Chinese President Xi Jinping told Russia's Vladimir Putin on Thursday their two countries should be "friends of steel", as they pledged to raise cooperation to a new level and "decisively" counter the influence of the United States.

At talks in the Kremlin, the two leaders cast themselves as defenders of a new world order no longer dominated by the U.S.
In a lengthy joint statement, they said they would deepen relations in all areas, including military ties, and "strengthen coordination in order to decisively counter Washington's course of 'dual containment' of Russia and China".

The two countries said the Ukraine conflict could only be settled by removing its "root causes" - a phrase that Russia has frequently used when arguing that it was forced to go to war to prevent the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO.

Xi is the most powerful of more than two dozen foreign leaders who are visiting Moscow this week to mark Thursday's 80th anniversary of the end of World War11.

The economic friction between the U.S. and China just reached a boiling point. Last month, the U.S. slapped a 145% tariff on Chinese imports, and China has responded with a 125% tariff on American goods.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, CEO of Pershing Square Capital Management, warned that prolonged trade tensions are pushing global companies to shift supply chains away from China—permanently.

"That cake is already baked," he wrote April 26 on X, referring to the irreversible decisions companies are making to exit China.
Tariffs Stack Up And Ships Slow Down.
Global Supply Chains Find New Homes
As companies scramble to minimize exposure, Ackman argued the longer the tariffs persist, "the more rapidly every company that has a supply chain based in China relocates it." He pointed to India, Vietnam, Mexico, and the U.S. as new manufacturing hubs for both U.S. and non-U.S. firms.

Taiwan and Europe face the same threat from authoritarianism, President Lai Ching-te said on Thursday, marking 80 years since the end of World War Two in Europe and warning that indulging aggressors only whets their appetite for expansion.

Taiwan has faced increased military pressure from China, including war games, as Beijing seeks to assert its sovereignty claims over the democratically-governed island, and has sought joint cause with Europe from the risk it faces from Russia.

Speaking to an audience including European, British, Japanese, Canadian and U.S. diplomats based in Taiwan, Lai said Taiwan shares the same values as many of the democracies who fought in World War Two.
"At many points in history, people have thought to give the aggressor a small concession to earn peace," Lai said

"But as we all know from the painful lessons of World War Two, indulging aggressors with a taste of expansion only whets their appetite; it makes them more confident and hungrier for more."

As financial markets pin their hopes on a de-escalation in the U.S.-China trade war, some experts caution that meaningful progress in striking a deal between the world's two largest economies may still be some way off.

"Either tariffs are cut to more palatable levels or both sides put more exclusions on the table to make tariffs effectively less binding," Aidan Yao, Amundi's senior investment strategist for Asia, told the Reuters Global Markets Forum.

"For now, signs of these are sparse, presumably because the pain threshold has not been reached," Yao said, adding that the outlook for the Chinese economy still looks positive.
China recently said it was "evaluating" a U.S. proposal to resume trade talks over Washington's 145% tariffs. It has also created a list of U.S.-made products for exemption from its 125% retaliatory tariffs.

Beijing and Tokyo exchanged diplomatic protests after an unknown Japanese group flew a civilian plane over a disputed island in the East China Sea.

The Senkaku are a chain of five uninhabited islands and reefs in the East China Sea, located northeast of Taiwan and southwest of Okinawa. They are administered by Japan but claimed by both Taiwan and China, which calls them the Diaoyu islands.

The Chinese coastguard said they launched a helicopter to “expel” a Japanese civilian aircraft that had entered the airspace over the islands on Saturday morning.

The head of the Chinese foreign ministry’s Asian affairs department, Liu Jinsong, lodged a protest with the chief minister of Japan’s embassy, Yokochi Akira, over the alleged intrusion by “Japanese right-wing extremists piloting a civilian aircraft”.

President Donald Trump said he will not drop tariffs on China to get Beijing to come to the negotiating table.

The president discussed his stance on the tariffs, which he defended, in an interview with NBC's "Meet The Press" recorded Friday from his Mar-a-Lago estate.

"They said today they want to talk. Look, China, and I don't like this. I'm not happy about this. China's getting killed right now," Trump told host Kristen Welker. "They're getting absolutely destroyed. Their factories are closing. Their unemployment is going through the roof. I'm not looking to do that to China now. At the same time, I'm not looking to have China make hundreds of billions of dollars and build more ships and more Army tanks and more airplanes."

