China

BEIJING: Hong Kong will suspend an agreement on mutual legal assistance with the United States, China's foreign ministry said on Thursday (Aug 20), in a tit-for-tat response to Washington ending some agreements with Hong Kong. The US State Department notified Hong Kong on Wednesday that Washington had suspended or terminated three bilateral agreements with the semi-autonomous city following China's imposition of a sweeping national security law. "China urges the US to immediately correct its mistakes," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a news briefing on Thursday as he announced the suspension of the agreement on legal assistance. The agreement, signed in 1997 before Britain returned Hong Kong to China, specified that the United States and Hong Kong governments would help ...

ISTANBUL: Turkey's new coronavirus cases jumped above 1,000 for the first time in three weeks on Tuesday (Aug 4) in what the government called a troubling rise during peak holiday season, raising concerns among top doctors about insufficient testing. Ankara, which lifted a partial lockdown in June and has lobbied hard for countries to allow tourists to visit, has called 1,000 a critical threshold to possibly reconsider rules. The 1,083 new COVID-19 cases reflect a "severe" rise after a four-day holiday weekend, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca wrote on Twitter, urging Turks to avoid contact and prevent vacations from having grave consequences. The virus has killed 5,765 and infected 234,934 in the country, putting it seventeenth globally based on total cases, according to a Reuters ta...

The California State Controller Betty Yee has called for the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public U.S. investment fund, to launch an inquiry into the abrupt exit of its chief investment officer. REUTERS: The California State Controller Betty Yee has called for the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public U.S. investment fund, to launch an inquiry into the abrupt exit of its chief investment officer. Yu Ben Meng, a U.S. citizen born in China, resigned from his position at the US$400 billion fund last week, saying he needed to focus on his health and family. In a letter sent to CalPERS' Board President Henry Jones on Monday, Yee called for a "swift and thorough inquiry" to determine w...

related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. 2 related media assets (image or videos) available. Click to see the gallery. With nearly seven months gone, an ambitious US$36.5 billion target for Chinese imports of U.S. farm goods this year may not be quite out of reach, but it's looking like a big, big stretch. BEIJING/CHICAGO: With nearly seven months gone, an ambitious US$36.5 billion target for Chinese imports of U.S. farm goods this year may not be quite out of reach, but it's looking like a big, big stretch. By end-May, imports were running behind 2017 levels - rather than 50per cent ahead as needed - and while orders for China's main farm import, soybeans, have started to pick up, scorching levels of buying would be needed to hit the mark. Add i...

HANOI: Vietnam's health ministry reported six new COVID-19 infections and two more deaths on Monday (Aug 10), bringing the total number of cases in the country to 847, with 13 fatalities. Most of the new cases, including an 8-year-old boy, are linked to the central city of Danang, where the new outbreak began late last month. The ministry said more than 182,000 people are being quarantined in the country, including 5,139 at hospitals, 28,408 at centralised quarantine centres and the rest at home. Aggressive contact tracing, targeted testing and strict quarantining had helped Vietnam halt an earlier contagion, but it is now racing to control infections in Danang and beyond after a new outbreak was detected there on Jul 25. On Friday, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc warned that...

Aug. 15 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. How can we understand where Japan has come from, where it is today and where it is going? To answer these questions, it’s important to reflect on just how much the world has changed since Japan’s surrender. A good place to start is the 70th anniversary in 2015, arguably the low point in Sino-Japanese relations. To mark the occasion, the Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan’s Role and World Order in the 21st Century released its report Aug. 6. It acknowledged Japan’s aggression in East Asia, writing that Japan “lost sight of the global trends, and caused much harm to various countries, largely in Asia, through a reckless war.” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reified much of the report in his Aug. 14 stateme...

The one common and peculiar aspect of most Shakespearean tragedies is the fact that the catastrophic events and unfolding misfortunes seem almost inevitable. While characters within the play are well aware of the fact that things are quickly going from bad to worse, it seems almost impossible to change the course of events. Unfortunately, the current U.S.-China relationship seems to be showing the same tendency. Many Shakespearean tragedies were caused by accidents, which in turn were a result of carelessness and miscommunication. U.S.-China relations have never been smooth and peaceful, and have in the past experienced various ups and downs and dangerous crises such as the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the 2001 military aircraft collision incident, among others. Th...