirmed death toll has climbed past 1,300 with more than 5,000 people still missing.

LVMH Shares Hit Six-Year Low as China Slowdown and Iran War Hammer Luxury Sector

LVMH shares fell to their lowest level since November 2020 this week, dragging Hermès, Kering, and EssilorLuxottica down with them, as analysts point to weak Chinese demand and the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict. The company's balance sheet is solid, debt is down, and cash flow is strong, but its biggest division, fashion and leather goods, is barely growing at all.

China's Finance Ministry Injects $47 Billion Into State Banks and Insurers to Patch Capital Holes

Beijing's Ministry of Finance is putting up roughly $47 billion combined to prop up core capital at Agricultural Bank of China, ICBC, and three state insurers, with the ministry itself supplying the overwhelming majority of the money. This is round two of a state-directed recapitalization plan that started in 2024, and it says a lot about how shaky China's banking system really is under the property bust and shrinking loan margins.

Blacklisted Chinese Server Maker's California Subsidiary Sold $100 Million in Nvidia Chips Abroad, Report Finds

Aivres Systems, once known as Inspur Systems before its Chinese parent landed on the U.S. Entity List in 2023, sold roughly 2,300 of Nvidia's most advanced GB200 chips to an Indonesian telecom carrier last November, according to Crypto Briefing and KuCoin. Aivres itself has never been individually blacklisted, and separately, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has sued the parent company and its subsidiaries over patent infringement.

COSCO Denies Reuters Report Alleging Its Cargo Ships Spy for Beijing

Reuters reported on September 1 that two anonymous Trump administration officials say China's COSCO fleet carries hidden equipment to intercept military communications near U.S. coastlines. COSCO calls it false, no ship or piece of equipment has been named publicly, and the claim lands three weeks before Xi Jinping's expected September 24 White House visit.

South Africa's Illegal Chrome Mines Killed 14 Migrant Workers in August. The Trade Still Feeds China's Steel Mills.

A soil collapse at an abandoned mine near Rustenburg killed 14 people, most believed to be undocumented migrants, on August 13. The disaster exposes a chrome-mining black market that feeds South Africa's legal exports to China, and no one has been charged for running it.

China's New Multichannel Content Rules Take Effect as Regulator Reports Removing 5.6 Million AI Posts

Beijing's Cyberspace Administration rolled out sweeping new rules on Sept. 1 forcing content companies and creators to register with the state, while separately reporting it scrubbed 5.61 million pieces of AI-generated content and penalized 49,000 accounts this summer. Creators tell The Epoch Times the standards for what counts as banned speech are vague enough to threaten anyone's livelihood, while state media frames the whole push as child and elder protection.

Wall Street Rotates Out of Crowded Korean and Japanese AI Trades, Into Chinese Stocks and Derivatives

Global investors, including a top Pimco fund manager, are cutting exposure to the Magnificent Seven and Korean chip stocks to chase cheaper Chinese AI plays, from Baidu to Unitree Robotics. Some of that money is flowing through regulated channels like Stock Connect, some through offshore perpetual futures sitting in a legal gray zone Beijing could shut down at any time.

DeepSeek Orders 160,000 Huawei Chips for China-Based Inference, Keeps Model Training on Nvidia Hardware

DeepSeek has ordered 160,000 Huawei Ascend 950DT chips worth roughly $2.64 billion to run its AI models out of a new data center in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia, according to Bloomberg. The chips handle inference only, meaning every query a user sends the model gets processed on Chinese soil, while DeepSeek still relies on Nvidia hardware to train its models. That split shows both the limits of U.S. export controls and a real question for anyone routing data through DeepSeek's API.

Russia Opens Arctic Pipeline, Ships First Vostok Oil Crude as China's Arctic Buying Surges

Vladimir Putin launched a 790-kilometer pipeline feeding a new Arctic export terminal on September 5, and Rosneft loaded its first Vostok Oil crude for shipment via the Northern Sea Route. Separately, Russian crude sales to China through that same Arctic corridor have already topped 10 million barrels this year, as Chinese refiners seek alternatives amid tightening Iranian exports and worries over the Strait of Hormuz, while a US congressional commission and analyst Gordon Chang warn the route is deepening China's strategic reach.