"You're not dropping the tariffs against China to get them to the negotiating table?" Welker asked.

China signaled the nation is “assessing” potential trade talks with the U.S. amid the Trump administration’s trade war but urged Washington to show “sincerity” to establish trust.

“As the US has recently reached out through relevant channels multiple times, expressing a desire to engage in talks with China over tariff issues, China is currently assessing the situation,” a Commerce Ministry spokesperson said in a statement, shared on social platform X by the Chinese Embassy.

“In any potential dialogue or talks, if the US does not rectify its erroneous unilateral tariff measures, it would demonstrate a complete lack of sincerity and further undermine mutual trust,” the ministry added. “Saying one thing while doing another, or even attempting to use talks as a cover for coercion and blackmail, will not work with China.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said the U.S. was meeting with many countries, including China, on trade deals, and his main priority with China was to secure a fair trade deal.

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he had no plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, but U.S. officials were speaking with Chinese officials about a variety of different things.

Asked if any trade agreements would be announced this week, Trump said that could "very well be" but gave no details.

Trump's top officials have engaged in a flurry of meetings with trading partners since the president on April 2 imposed a 10% tariff on most countries, along with higher tariff rates for many trading partners that were then suspended for 90 days. He has also imposed 25% tariffs on autos, steel and aluminum, 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and 145% tariffs on China.

Trump, during the interview that was conducted May 2, said he's not looking at running for a third term for president.
Trump again refused to take responsibility for the state of the economy and blamed his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, after the U.S. gross domestic product shrank at a 0.3% annual rate in the first three months of the year.
Trump said he does not know whether he's required to uphold the Constitution as he defended his administration's actions to remove people who are in the country illegally.
Trump said little girls in America don't need to own so many dolls, doubling down on an example he gave last week to defend his universal tariffs on imports that could spike the prices of many goods, particularly imports from China.
Trump downplayed economic anxieties caused by his tariffs, saying that everything would be "OK" even if the U.S. enters a recession in the short term.
"Everything's OK," Trump said, arguing the United States is in a "transition period"

2 new stealth fighter jets will expand who's in the world's top air forces...
Twelve countries operate one of the four models that can claim status as 5th-generation fighters.
Those elite ranks are set to grow with two new entrants: Turkey's Kaan and South Korea's KF-21.

The monopoly held by the world's superpowers on 5th-gen aircraft is likely nearing its end.
Ever since the introduction of the F-22 Raptor in 2005, 5th-generation fighters have been the undisputed kings of the skies.

These state-of-the-art fighter jets have characteristics like high maneuverability, advanced electronics, the ability to supercruise, and, most importantly, low observability to enemy radar detection. They are both feared and vaunted, and are at the top of the wish lists of best air forces.

To date, twelve countries operate one of the four models that can claim 5th-gen status; the American F-22 and F-35 built by Lockheed Martin, China's J-20, and Russia's Su-57. That club could grow to twenty b

Britain is ‘compliant servant of communist China’, says Trump’s tariff chief- The real truth by Peter Navarro.
Donald Trump’s tariffs tsar has accused Britain of being a “compliant servant of communist China” at risk of having its “blood sucked” dry by Beijing.

Peter Navarro, the president’s trade adviser, said the Government must resist “string-laden gifts” from Beijing and avoid becoming a “dumping ground” for goods that China can no longer sell to the US.

In an intervention set to complicate trade negotiations between Britain and America, he said: “If the Chinese vampire can’t suck the American blood, it’s going to suck the UK blood and the EU blood.

“This is a very dangerous time for the world economies with respect to exposure to China.”

Talks or no talks: Who blinks first in US-China trade war?
China's ministry of commerce announced that Beijing was assessing the possibility of tariff negotiations with the United States.

It was news the rest of the world had been waiting to hear as astonishingly high tariffs - up to 245% on some Chinese exports to the US - throttle trade between the world's two biggest economies, raising the spectre of a recession.

