Free Republic

For months on end we have heard rumors of a “breakthrough” in the endless diplomatic negotiations between the Vatican and the Communist government of China respecting the status of the Catholic Church in that country. Since the 1950s, however, the regime in Beijing has persecuted the true Catholic Church, driving it underground, while purporting to operate an “official” church called the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA), which has illicitly consecrated scores of bishops who are essentially puppets of the regime. Although the CPA is the very definition of a schism, the Vatican continues to pretend it can somehow regularize this pseudo-church...

The European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties on steel products from China to stop them flooding Europe’s struggling steel market. […] The Chinese exports will now be taxed with duties ranging from 18.1 percent to 35.9 percent. …

The Trump administration said Monday it was ending funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), long a target of conservatives over concerns that its work in China abets the communist authorities’ controversial population limitation programs. The administration’s first confirmed cut to a U.N. agency will cost the UNFPA $32.5 million. Its budget proposal for fiscal year 2018 calls for unspecified reductions to contributions to the U.N. budget, and further “seeks to reduce or end direct funding for international organizations whose missions do not substantially advance U.S. foreign policy interests, are duplicative, or are not well-managed.” The move comes as...

China has started building a new generation of large amphibious assault vessels that will strengthen the navy as it plays a more dominant role in projecting the nation’s power overseas, military sources said. The 075 Landing Helicopter Dock is now under construction by a Shanghai-based shipbuilding company, the sources said. The amphibious vessel is far larger than similar ships previously constructed for the PLA Navy. The 075 can serve as a form of aircraft carrier and military experts said it would give China’s navy the ability to launch various types of helicopters to attack naval vessels, enemy ground forces or...

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping Thursday stressed their commitment to free trade ahead of a G20 finance ministers’ meeting set to be dominated by debate on protectionism. The two leaders spoke by telephone and said in a statement issued in Berlin that they would “together fight for free trade and open markets”. Finance ministers from the world’s top economies are gathering in Germany from Friday as fears grow that US President Donald Trump could upend the global economic order with his “America First” policy challenging open markets. Meanwhile, Merkel is set to hold her first meeting with...

The German city of Trier has decided to accept a statue of Karl Marx from China, marking the 200th anniversary of the father of communism’s birth. The city council voted 42-7 with four abstentions Monday night to accept the gift, according to news agency DPA. The statue’s precise location and size are to be decided following further negotiations with China. […] Statues and streets named after Marx were common in communist East Germany. Many survived the collapse of communism, unlike tributes to more contemporary socialists. …

Last year, China became Germany’s most important trading partner, knocking the US off the top spot. Goods with a value of €170 billion were traded between Germany and China in 2016, according to data from the Federal Statistics Office (destatis) released on Friday. France was the second most important trade partner. Total trade with the Gallic nation was valued at €167 billion, while the US was relegated to third place, with total transatlantic trade accounting for €165 billion. Nevertheless, the US remained the most important export destination for German goods, with €107 billion “Made in Germany” products making the journey....

Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House will have real effects on the international system as a whole, and will inevitably impact the Latin American region. The key question is, will we continue alone under the U.S doctrine, or make a strategic adjustment? Chile’s Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz has declared that with Trump’s pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, Chile must look elsewhere — to China and South Korea. Asking epochal questions is absolutely valid right now for all of Latin America and the Caribbean. In essence, since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the United States has...

Monday marks the end of US President Donald Trump's first month in office. US mainstream media spared no efforts in satirizing and criticizing him. The latest Gallup poll released Saturday local time shows that Trump only had a 40 percent approval rating, 21 percentage points below the average rating for presidents in their first month in office. Trump said that "any negative poll is fake news," but analysts believe he does care about the results. Trump's first month in the Oval Office can only be described as bumpy. He is now losing his offensive momentum and is entering the stalemate...

A prefecture in China’s far western Xinjiang region is requiring all vehicles to install satellite tracking systems as part of stepped-up measures against violent attacks. Traffic police in Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture announced the regulation on Sunday, shortly after thousands of heavily armed police paraded in the Xinjiang capital and ruling Communist Party officials vowed to ramp up their campaign against separatists and Islamic militants. The vehicle-tracking program in Bayingolin will utilize China’s homegrown Beidou satellite system, launched in recent years to reduce China’s reliance on U.S.-based GPS providers for sensitive applications. Authorities said they will also track cars using...