Xi Jinping Plans to Bring Chinese CEOs to September 24 Trump Summit in Washington

Xi Jinping is preparing to bring a large delegation of Chinese business executives to his September 24 meeting with Trump, according to Reuters sources, the first time he's done so since a 2015 trip that included Jack Ma and Pony Ma. The White House says it isn't tracking any such delegation, and sources caution the summit itself is likely to produce mostly symbolic results given tariffs, rare-earth licensing fights, and unresolved disputes over which goods count as non-sensitive.

State Department Reaffirms China Is Committing Genocide Against Uyghurs, Bipartisan Letter Questions Whether Enforcement Matches the Words

The State Department told the Daily Signal in writing on September 1 that the U.S. still considers the Chinese Communist Party's treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang genocide, a finding unbroken since Mike Pompeo's January 2021 determination. Days later, a bipartisan group of six lawmakers asked DHS why forced-labor import enforcement appears to be sliding even as the genocide finding stands. Words are cheap if the border enforcement behind them isn't backing it up.

Kai-Fu Lee Says US-China AI Gap Has Shrunk to Six Months, Calls It an iPhone vs Android Race

Kai-Fu Lee, the former Google China chief who now runs 01.AI, told Bloomberg's Mishal Husain that Chinese AI labs have closed a three-to-four-year gap with US rivals down to about six months, using a fraction of the GPU power. His framing: OpenAI and Anthropic built the iPhone, Chinese labs are building Android, and Android usually wins on reach even if it doesn't win on margin.

Hong Kong Unveils First Five-Year Financial Plan, Ties Itself Closer to Beijing's Yuan and Gold Ambitions

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee laid out a first-ever five-year financial blueprint built around offshore yuan expansion, deeper mainland market links, and a fast-growing gold-trading operation tied to China's de-dollarization push. The plan is explicitly designed to sync with Beijing's own 15th Five-Year Plan and is billed as 'market-led and government-guided' - a phrase that should raise eyebrows about who's really steering.

Bessent Reportedly Set to Lead US-China AI Safety Talks in Mid-September, White House Says No Meeting Is Planned

Reuters reports Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is preparing to lead the first US-China talks devoted solely to AI safety since Trump took office, tentatively set for mid-September. A White House official flatly denies any such meeting is on the calendar, and the agenda reportedly includes real fears about Chinese firms distilling stolen US AI models and swarms of rogue AI agents already hacking systems on their own.

China Added 34 Gigawatts of Nuclear Capacity in a Decade. The U.S. Added One Plant.

The U.S. still produces about a third of the world's nuclear power, but its fleet is aging out fast and China is building six-year reactors while America's last project took over a decade and blew its budget. Add in China's lead on fusion research and a new seawater uranium extraction breakthrough, and the gap is widening on every front that matters.

Chinese Researchers Identify New Tick-Borne Virus as US States Report Bourbon and Heartland Cases

A team in Beijing found a brand-new tick virus, ALTNV, in over 10% of tick-bite patients tested, publishing the work this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. Meanwhile, US states including New York and Nebraska are separately confirming known but still-rare tick viruses like Bourbon and Heartland, none of which have an approved vaccine or treatment.

Pentagon and Beijing Are Both Preparing Weapons for Orbital Combat, Reuters Review Shows

A Reuters review of documents, patents and space-tracking data shows the U.S. and China are actively preparing satellites, spaceplanes and jamming systems for potential combat in orbit, not just surveillance. China says its programs serve civilian purposes and accuses Washington of militarizing orbit first—a dispute Reuters' reporting does not resolve.