"US officials have repeatedly expressed their willingness to negotiate with China on tariffs,"

"China's position is consistent. If we fight, we will fight to the end; if we talk, the door is open... If the US wants to talk, it should show its sincerity and be prepared to correct its wrong practices and cancel unilateral tariffs."
"China has no need to talk to the United States," Yuyuantantian, a Weibo account affiliated with China Central Television (CCTV). "From the perspective of negotiations, the United States must be the more anxious party at present."

The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in President Xi Jinping's government: Come work with us.
America's premier spy agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted to YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day.

The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost both the agency's use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted U.S. officials with its own espionage operations.

The videos are “aimed at recruiting Chinese officials to steal secrets,” Ratcliffe said. He said China “is intent on dominating the world economically, militarily, and technologically.”

America and European big fools knows China created what escaped from their lab. The big fools scared of Chinese push back with trade embargo on their big companies.
China is blaming the United States for the origin of COVID-19, accusing Washington of "evading responsibility" for the virus amid multiple statements by President Donald Trump that it was leaked from a lab in Wuhan.

In a multipage paper, the Communist regime said the infectious disease was present in the U.S. earlier than what was officially determined.

"The US should cease from shifting blame and evading responsibility, stop finding external excuses for its internal malaise, and genuinely reflect on and overhaul its public health policies," the paper states. "The US cannot continue to turn a deaf ear to the numerous questions over its conduct."

The US industrial base isn't sufficiently prepared for a long, drawn-out conflict with China, the Army secretary said.
Daniel Driscoll said addressing the issue was an immediate concern.
The Trump administration has indicated that fixing defense industry problems is a top priority.

A war with top US rival China could be a long conflict that would strain resources and capabilities, and the US Army secretary has concerns that American industry isn't ready.

Last week, Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll spoke about the Army's priorities amid plans to shift Pentagon focus to the Indo-Pacific region. Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have identified the theater and countering China as a focus.

Driscoll said that the Army's immediate concerns when it comes to readying for a war with China are "to strengthen our defense industrial base and increase our magazine depth."

China, Brazil and other members of the BRICS grouping on Tuesday slammed the "resurgence of trade protectionism" at a meeting in Rio de Janeiro dominated by US President Donald Trump's tariffs blitz.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov were among the top diplomats of the 11-country grouping attending two days of talks on issues ranging from Trump's trade war to the push for peace in Ukraine.

Mauro Vieira, the foreign minister of Brazil which holds the rotating BRICS presidency, said the bloc underscored its "firm rejection" of protectionism, without explicitly referring to Trump.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has hit dozens of countries with a blanket 10 percent tariff, but China faces levies of up to 145 percent on many products.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said US and China are close in the AI chip race, with China close behind.
Nvidia said that the Trump administration plans to restrict its chip sales to China.
The CEO also urged an "industry-oriented energy policy" that will encourage the growth of new tech.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the US and China are neck and neck in the race for AI chip dominance and that America needs to implement energy policies that will accelerate emerging tech industries.

Huang "China is not behind" the US. And, when asked if China is ahead, Huang clarified, "China is right behind us. We're very, very close."

Nvidia, which produces some of the most expensive and sought-after chips for training and using artificial intelligence models, said the Trump administration had informed the company that it would be restricting the sale of chips to China by requiring the tech giant to obtain special licenses to continue selling its H20 chips to Chinese customers.

France will from next year impose a handling tax for every small parcel sent from China sent by platforms such as Shein and Temu, a minister said Tuesday.

The charge was announced by public accounts minister Amelie de Montchalin amidst international concerns that tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump could force more Chinese goods into other markets.

Montchalin said the tax would be a "a few euros" for each parcel, or a few cents for each article. The aim, she added, was for platforms to pay rather than the consumer.

The European Union is aiming to reform its customs union by 2028 and the minister's office said France wanted "the rapid establishment at the European level of a handling fee mechanism for each small package entering Europe."

A seasoned diplomat who worked with Pope Francis for 12 years, Cardinal Pietro Parolin is well-known in Rome and abroad, and a serious contender to be the next pontiff.
The 70-year-old Italian was secretary of state -- the Vatican's effective number two -- for almost the entire Francis pontificate, and its most visible exponent on the world stage.

With his air of calm and subtle sense of humour, Parolin is the consummate diplomat, a polyglot with experience in Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.

