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Chinese President Xi Jinping met Tuesday with Taiwan’s opposition leader, underscoring Beijing’s message to the island’s independence-leaning administration that it won't have access to the mainland’s highest levels of power if it doesn’t accept that Taiwan is part of China. Xi’s meeting with Nationalist Party Chairwoman Hung Hsiu-chu at the Great Hall of the People in the heart of Beijing comes months after China cut off communication and exchanges with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration. Diplomatically, China has also sought to isolate the island even more by having its representatives barred from international gatherings. […] Xi said that China “resolutely...

China is the least generous country in the world, according to a worldwide survey on generosity by the Charities Aid Foundation. The 2016 CAF World Giving Index is based on a poll of 1,000 respondents from 140 countries and regions, asking them if in the last month they helped a stranger, donated money to charity or volunteered their time. China ranked 140th place in the poll, behind Palestine, Yemen, Greece and the Democratic Republic of Congo, lifestyle website Shanghaiist reports. […] Myanmar tops the index for the third year running with a score of 70 percent, followed by the United...

China’s Communist Party on Thursday elevated President Xí Jìnpíng to the position of “core” of the leadership, underscoring the clout he has amassed on the back of a sweeping anti-corruption campaign and crackdown on dissent. […] While mainly symbolic, the move to bestow Xí with “core” status reflects his assertion of himself as one of the country’s most powerful leaders in decades. It was an accolade bestowed on past leaders including famed reformist Dèng Xiǎopíng and ex-President Jiāng Zémín, but which Xí’s immediate predecessor never attained. …

Chinese officials unveiled plans for Monday’s launch of the country’s latest space mission in which two astronauts will be blasted into space and will dock with an orbiting space lab. The Shenzhou 11 spacecraft will be launched at 7:30 a.m., said Wu Ping, deputy director of China’s manned space engineering office, in a televised news conference. The Shenzhou mission will take off aboard a Long March-2F carrier rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on the edge of the Gobi Desert in northern China. …

The Treasury Department and Justice Department took actions Monday against four Chinese individuals and one Chinese company for conspiring to aid North Korea’s nuclear weapons program in violation of U.S. economic sanctions. The unsealing of criminal charges and the imposition of new sanctions are aimed at shutting down a major Chinese node supporting North Korea’s weapons proliferation, officials said. The Justice Department charged the individuals and the trading company with conspiring to launder money and with evading sanctions. The four individuals and the company are all located in China. …

Recent remarks by the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, have fueled speculation about a possible exchange of diplomatic representation between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China. Unfortunately, the cardinal’s remarks did not address any of the serious questions that have been raised about the evangelical and prudential wisdom of such an agreement at this moment in history. Those questions involve the nature of the PRC regime; the doctrine and canon law of the Church; the impact of such an agreement on Vatican diplomacy in promoting human rights; and the Church’s twenty-first-century mission in China. 1....

Treat us as your brothers and not enemies. President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday personally pleaded to the Chinese ambassador to the Philippines to allow Filipino fishermen to fish over the disputed West Philippine Sea. “I hope the Chinese may find a place in their hearts for the Filipinos. I hope you treat us [as] your brothers and not enemies and take note of our plight,” Duterte said in front of Chinese Ambassador Zhao Jianhua during his speech at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. …

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Tuesday he won’t allow government forces to conduct joint patrols of disputed waters near the South China Sea with foreign powers, apparently scrapping a deal his predecessor reached with the U.S. military earlier this year.Duterte also said he was considering acquiring defense equipment from Russia and China. The Philippines has traditionally leaned on the U.S., its longtime treaty ally, and other Western allies for its security needs. The remarks were the latest from a Philippine president who has had an uneasy relationship with the U.S. but also has tried to mend relations with China strained...

China says it intends for the death penalty to be used only on “a very small number of extremely serious criminal offenders.” […] China is believed to execute more people than the rest of the world put together, but no longer does so for most nonviolent crimes. China’s law allows for the death penalty for dozens of offenses, including treason, separatism, spying, arson, murder, rape, robbery and human trafficking. …

Germany on Wednesday warned Britain against negotiating free trade deals with non-EU member states before it quits the bloc, after Prime Minister Theresa May sought to drum up commerce agreements during a G20 summit in China. “As spokesman of the German government, I am not going to judge who the British prime minister holds talks with,” Steffen Seibert told journalists in Berlin. But he stressed that “it is clear that an EU member state cannot hold bilateral talks on free trade deals with non-EU states as long as it remains a member of the EU”. …

This week, President Obama is making his final trip to Asia. With the presidential election looming, it is the right time to reflect on Obama’s foreign policy, and to think about what is to come. A key component of the next president’s foreign policy must be to compel China to respect international law. Otherwise, we may be faced by a conflict with a growing navy at a time when ours is decreasing in size. Obama has not made this imperative any easier. On July 12 an international tribunal at The Hague found that China possessed neither an historic claim over...

