Taiwan's foreign minister Joseph Wu urged the international community Wednesday to help defend his country and region against "expansionist" Chinese moves, saying Taipei feared Beijing would resort to force.Taiwan was "on the front-line defending democracies from being taken over by the communist China" and needed help from other countries, he told the France 24 TV station.Wu said China "has been intensifying its military threat against Taiwan" in recent yea

The United States (US) on Saturday called a decision by Beijing to impose restrictions on all American diplomats on Chinese soil an "escalation," the latest rebuke in an ongoing tit-for-tat dispute over foreign missions.Relations between the world's top two economies have deteriorated in recent months, with both sides locked in fierce recriminations over trade disputes, human rights and the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.On Friday, China announced "reciprocal restrict

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on 11 March that the outbreak of COVID-19 had become a pandemic. Six months on the virus has cost the lives of over 900,000 people.Back in March the death toll stood at 4,200 from 120,000 cases, with most of the fatalities in the Wuhan region of China where the virus first came to light last December.Those figures were enough to cause concern back then.

The United Nations (UN) turns 75 this autumn, and if this were a normal year, many of the world’s leaders would gather in New York City to celebrate this milestone and open the annual meeting of the General Assembly. But this year is anything but normal.

Washington's top diplomat urged Southeast Asia on Thursday to cut ties with Chinese companies helping build islands in the South China Sea, weeks after the United States (US) blacklisted two dozen firms working in the disputed waters.Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's comments came at a regional Asian summit overshadowed by the US-China rivalry over a range of issues, from trade to the coronavirus.Tensions are also simmering over the South China Sea, with the US last month sanctioning

Despite taking a serious hit from COVID-19 lockdowns, China’s economy has proved resilient. It has not, however, fully bounced back: some activities, especially in the service sector, simply cannot be revived. Yet, unlike most of the world, China seems unlikely to become mired in a long recession, not least because of its rapid digital transformation.

China is recasting Wuhan as a heroic coronavirus victim and trying to throw doubt on the pandemic's origin story as it aims to seize the narrative at a time of growing global distrust of Beijing.The PR blitz plays out daily in comments by Chinese officials and lavish state media coverage of a "reborn" Wuhan that trumpets China's epidemic-control efforts and economic recovery while the United States (US) struggles.The drive peaked in the past week as Chinese primary schools

At the Koon Chun Sauce Factory workers are scrambling to cover hundreds of thousands of bottles with new "Made in China" labels as the popular Hong Kong brand falls victim to spiralling diplomatic tensions.Founded nearly a century ago, the family-owned factory has survived a world war, multiple economic crises and the slow withering of Hong Kong's manufacturing base as companies looked for cheaper labour in mainland China.It remains one of the financial hub's most enduring

More than seven years ago, in January 2013, the Philippines took the initiative of contesting the legal basis of China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea (SCS) through the Arbitral Tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague under the compulsory dispute resolution provisions contained in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). On 12, July 2016, the Arbitral Tribunal released its ruling on the SCS arbitration in favour of the

India and China traded blame for rising tensions over their disputed Himalayan border on Saturday following their highest-level meeting since a deadly clash in June.India's Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and his Chinese counterpart General Wei Fenghe released rival statements accusing each other of inflaming the showdown after talks late Friday on the side-lines of an international meeting in Moscow.Singh said they had "frank" discussions on the dispute and the strained relatio