He played a key role in mediating a thaw between the United States and Cuba, as well as making a key Vatican agreement with China on naming bishops.
Parolin is the favourite to replace Francis, who died on April 21, when the conclave of cardinals starts meeting on May 7.

He is well known to world leaders and diplomats. Crucially, he also has a fine grasp of the intricacies the Roman Curia, the Holy See's central government, and was part of a group of cardinal advisors to Francis

China's navy conducted a patrol in the South China Sea on Tuesday, saying that the Philippines has been creating "disturbances", as the Filipino and U.S. air forces conducted their own joint mission above the disputed waterway.

China, which claims almost the entirety of the South China Sea, has been involved an increasingly tense stand-off with the Philippines in the waters there, as both seek to assert their sovereignty claims.

More than 14,000 Filipino and U.S. soldiers are participating in joint exercises which run from April 21 through May 9 for a "full battle test" in the face of shared regional security concerns. China has said the drills are provocative.

In a statement late on Tuesday, the Southern Theatre Command of China's People's Liberation Army said its forces had that same day carried out "routine" patrols in the South China Sea, without giving an exact location.

China struck a defiant stance on Tuesday in response to American concerns about Beijing's efforts to expand its influence in the resource-rich South American nation of Chile, escalating tensions over a Chinese astronomical venture in Chile’s arid north.

At a press conference Tuesday in Chile's capital of Santiago, China's ambassador to Chile, Niu Qingbao, lambasted the United States for “interfering in Chile’s sovereign right to independently choose its partners” and spreading "disinformation about the project.”

The astronomy project stems from a 2023 agreement between China's state-run National Astronomical Observatory and Chile's Catholic University of the North to work on a powerful space observatory in the country's vast northern Atacama Desert. The proposed high-resolution telescope would be able to observe near-Earth objects, which are classified as asteroids or comets.

But the project quickly became entangled in China's spiraling rivalry with the Trump administration.

The president and Terry Moran when talking about the import tax, with Moran arguing the tariff is going to “raise prices on everything from electronics, to clothing, to building houses.”

“You don’t know that, you don’t know whether or not China’s going to eat it,”
“That’s mathematics,” Moran said.
“China probably will eat those tariffs,” Trump replied. “But at 145, they basically can’t do much business with the United States. And, they were making from us a trillion dollars a year, they were ripping us off like nobody’s ever ripped us off.”
“They make up bargaining chips out of thin air, bully and go back on their words,” Zhao Chenxin, deputy director of China’s economic agency.
Zhao added that the method “makes everyone see one thing more and more clearly, that is the so-called ‘reciprocal tariffs’ severely go against historical trends and economic laws, impact international trade rules and order and seriously impair the legitimate rights and interests of countries.”

China restated its case that COVID-19 may have originated in the United States in a white paper on its pandemic response released on Wednesday after President Donald Trump's administration blamed a lab leak in China.

The White House launched a COVID-19 website on April 18 in which it said the coronavirus came from a lab leak in China while criticising former President Joe Biden, former top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization.

In the white paper, released by the official Xinhua news agency, China accused the U.S. of politicising the matter of the origins of COVID-19. It cited a Missouri lawsuit which resulted in a $24 billion ruling against China for hoarding protective medical equipment and covering up the outbreak.

China shared relevant information with the WHO and the international community in a timely manner, the white paper said, emphasising that a joint study by the WHO and China had concluded that a lab leak was "extremely unlikely".

China is accelerating plans to cut its dependence on US pharmaceutical supplies as trade tensions show no signs of easing. After Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, Beijing's National Medical Products Administration instructed state-owned drugmakers to assess their exposure to US raw materials, lab equipment, and reagents.
The directive also extended to top hospitals, which heavily rely on advanced medical devices from companies like GE HealthCare Technologies (NASDAQ:GEHC) and Medtronic (NYSE:MDT). Early findings show that while basic medicines are largely produced domestically, critical high-end materials and equipment still come from the US, highlighting a major vulnerability China is now working to fix.
Although China already manufactures a large share of essential medical goods, replacing cutting-edge US products remains a complex challenge. Regulatory reviews will be needed before any substitutes are approved, meaning immediate changes are unlikely.

Markets in China were down this morning on gloomy macroeconomic data showing a possible contraction of activity caused by President Trump’s trade war. The S&P 500, by contrast, notched six straight days of gains on hopes that as Trump makes further compromises on tariffs the worst may be behind us.