Caitlin Clark Comes Off the Bench, Puts Up 14 Points and 11 Assists as Team USA Routs China 94-61

Caitlin Clark didn't start Team USA's FIBA Women's World Cup opener Friday in Berlin, but she finished with 14 points and 11 assists without a turnover as the Americans beat China 94-61. Coach Kara Lawson went with a veteran-heavy starting five, sparking fan backlash online, but the results speak for themselves: 31 straight World Cup wins and counting.

China's Rare Earth Suppliers Are Quietly Refusing US Shipments Weeks Before Xi's September 24 Washington Visit

Since China sanctioned a US supply chain auditor in early August, a handful of Chinese rare earth suppliers have refused to ship to American buyers, according to Reuters sources, keeping yttrium and tungsten prices near record highs. Meanwhile Xi Jinping is reportedly planning to bring a large CEO delegation to his September 24 summit with Trump, even as a Tennessee polysilicon plant backing US chip policy is on the brink of closing because of Trump's own trade rules.

Erdogan Says NATO Ally Turkey May Join Russia-China Security Bloc, Denies Turning Its Back On The West

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Ankara is weighing full membership in the Russia-China-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization while insisting it won't cost Turkey its place in NATO. The comments come weeks after Turkey signed a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and while Ankara is still negotiating with Washington to buy F-35s.

India Backs China-Led SCO Statement on Iran as Xi Jinping Prepares First New Delhi Visit Since 2019

India signed onto a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation declaration in Bishkek that sided with China and Russia on Iran, even as New Delhi and Beijing quietly restarted border talks and prepare for Xi Jinping's trip to India this month. Whether that's India hedging its bets or genuinely drifting from Washington depends on who you ask, and the sources disagree.

US Debt Hits $40 Trillion, 30-Year Yield Tops 5.3%. Chinese Banks Are Reportedly Buying Some Treasuries.

The 30-year Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007 this week as investors balk at Washington's spending, and the national debt just crossed $40 trillion. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tried an emergency buyback to calm markets, but yields crept right back up. Meanwhile Reuters reports Chinese banks have been buying Treasuries after jacking up dollar deposit rates to lure in cash, though the scale of purchases remains unconfirmed.

Rosneft's Sechin Claims China, Not OPEC, Now Controls Global Oil Markets

Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin told a Vladivostok business forum that China has replaced OPEC as the dominant force in oil markets, citing a supposed 5.5 million barrel per day cut in Chinese crude imports this year. Nobody in these reports independently verifies that number, and Sechin, a sanctioned Putin ally whose company depends heavily on Chinese buyers, has every incentive to talk up Beijing's leverage and OPEC's decline.

Nepal-China Flood Toll Passes 750 as Fresh Warnings Issued, Separate India Monsoon Floods Hit 26 Uttar Pradesh Districts

The catastrophic Aug. 26 flash flooding along the Nepal-Tibet border has killed at least 768 people combined and left thousands missing, with new flood alerts going out as rescue crews dig through the wreckage. Separately, monsoon rains are pushing the Ganga toward record levels across Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where officials say five people have died and cremations in Varanasi have moved to rooftops.

Electric Cars Outsell Petrol in Australia for First Time, and Nearly All the Top Sellers Are Made in China

August data from the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries shows battery EVs beat petrol and diesel sales in Australia for the first time, as fuel prices spiked when conflict involving Iran disrupted global supply and a 2025 emissions mandate pushed automakers to bring more low- and zero-emission models into the market. Seven of the eight best-selling EV models are Chinese brands, and even Tesla's Model Y is built in Shanghai, which is only possible because Australia has no tariffs blocking Chinese cars like the US and EU do.

China's Venezuela Oil Loans Take a Hit as US-Backed Firm Takes Over Fields Beijing Once Ran

Since Trump announced the US-Venezuela oil partnership on August 28, new reporting shows the deal's biggest loser might be Beijing. A US-backed company just took control of oilfields that Chinese state firms used to run, putting an estimated $10 billion or more in Chinese loans further out of reach.