WASHINGTON — When President Trump took a phone call from the leader of Taiwan in December and asserted that the United States might no longer be bound by the “One China” policy, his defenders hailed it as a show of strength — the latest delicate issue on which Mr. Trump was willing to challenge decades of diplomatic orthodoxy. On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump fell back into line. In a call with President Xi Jinping of China, he pledged fealty to One China, a 44-year-old policy under which the United States recognized a single Chinese government in Beijing and severed its...

President Donald Trump's acceptance of Beijing's demand that he re-commit to a "one China" policy was heavily influenced by his new top diplomat, who argued behind the scenes that relations would remain on hold until Trump cleared up doubts about a longtime bedrock of U.S.-China ties, officials said.

Hong Kong said on Tuesday it would release the nine Singaporean armored vehicles it seized in November on their way home from military exercises in Taiwan, easing tensions between China and Singapore. After the troop carriers had been seized, Beijing, which regained sovereignty over the former British colony of Hong Kong in 1997, warned countries against maintaining military ties with Taiwan, which it views as a wayward province. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote to Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying requesting the return of the carriers, and Hong Kong said it would handle the matter in accordance with...

China’s President Xi Jinping warned on Tuesday against scapegoating globalization for the world’s ills or retreating behind protectionist walls, staking out an alternative vision for the international economy days before Donald Trump takes office. The global economic order has been led for decades by the United States, but the president-elect is threatening to tear up the rule book, and Xi used his debut appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos to insist that globalization was irreversible. “Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. Wind and rain may be kept outside, but so is light and air,”...

U.S. companies feel less welcome in China and some are shifting operations to other countries, a business group reported Wednesday, amid rising tension between President-elect Donald Trump and Beijing over trade. The report by the American Chamber of Commerce in China reflects frustration among companies that see China as a key market but face growing efforts to block access to technology and other promising industries. […] Communist leaders have promised to make China’s state-dominated economy more productive by opening more industries to private and foreign competitors. Business groups say such initiatives have had little impact. The American chamber said 81...

A Chinese professor has been sacked after he criticized Chairman Mao Zedong on his 123rd birthday in an commentary he posted online that enraged leftists. Mao, who died on Dec. 9, 1976, is still officially venerated by the ruling Communist Party as the founder of modern China, and his face appears on every yuan banknote. But he is particularly respected by leftists who believe the country has become too capitalist and unequal over three decades of market-based reforms, and attitudes towards Mao and his legacy mirror differences between reformers and traditionalists. Deng Xiaochao, 62, an art professor at Shandong Jianzhu...

A pledge by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to advance efforts this year to test-fire an intercontinental ballistic missile received a blunt Twitter slap down Monday from President-elect Donald Trump: “It won’t happen!” “North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S.,” Trump tweeted. “It won’t happen!” In a subsequent post, the president-elect criticized China — North Korea’s closest ally and biggest trading partner — for not doing enough to rein in its unstable neighbor. “China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth...

China and São Tomé and Principe officially resumed diplomatic relations on Monday, in a triumph for Beijing over rival Taiwan after the African island nation abruptly broke away from the self-ruled island last week. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his counterpart from São Tomé, Urbino Botelho, signed books at a ceremony in front of their flags at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. Wang said the re-establishment of relations would bring benefits to both countries and that they would hold exchanges in tourism, the media and other areas. The move is a victory for Beijing, which considers the self-governing...

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously proclaimed the “end of history”, seeing the triumph of the United States as the only remaining superpower and the leader of Western democracies. “The end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy (is) the final form of human government,” he wrote in his best-selling 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man.Twenty-five years later, Fukuyama’s certainties have all but vanished. Liberal democracy in Europe and the United States is in crisis, while China and Russia demonstrate that authoritarian regimes are...

Another day, another shot across the bow from Donald Trump aimed squarely at China. Having already participated (and in the case of one, precipitated) two mini diplomatic snafus with Beijing in just the past two weeks, Trump is sending a clear message to Beijing that US-China trade under his administration will be anything but business as usual, by creating a National Trade Council inside the White House to oversee industrial policy and has decided to appoint a hard core China hawk to run it. According to the FT, which broke the news, Trump has chosen Peter Navarro, a Harvard-trained economist...