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China seeks to establish ‘green channel' for rare earth exports to EU
China accounts for more than 60 percent of rare earth mining production and 92 percent of global refined output, according to the International Energy Agency read more
Miners are seen at the Bayan Obo mine containing rare earth minerals, in Inner Mongolia, China. File image/ Reuters
China has suggested developing a 'green channel' to facilitate rare earth exports to the European Union, the commerce ministry announced Saturday, after Beijing restricted their sale abroad.
Since April, Beijing has asked for licences to export these key commodities from China, which accounts for more than 60% of rare earth mining production and 92% of worldwide refined output, according to the International Energy Agency.
The metals are used in a broad range of goods, including electric vehicle batteries, and industry leaders have criticised China's licensing process.
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'Export control on rare earths and other items is an international practice,' the commerce ministry said in a statement.
'China attaches great importance to Europe's concerns and is willing to establish a green channel for eligible applications, fast track the examination and approval, and instruct the working level to maintain timely communication on this,' a ministry statement said.
The comments were attributed to China's Commerce Minister Wang Wentao, who met Tuesday with EU trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic.
During the bilateral talks, Wang said he hoped the bloc would in turn 'take reciprocal action, adopt effective measures to facilitate, safeguard, and promote compliant trade of high-tech products with China,' according to the commerce ministry.
The two officials also discussed imports by European countries of Chinese electric vehicles, which the EU has hit with levies over allegedly unfair subsidies from Beijing.
'The negotiation on the price commitment of electric vehicles between China and Europe has entered the final stage, but both sides still need to make efforts,' the commerce ministry said.
The discussions will be followed by China hosting a summit with the EU next month, 50 years since Beijing and Brussels established diplomatic ties.
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Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
Buyer with ties to Chinese Communist Party got VIP treatment at Trump crypto dinner
The Trump White House has repeatedly sounded an alarm about visitors with ties to China's Communist Party coming to the United States, arguing that they are a potential security threat. But the administration appears to have literally left the door open to a member of a Chinese government group when it went along with a plan to give the biggest purchasers of President Donald Trump's digital currency access to the president and the White House. Trump launched a so-called meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency, just days before his inauguration. To bolster sales, the president's business partners created a contest in April, offering the coin's top buyers a tour of the White House and a private dinner with Trump at his Virginia golf club. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like If You Eat Ginger Everyday for 1 Month This is What Happens Tips and Tricks One of those buyers was He Tianying, who is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, according to government documents in China examined by The New York Times. That government group, referred to as the CPPCC, is an advisory body that seeks to broaden the Communist Party's influence and solicit support from influential people in Chinese society. Live Events He, who was registered at the Trump event as a resident of Hong Kong, advises the Chinese government through his role as a delegate of the Fangshan CPPCC, a district of Beijing. He is listed as a member of the organization's science and technology committee. The Times could find no indication that He is a member of the Communist Party, and the government body he serves on is fairly low-level. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories There were no restrictions on who could buy the Trump meme coin -- which was marketed like a collectible baseball card -- including foreign nationals. But the winning buyers were given the opportunity for close proximity to the president. It is not clear why He wanted to attend. Still, at a time when the administration is seeking to scrutinize and revoke the visas of Chinese students with ties to the Communist Party, the incident illustrates inconsistencies in the Trump administration's approach to how it handles Chinese nationals, as well as potential weaknesses in the background checks the Trump administration did on the guests who bought his meme coin. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in an interview that the dinner was a private event and that government officials were not closely involved. "As the White House has always maintained, this was not an official White House event," she said. Once a crypto skeptic, Trump has done an about-face and declared himself a digital coin enthusiast, raising ethical concerns and blurring the line between his personal business ventures and the presidency. His family's company has issued its own cryptocurrency, and he has also heavily promoted the meme coin, known as $TRUMP. The meme coin dinner engendered strong criticism from Democrats, government watchdogs and even some Republicans about the appearance of monetising the presidency for personal gain. The event was arranged by the president's business partners to directly enrich the first family, even as Trump spoke that evening behind a stand emblazoned with the presidential seal. Bidders competed to accumulate the largest holding of the coin over several weeks. The top 220 won a dinner with Trump, and the top 25 also got a "VIP" tour of the White House. The buyers used self-adopted nicknames that disguised their identities, but the Times obtained copies of several pages of an official sign-in