Pacific Islands Forum 'Registers Concern' Over China's Missile Test, Stops Short of Condemning Beijing

Wrapping up its annual summit in Koror, Palau on Thursday, the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum agreed to voice 'concern' over China's July intercontinental ballistic missile test and demand 24-hour advance notice for future launches, but declined to name China or use the word 'condemn.' Nauru, which switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing in 2024, was the lone dissenter from an otherwise consensus statement.

SpaceX Preps Friday Starlink Launch as US Famine Tracker Stays Dark and China Hackers Hit Cisco Routers

SpaceX is set to launch 27 more Starlink V2 Mini satellites Friday, September 4, with Starship's first orbital V3 satellite deployment mission targeted for September 15. The same week, a U.S.-funded famine early warning system remains without months of data on Somalia, cybersecurity firm Sygnia flagged China-linked hackers hiding inside Cisco routers, and Europe's FLEX satellite is scheduled to launch and map plant health worldwide.

Xi Tells Egypt's Sisi to Ditch 'External Interference,' Pitches China-Led Middle East Security Deal

Xi Jinping wrapped a two-day Cairo visit by pushing Egypt toward a China-brokered security framework for the Middle East, explicitly telling Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to reject outside interference while the US and Iran remain at war. Egypt, which still takes $1.3 billion a year in American military aid, says it's just diversifying. Beijing calls that 'strategic balance.'

Ukraine's Drone War Now Consumes 4% of World Germanium Supply, and China Still Refines Nearly All of It

A new BMO Capital Markets report finds the roughly 15 million drones expected on Russian and Ukrainian battlefields this year are eating up 4% of global germanium demand, on top of the metal China already controls almost completely. Western governments are pledging billions for mines and processing plants, but the new capacity mostly won't come online until 2028 or later, and China's suspended export ban on the U.S. is set to expire November 27, 2026.

Anthropic Accuses Chinese AI Labs of Stealing Claude Through Dark Web Distillation Schemes

Anthropic's threat intelligence chief Jacob Klein says foreign actors, mostly tied to China, are using fake accounts and stolen credit cards to rip off Claude and build cheap copycat models. Beijing state media calls the accusations a self-serving power grab from a company about to go public near a $1 trillion valuation. Nobody's been charged with anything, and distillation itself is legal, so this is Anthropic's word against a wall of Chinese silence.

X Shuts Down Suspected Chinese Bot Farm as White House Moves to Block Chinese Grid Gear in AI Data Centers

Since Trump's executive order last week declaring a national emergency over foreign bulk-power equipment, two China-related threads have converged: X disabled roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm pushing anti-data-center content, and analysts confirm China still supplies nearly a third of US transformer and switchgear imports. Real American anger over data centers is separate from any propaganda campaign, and the sources make clear both things are true at once.

Trump Scales Back Korea War Games, Calls Taiwan Arms Package a China Bargaining Chip

In mid-August, President Trump ordered the Pentagon to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea hours before they were set to begin, part of a broader pattern that includes calling a pending $14 billion Taiwan arms package a 'negotiating chip' with Beijing and letting Nvidia sell advanced AI chips to China. Pentagon officials insist the U.S. isn't leaving Asia, but allies, analysts, and members of Congress from both parties aren't so sure.

American Journalist Thomas Pauken II Gets Two Years for Acting as Illegal Chinese Agent

Thomas Weir Pauken II, a Texas-born journalist who spent 16 years working for Chinese state media, was sentenced Tuesday to two years in federal prison for acting as an unregistered agent of Beijing. He took over $100,000 from a Chinese intelligence handler, tried to recruit a Trump administration official, and admitted in court he told China secrets, though prosecutors agree none were classified.

China's Emissions Fell 1% in Q2 as Oil Use Drops for the First Time Ever, Sinopec Says Demand Already Peaked

China cut crude imports up to 32% during the Strait of Hormuz crisis, and new data shows its carbon emissions actually fell because of less oil use, not less coal, for the first time on record. Sinopec now says Chinese oil demand probably peaked last year, PetroChina posted a 22% profit jump anyway, and Beijing just opened an Arctic shipping route to hedge against future chokepoint chaos. None of it means China is going green so much as it means China got spooked and adapted fast.