European Union leaders have called for China to take action on its bloated steel industry and defended an order to Ireland to collect back taxes from Apple, highlighting the trade strains looming over a global economic summit. The president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Sunday that the Group of 20 meeting “must urgently find a solution” to excess steel production that Beijing’s trading partners blame for job losses. …

Upon arrival on Saturday in China as part of his last visit to Asia as US Commander in Chief for the periodic photo-op that is the G-20 meeting, something unexpected happened: a very undiplomatic greeting when an unusual tarmac altercation involving Chinese and U.S. officials, including national security adviser Susan Rice, devolved into a shouting match by a member of the Chinese delegation.

China is building new roads, railroads and pipelines from Central Asia to Europe in an effort to build new connections to the rest of the world. The results may be good for the Chinese — but less so for the other countries involved. […] Xi Jinping, 63, the president of China and general secretary of the Communist Party, wants to revive the myth and build a New Silk Road, in large parts along the old trade route. It would mark the return of a legend. For some time now, many of his speeches have included references to “yi dai yi...

The Standing Committee of China’s rubberstamp parliament is meeting to discuss formally acceding to a far-reaching climate change agreement negotiated in Paris last year, amid signs that President Obama is preparing to take the same step — but without Senate ratification — possibly within days. The White House maintains that the climate accord is an executive agreement, not a treaty, and therefore does not require the Senate’s advice and consent. Obama travels to China this week for a G20 summit in Hangzhou, and climate change is high on the agenda both for the summit and for his bilateral meetings with...

Recently released emails appear to further show a direct connection between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, including efforts to get foundation donors seats to an official lunch with Chinese President Hu Jintao. In emails dated December 2010, Clinton State Department aide Huma Abedin and then-top Clinton Foundation official Doug Band discussed potential guests for the lunch with the Chinese president — including three executives from groups that had donated millions to the foundation, according to an ABC News report late Saturday. Among the possible guests discussed were Bob McCann, then-president of...

China wants to have closer military ties with Syria, state media on Tuesday cited a senior Chinese officer as saying during a rare visit to the war-torn Middle Eastern country. While relying on the region for oil supplies, China tends to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, namely the United States, Britain, France and Russia. But China has been trying to get more involved, including sending envoys to help push for a diplomatic resolution to the violence there and hosting Syrian government and opposition figures. …

TEMPERATURE RISING:Tokyo has lodged at least 32 protests since Aug. 5 over what it says have been 30 intrusions in its waters by Chinese vessels Tokyo yesterday protested to Beijing after Chinese Coast Guard vessels sailed into territorial waters surrounding disputed islands in the East China Sea, Japan said. Four Chinese vessels entered the waters around the Japanese-controlled Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) — known as the Senkakus in Japan — at about 10am, the Japan Coast Guard said, adding that the vessels left the waters within one hour. The two countries are locked in a long-running dispute over the uninhabited islets,...

Flying across the Pacific on an Air Force jet bound for Beijing, first lady Hillary Clinton huddled deep into the night with a few aides and advisers, honing her speech for the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women. It was 1995, and it had been a bruising first few years in the White House: Troopergate, Travelgate, Whitewater. Not to mention the failure of her own high-profile efforts — unprecedented for a first lady — to reform the nation's health care system. Even her trip to China provoked controversy. There were objections in some quarters to a first lady wading into...

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) – Here at AsiaNews we have received and gladly publish this urgent appeal from a priest in South China. Frequent appeals for help are arriving from the underground Catholic Chinese clergy, this year. They find themselves in a very difficult and serious dilemma: they are being forced to register by accepting the Catholic Patriotic Association with its three autonomy principles. But, it seems that nobody cares for them. The public attention of all Catholics concerned with the Church in China is drawn elsewhere: it is focused upon the possible results of the ongoing negotiations between the Holy...