The trade war has begun to take its toll on Chinese stocks, which until recently had been more resilient than U.S. equities to President Trump’s incoming tariffs. China’s SSE was down 0.23% today and the CSI 300 was down 0.12%, following news that new export orders in China fell in April to their lowest since COVID-19. China’s purchasing managers’ index for manufacturing fell to 49, indicating a contraction in activity.
However, new data emerged showing a drastic reduction in export shipping from China to the U.S. and investors appear to have reacted as a result. While the S&P has now notched six straight days of gains, the CSI has lost 0.45% over the same period.

Chinese President Xi Jinping used a visit to Shanghai on Tuesday to push for breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and underscore China’s leading role in the "Global South".

Although Xi did not reference the trade war started by U.S. President Donald Trump during his visit, the implicit message was clear: China can develop its own leading technology and has alternative markets.

"It's a show of strength," said Alfred Wu, a China expert at National University of Singapore.

Xi's Shanghai trip, his first to China's main international financial hub since November 2023, comes at a time when the tariff fight with the U.S. has raised the stakes for global economic growth, and as Beijing pursues AI development in the wake of the global success of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.
Shanghai to accelerate efforts to turn itself into a technological and innovation hub with global influence and strive to be at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) development and governance.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said the "onus" is on China to bring down its tariffs as he outlined how many jobs the world's second-largest economy stands to lose in a trade war.

If the US keeps tariffs in place at the current level of 145%, China could lose 10 million jobs "very quickly," Bessent said during a press conference at the White House, citing outside statistics.

Even if the US were to lower tariffs somewhat, China still stands to lose 5 million jobs, he added.

"So remember that we are the deficit country," Bessent said. "They sell almost five times more goods to us than we sell to them. So the onus will be on them to take off these tariffs. They're unsustainable for them."

Taiwan is watching with growing unease as the Catholic Church prepares to elect a new leader following the death of Pope Francis. The Holy See is the only European state that maintains diplomatic relations with Taipei, but some fear the growing ties between the Vatican and Beijing could change things.

Taiwan is home to fewer than 300,000 Catholics. By contrast, estimates put the number of Catholics in communist China at anywhere between eight and 12 million, with another 390,000 in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong. Despite these figures, the Holy See recognize Taiwan as the sole "China."

After Pope Francis’ death, Taiwan’s President William Lai quickly said he planned to attend the funeral. A short time later, however, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that former Vice President and devout Catholic Chen Chien-jen will be Taiwan’s envoy.
"The precedent exists for Taiwan’s president to attend a pope’s funeral. In 2005, then-President Chen Shui-bian attended John Paul II’s fune

The Philippines on Monday slammed an "irresponsible" Chinese state media report claiming a disputed reef in the South China Sea was under Beijing's control, saying the status quo was unchanged.

The Sandy Cay reef lies near Thitu Island, or Pag-asa, where the Philippines stations troops and maintains a coast guard monitoring base.

Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said Saturday that the country's coast guard had "implemented maritime control" over Tiexian Reef, part of Sandy Cay, in mid-April.

The Philippines and China have been engaged in months of confrontations over the South China Sea, which Beijing claims nearly in its entirety despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
"There is no truth whatsoever to the claim of the China Coast Guard that the (Sandy Cay sandbanks) have been seized," National Security Council spokesman Jonathan Malaya said.

The U.S. military has deployed an anti-ship missile launcher for the first time on Batan Island in the Philippines, as Marines unloaded the high-precision weapon on the northern tip of the archipelago just a sea border away from Taiwan

U.S. and Philippine forces separately unleashed a barrage of missile and artillery fire that shot down several drones acting as hostile aircraft in live-fire drills on Sunday in Zambales province facing the disputed South China Sea

The mock battle scenarios over the weekend in the annual Balikatan exercises between the U.S. and its oldest treaty ally in Asia, the Philippines, not only simulated real-life war. They were also staged near major geopolitical hotspots, which have become delicate frontlines in the regional rivalry between China and the U.S

About 9000 American and 5,000 Filipino military personnel took part in the combat maneuvers. At least 260 Australian personnel also joined, with smaller observer delegations from Japan and other cou