Trump Says Xi Will Visit White House Sept. 24, Beijing Has Not Confirmed

President Trump has publicly set a September 24 date for Chinese leader Xi Jinping to visit the White House, but China's government has not officially confirmed the trip. Prediction markets already put the odds near 95%, while foreign policy analysts say the summit is more about managing an uneasy truce than fixing anything.

Trump Weighs New 7.5% Tariff on China as G20 Finance Ministers Split 19-1 Over Beijing's Trade Surplus

Since Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told G20 finance ministers in Asheville on August 31 that the world 'cannot have a China with a $1.2 trillion trade surplus,' the Trump administration is now weighing a fresh 7.5% tariff on Chinese goods to punish Beijing for underpricing exports, according to AP News and Breitbart, citing people familiar with the deliberations. The move would stack on existing tariffs and is being calibrated to avoid blowing up the trade truce before a planned Trump-Xi meeting expected in late September. Meanwhile Canada's central bank just cited the U.S.-Canada trade fight itself as an inflation risk, showing the collateral damage spreading beyond Beijing.

Bessent Says China Is 'Right Behind' the US on AI as Chinese Models Undercut Silicon Valley on Price

A day after wrapping the G20 finance summit in Asheville, Scott Bessent flagged Chinese AI progress as America's top strategic worry. Fresh data on model pricing and usage backs up part of his concern, but also complicates it: Chinese models are winning on volume and price, while US labs still dominate spending and top-tier performance rankings.

OpenAI and Anthropic Cut Prices Again as Chinese Models Grab a Bigger Share of AI Usage

OpenAI slashed its cheapest model 80% and Anthropic scrapped a planned Sonnet 5 hike, both citing competition from Chinese rivals like DeepSeek, Kimi K3 and GLM-5.2. New data shows US models' share of usage on the OpenRouter marketplace has collapsed from 70% to 30% in a year, though Americans still capture most of the actual spending.

Nepal Moves to Rebuild Border Flood-Warning System as Death Toll Climbs Past 1,200 and a Minister Demands China Pay Up

Since the August 26 glacial collapse that has killed well over 1,100 people across Nepal and Tibet, Kathmandu is quietly rebuilding the early-warning system that got washed away, while a Nepali minister has floated demanding compensation from China even as the prime minister publicly thanked Beijing for aid. The government still can't agree on exact casualty numbers, which shifted by the hour Wednesday.

Chinese National Dies in ICE Custody on Saipan as Beijing Demands Answers, While US Presses China Over Two Detained Americans

A 51-year-old Chinese man died hours after ICE took him into custody in the Northern Mariana Islands, and Beijing is demanding an investigation. Meanwhile the State Department just designated an American academic as wrongfully detained in China, one of two US citizens Beijing is holding, ahead of Xi Jinping's expected September 24 visit to the White House.

Iran Blacklists 45 Tankers Over Hormuz Transfers, Indian Refiners and Chinese State Shippers Start Rerouting

Since Iran retaliated for the U.S. strike on its island territory, Tehran has escalated with a blacklist of 45 tankers it says broke Hormuz transit rules. At least three Indian refiners, a global energy major, and Chinese state shippers COSCO and CMES are now avoiding those ships and, in some cases, the strait itself, favoring ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman instead.

Susquehanna Plans to Triple Hong Kong Office Space to Chase China's ETF Boom

Philadelphia-based trading firm Susquehanna International Group is scouting for office space in Hong Kong that would triple its current footprint, according to Reuters sources, as it bets on deeper access to China's exchange-traded fund market. The expansion comes as Hong Kong's IPO scene sends mixed signals: fast-fashion giant Shein's debut flopped while companies like Jollibee and Akulaku are choosing the city over New York.

