China has now accepted the battle will be lengthy and hard-fought – with the potential to create serious difficulties for its own people. This week it confirmed that the quest for technological supremacy was, more specifically, China’s new Long March. The Long March is a major event in Chinese history, […]
China
HSBC and Standard Chartered fear new Trump China sanctions could freeze them out of dollar
HSBC and Standard Chartered are bracing for a renewed US sanctions assault on China, amid official concern that escalating diplomatic tensions threaten collateral damage in the City. They are working on contingency plans for a worst-case scenario in which the political and trade disputes between Washington and Beijing trigger restrictions […]
China ‘bullied’ HSBC into blocking accounts of pro-democracy supporters, Pompeo claims
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused China’s Communist leadership of bullying HSBC into allegedly maintaining bank accounts for sanctioned officials while closing ones for those “seeking freedom”. Mr Pompeo said the US was “dismayed” to learn that London-listed HSBC, Europe’s largest lender, was taking these actions and accused China of […]
Biden’s green deal is really a loaded weapon for trade war against China
Mr Biden’s original ‘build back better’ manifesto was $1.7 trillion over ten years. It is now $2 trillion over four years. The sedate waltz is skipping into a fast tarantella. All talk of a fracking ban has been dropped in the final text, wisely if the Democrats wish to win […]
China has itself to blame as time runs out for Tiktok
It was a misconcocted scheme from the start, but it is now deeply weird to think that less than a year ago a Hong Kong company made an attempt to take over London Stock Exchange Group. Cast your mind back to the innocent pre-Covid days of September 2019, when HKEX […]
America’s biggest companies fear being locked out of China after Trump WeChat ban
WeChat, and its Chinese equivalent Weixin, have a combined 1 billion users, but have long been criticised for censoring posts and messages in China and for submitting to demands for information about users from the Chinese state. Neil Campling, head of TMT at Mirabaud Securities, said: “US companies will be […]
Huawei is being swept up in the tide of history as China turns away
In some respects this has been the case for years. Russians do not use Google but Yandex, a search engine headquartered in Moscow where it is subject to Vladimir Putin’s security laws. Likewise Chinese smartphone users have access to an array of censored and monitored versions of Facebook, Twitter and […]
China needs to be brought to heel on trade, but let’s do it by example
China’s potentially vast internal market is plainly something worth aspiring to, but may be ultimately unobtainable. If access is based more on genuflection and obedience than on internationally agreed rules, it may in any case not be worth pursuing. If there is any economic sense at all in Beijing’s growing […]
WTO nominee Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala vows to bridge divide between US and China on trade
The leading candidate to become the next boss of the World Trade Organisation has claimed she is the best placed contender to bridge the bitter trade divide between the US and China. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s official nominee to replace Roberto Azevedo as director-general, said she had a track record of dealing […]
How the China vs US technology race is remapping the world
In 2015, it unveiled its 10 year strategy, known as the “Made In China 2025”, which aimed to encourage China to assert its technical independence. Increasingly, its firms are creating rival products and services to those pioneered in the US. Domestically, such initiatives are viewed as key to accelerating its […]