sheet for the dinner and over the past two weeks has been examining the biographies of many of the attendees. He, using the nickname Sky, owned $3.7 million worth of the meme coin, public transaction records show, at the time the contest ended. He was ranked as the seventh-largest buyer of the cryptocurrency, which entitled him to a gold-colored VIP wristband for the event. The day after the dinner at Trump's golf club, He was observed by a reporter from the Times entering the White House for the tour that had been set up by Trump's business partner Bill Zanker, who created the Trump meme coin. Zanker and the Trump family share in the revenues from the meme coin business, which has already totaled at least $320 million, according to an estimate by Chainalysis, a crypto forensics group. After the tour, He, using a social media account under his Sky pseudonym, posted a series of photos from the dinner and White House tour, which he electronically modified to cover his face. The Times was able to establish his identity through publicly available information, including photos and biographical information on his company website. He made several waves of purchases during the three weeks of the meme coin contest, according to the transaction records. "May I have the pleasure?" he wrote in one social media post, showing off his standing as one of the top owners of the meme coin, several days before the contest ended. He declined to comment as he entered the White House, and he did not respond to follow-up emails, calls and text messages from the Times. The dinner invitation sent to He stands in contrast to the statement Trump issued Wednesday, arguing that his administration needed to urgently move to block visas for certain Chinese nationals, including those attending Harvard University, as "the Chinese Communist Party has sent thousands of midcareer and senior bureaucrats" to the United States. He said this order was for "crucial national security reasons." A senior White House official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter, said this week that the presence of He at the dinner and White House tour was unfortunate and that overall, the meme coin dinner had created unnecessary questions. But the White House official added that it had occurred because Trump "carelessly committed" to his longtime friend and business partner Zanker that he would be a part of it. The official added that Trump was not notified who would be attending and was unaware of He's background. Supporting the party The mission of the Fangshan District division of the CPPCC, which lists He as a member, is to "uphold the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China and strengthen the common ideological and political foundation," the group says in describing one of its meetings this year. CPPCC committees are advisory bodies to China's rubber-stamp legislatures at the national, provincial and, like Fangshan, district or county levels. Members can make policy recommendations to the legislative bodies, called People's Congresses. These committees are part of the Communist Party's United Front system, which is devised to co-opt broad segments of the population, including entrepreneurs like He, into supporting and carrying out the party's policies. The CPPCC bodies also act as networking clubs. "When you are a CPPCC member, you are expected to be a part of the United Front system and carry the water where the party asks you to," said Peter Mattis, the president of the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation who studies the United Front. The Times turned up documentation on Chinese government websites showing He's participation in the CPPCC group, as well as an attendance list for the committee's gathering in Beijing in January that included He's name. Chinese government records show that He is the majority owner of a Beijing-based investment firm, TechSharpe (Beijing) Capital Management Co., which says on its website that it uses artificial intelligence to "conduct quantitative investment in stocks." Recently, He has also promoted a crypto firm called LuckyFuture and has interacted on social media with Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the giant crypto exchange Binance. In a social media post, responding to an inquiry from the Times, Zhao said he learned about LuckyFuture after He reached out to him in the last few weeks. (A Binance spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.) He came to the United States from China about a decade ago to get a master's degree in finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before returning to China and becoming active in the CPPCC, which is noted in his TechSharpe biography. This made He just the kind of student Trump is now targeting. But there was no hint of those kinds of fears in gracious invitations sent via email in mid-May to the dinner guests. "Congratulations!" said the notice sent to He, with a photo illustration of a muscular, smiling Trump at a dinner table, with an American flag on his lapel. "We can't wait to see you at the Gala Dinner." (He posted a copy of these emails on his social media account.) A table of foreign visitors According to a video taken at the dinner, the VIPs at just one table illustrated how many of the guests had traveled from overseas, including from China. He's dining companions included Justin Sun, a Chinese-born billionaire who was the contest's single largest buyer and one of the largest investors in the Trump family's other crypto venture, World Liberty Financial. Sun also has experience as a CPPCC member. In 2016, he was named as a delegate for a committee in a district in Guangzhou, a city in southern China. 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People not on the guest list were in certain cases allowed to enter the golf club grounds that evening and remain there after Trump arrived, the Times also confirmed. "I expected more from the security questions," said Nicholas Pinto, a Florida resident and crypto trader who attended the dinner. "It was very basic. And next thing you know, I am standing there in the room with President Trump."
