President Joe Biden has said the United States (US) would come to Taiwan’s defence and had a commitment to defend the island China claims as its own, forcing the White House to clarify for the second time in three months that US policy on the subject has not changed.“Yes, we have a commitment to do that,” Biden said at a CNN town hall on Thursday night when asked if the US would come to the defence of Taiwan, which has complained of mounting military and political pressure from Beijing to acc

Smokestacks belch noxious fumes into the air from a massive coal-fired power plant on the Indonesian coast, a stark illustration of Asia's addiction to the fossil fuel which is threatening climate targets. Asia-Pacific accounts for about three-quarters of global coal consumption – even as the region struggles with the environmental and public health impacts of global warming, from deadly levels of air pollution in India to extreme heatwaves and wildfires in Australia. H

Activists on Tuesday called for the postponement of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics as China prepared to receive the Olympic flame, a day after a protest disrupted the lighting ceremony in Olympia."This is sports-washing.

The relationship between the United States (US) and China promises to do much to define this era. And what could determine this relationship might well be whether the two countries are able to continue to avoid armed conflict over Taiwan. But with signs that the chances of conflict are growing, the question facing the US and its partners is how to avoid that outcome without sacrificing essential interests. Conceptual framing is always critical to foreign policy.

The United States (US) is "very concerned" about China's hypersonic missile tests, US disarmament ambassador Robert Wood said Monday, after reports that Beijing launched one with a nuclear capacity in August.On Saturday, the Financial Times (FT) reported that China had launched a hypersonic missile that completed a circuit of the planet before landing, missing its target."We are very concerned by what China has been doing on the hypersonic front," said Wood, who next

When Xi Jinping promised the world’s movers and shakers in January 2017 that China would champion globalisation, it looked as if the baton of global economic leadership was being picked up seamlessly by Beijing as Donald Trump prepared to usher in an era of American isolationism.Almost five years later a new world order has emerged, but it is not the one China’s president and others gathered in Davos that day seemed to have in mind.Instead of a continuation of the post-cold war era of growth

Last month, I lamented that the leaders of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) seem incapable of agreeing on coordinated policies that would benefit their own economies and the world.

Almost 200 nations pledged Wednesday to tackle ecological destruction at a key United Nations (UN) conservation summit in China, but environmentalists criticised the proposal as vague and lacking accountability.Delegates from some 195 countries said they would support the 'Kunming Declaration' – working to tackle issues around biodiversity and species protection – in the first segment of the two-part COP15 summit in the southern Chinese city Kunming.The pledge is expected to pave th

China is preparing to test tens of thousands of blood bank samples from the city of Wuhan as part of a probe into the origins of COVID-19, according to a Chinese official.

COVID-19 has exposed the myriad weaknesses of cross-border value chains. Once the backbone of globalization, now they are associated with vulnerability to disruption. Thanks to the pandemic, value chains are being reconfigured with a focus on resilience. At the same time, China’s changing role in the global economy is forcing companies to reconsider it as a manufacturing hub. The world’s factory has reinvented itself as the world’s investor.