G20 Summit Closes With China the Lone Holdout as Bessent Predicts Hormuz Strait Bypass Within Two Years

The G20 finance summit in Asheville wrapped up Tuesday with every member but China signing the joint statement, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's prediction that the Strait of Hormuz will be obsolete within two years landed alongside a rough Wednesday for Asian markets. Oil prices held firm, Japan's Nikkei dropped as much as 2.6%, and Japanese bond yields hit a 30-year high, suggesting traders aren't buying the two-year timeline just yet.

Trump Declares National Emergency Over Chinese-Made Grid Equipment, Battery Makers Scramble

Trump's Aug. 26 executive order lets Energy Secretary Chris Wright force utilities to isolate, replace or rip out foreign-made batteries, inverters and transformers already installed on the grid. The China security case is real and overdue. But nobody in Washington has put a price tag on it, and BloombergNEF says storage projects are already at risk of delay or cancellation.

China's CXMT Begins Small-Batch HBM3E Production, Ships Samples to Alibaba and Cambricon

CXMT, China's top DRAM maker, has started small-scale production of HBM3E memory and sent samples to Alibaba's T-Head and Cambricon for testing, according to The Information. It's real progress, but CXMT is still three to five years behind Samsung and SK hynix, who are already shipping HBM4 and sampling HBM4E. Export controls slowed China down. They didn't stop it.

China's Solar Capacity Overtakes Coal, But Coal Still Generates Far More Electricity

China's National Energy Administration says installed solar capacity hit 1,286 gigawatts in July, edging past coal's 1,285 gigawatts for the first time. The catch: solar only produced about one-eighth of China's actual electricity in the same period, because sunlight-dependent panels run a fraction of the hours a coal plant does.

US Courts Egypt and Morocco as China Expands Military Reach Across Africa, While Beijing Bets on American Decline

The US, China and Russia are all working Africa's diplomatic and military angles at once, with Egypt hosting American diplomats and Chinese fighter jets in the same month. Zoom out and it's the same contest playing out in BRICS, in Beijing's internal strategy documents, and in the race for artificial general intelligence. China's own think tanks say they're patiently waiting for America to decline, not trying to beat it in a straight fight.

US, Australia and Japan Bankroll Alcoa Gallium Plant to Chip Away at China's Near-Total Grip

The Pentagon (now formally the Department of War) is putting money into an Alcoa refinery in Western Australia to produce gallium, a metal China controls almost completely and cut off from direct US shipments in 2024. The reported US dollar figure varies by outlet, from $93 million to $174 million, and Alcoa still hasn't disclosed the project's total cost or offtake terms.

Chinese Robot Vacuum Makers Barred From New US Sales Head to Berlin's IFA 2026 in Record Numbers

Since the FCC added foreign-made robot vacuums to its Covered List on July 28, 2026, blocking new models from Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame, Xiaomi and Narwal, those five brands, which held 68% of global market share in 2025, have redirected their next-generation launches to IFA 2026 in Berlin. Chinese firms now make up nearly half of the show's 1,900-plus exhibitors, and the same data-access laws that got them banned in the US travel with every unit they sell in Europe.

Iran Sanctions Push Tehran Toward China as Fresh Hormuz Clash Sends European Gas Above €70

A weekend clash near the Strait of Hormuz sent Dutch gas prices above €70 per megawatt-hour Monday, while nine-year-low Middle East diesel exports are being replaced by a 4.5-year record surge of Asian cargoes into Africa. Iran's president is courting China, Russia and India for support as Washington's new secondary sanctions squeeze Tehran's last major customer.

China's Coking Coal Futures Surge Record 46% in August as Shanxi Mine Safety Crackdown Chokes Supply

Dalian coking coal futures posted a record 46% monthly gain in August, the biggest since the contract launched in 2013, according to Bloomberg. The surge stems from output disruptions and tougher safety checks following China's worst coal mining disaster since 2009, which hit the northern province of Shanxi roughly three months ago. Beijing's own regulatory crackdown, not some outside shock, is squeezing the steelmaking fuel supply it needs to run its economy.

Showing the 60 most recent of 914. Browse the full archive →