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The highly anticipated yuan-backed crude oil futures have been launched in Shanghai. China is the world’s biggest oil consumer, with eyes on rival benchmarks Brent and WTI as well as the US currency. Trading of the new oil futures contracts for September settlement started on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange at 440.20 yuan ($69.70) per barrel, reports Chinese daily the South China Morning Post. Some 18,540 lots have reportedly been sold and purchased so far. long-awaited step evoked a surge in global prices for oil with Brent Crude soaring to $71 a barrel for the first time since 2015. US...

WASHINGTON — The Chinese government “systematically dismantled” CIA spying operations in China starting in late 2010 and killed or imprisoned at least a dozen CIA sources over the next two years, The New York Times reported Saturday. The newspaper cited 10 current and former U.S. officials, who described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. They spoke on condition of anonymity. The report said U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies scrambled to stem the damage, but were bitterly divided over the cause of the breach. Some investigators were convinced there was a mole within the CIA, while...

Here's a story you'll be hearing about a lot this year. Chinese companies have been buying up foreign businesses -- including American ones -- at a record rate, and it's freaking out lawmakers. There is General Electric's sale of its appliance business to Qingdao-based Haier, Zoomlion's bid for the heavy-lifting-equipment maker Terex Corporation, and ChemChina's record-breaking deal for the Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, valued at $48 billion. Most recently, a unit of the Chinese conglomerate HNA Group on Wednesday said it would buy the technology distributor Ingram Micro for $6 billion. And the most contentious deal so far...

Large manufacturers are increasingly moving production back to the United States from China, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group. After watching the US bleed jobs for years as manufacturers offshored production to China, "now we're watching a switchback," Harold Sirkin, a co-author of the BCG research, told AFP. More than 70 percent cited better access to skilled labor as a reason to move production to the US, more than four times as many who cited it for moving production away from the US. For goods that would be sold in the US, nearly 80 percent gave...

China is building an entire city in the forests near the Belarusian capital Minsk to create a manufacturing springboard between the European Union and Russia. Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko allotted an area 40 percent larger than Manhattan around Minsk’s international airport for the $5 billion development, which will include enough housing to accommodate 155,000 people, according to Chinese and Belarusian officials. Lukashenko, who’s led his former Soviet state of 9.5 million for two decades, is turning to China to help revive a $60 billion economy that’s needed $6.5 billion of bailouts from the International Monetary Fund and Russia since 2009....

People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Chief of General Staff Chen Bingde confirmed earlier this week that China was developing the Dong Feng 21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), the first Chinese official to publicly state that the missile is in development. His comments came as the English-language China Daily reported that the DF-21D had a range of 2,700km, well beyond assessments by the Office of Naval Intelligence last year, which put it at about 1,500km. The missile, which is capable of hitting moving targets at sea and is seen as a potential threat to aircraft carrier battle groups, would represent a powerful...

The United States and China are working on a pact to promote use of ethanol and other biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and could announce an agreement as early as next month, an American official said Friday.

If China stays on the same economic track, it would become the world's largest economy in 2027, surpassing the United States, according to projections by Goldman, Sachs & Co., a Wall Street investment bank.

BEIJING (Reuters) - A top official in China's space program has set 2024 for the country's first moonwalk, a Hong Kong newspaper reported on Monday, cementing its position as a new space power. The mission would kick off in earnest next year, the Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po paper said, when China launches an unmanned lunar satellite in March or April to orbit and survey the lunar surface. "China now basically possesses the technology, materials and the economic strength" to put a man on the moon, the paper quoted the official as saying.

<p>The deadly attacks on the United States in New York and Washington prompted some suggestions that the U.S. must work with Communist China to combat international terrorism. This is a badly misguided proposal that merits a hasty burial. Given the resolve the Bush administration has displayed toward China to date, it is unlikely to fall into this trap.</p>