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Money, mining and marine parks: The big issues at UN ocean summit
France is hosting world leaders this week to confront what the United Nations calls a global "emergency" in the oceans but what is expected, and can the summit make a difference? There is pressure on the UN Ocean Conference starting Monday in Nice to show that countries can unite and deliver more than just talk for the world's ailing and neglected seas. Several countries are expected to announce the creation of new marine conservation zones within their national waters, though how protected they really are will come under scrutiny. Some countries impose next to no rules on what is forbidden or permitted in marine zones. France and other EU states, for example, allow bottom trawling, a damaging fishing practice, in protected waters. This means just three percent of oceans are considered truly safe from exploitation, far short of a global target to place 30 percent under conservation by 2030. Key to achieving this goal is enacting the high seas treaty, a landmark global pact signed in 2023 to protect marine life in the vast open waters beyond national control. France had pinned success at Nice on delivering the 60 ratifications necessary to bring the treaty into force, saying the conference would be a failure without it. But it could not get the required number, drumming up roughly half ahead of the summit. Those outstanding will be pushed to explain when they intend to do so. France will be leading diplomatic efforts in Nice to rope more countries into supporting a moratorium on deep-sea mining, a contentious practice opposed by 33 nations so far. Bolstering those numbers would send a rebuke to US President Donald Trump, who wants to allow seabed mining in international waters despite concerns over how little is understood about life at these depths. But it would also carry weight ahead of a closely watched meeting in July of the International Seabed Authority, which is haggling over global rules to govern the nascent deep-sea mining sector. At the summit's close, nations will adopt a pre-agreed political statement that recognises the crisis facing oceans, and the global need to better protect them. Critics slammed the language in the eight-page document as weak or in the case of fossil fuels missing altogether, but others cautioned against reading into it too much. "The end declaration from here isn't really the only output. It's much more important, actually, what governments commit to, and what they come here to say on an individual basis," said Peter Haugan, policy director at the Institute of Marine Research in Norway. The conference is not a COP summit or a UN treaty negotiation, and any decisions made between June 9 and 13 in Nice are voluntary and not legally binding. But countries will still be expected to put money on the table in Nice to plug a massive shortfall in funding for ocean conservation, said Pauli Merriman at WWF International. "What we lack what we still lack is the ambition, the financing and the delivery needed to close the gap," she told reporters. "It's not enough for governments to show up to Nice with good intentions." np/klm/js
The Hindu
an hour ago
- The Hindu
Germany reaffirms strong support to India in fight against terrorism: FM Wadephul
Germany reaffirmed its strong support and solidarity with India in the fight against terrorism, Federal Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told an Indian parliamentary delegation that outlined New Delhi's resolve to not give in to nuclear blackmail by Pakistan. As the delegation visited the European country, it conveyed to German political and diplomatic leadership India's unwavering united stand for zero-tolerance for terrorism, especially in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people. The delegation, led by BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad, concluded its visit to Germany on Saturday (June 7, 2025), with the Indian Embassy stating that New Delhi's firm and principled position against terrorism 'found resonance across the top political leadership, decision-makers and think-tanks — reinforcing depth of the India-Germany Strategic Partnership.' Earlier on Friday evening, the delegation called on Minister Wadephul, who, building on his recent meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, 'condemned the terrorist attack in Pahalgam and reaffirmed Germany's strong support and solidarity with India, in the fight against terrorism,' said a post on X by the Indian Embassy in Berlin. Both sides 'discussed ways to further strengthen & deepen multi-faceted India-Germany Strategic Partnership and reiterated their commitment to a rule-based international order, based on shared democratic values,' it added. 'We underscored the significant threat terrorism poses to democracy, humanity, and human rights, and expressed grave concern over Pakistan-sponsored terrorism,' MR. Prasad said on X after the meeting. 'Emphasising the need for collective action, we stressed that democratic nations must unite to counter this menace.' The discussions also focused on enhancing and deepening the multi-faceted India-Germany Strategic Partnership, built on a shared commitment to upholding a rules-based international order rooted in democratic values, he added. The delegation had earlier interacted with key members of the German Bundestag (MdBs) in charge of foreign and security policy, such as Jurgen Hardt, Foreign Policy Spokesperson of CDU, and Tilman Kuban, as well as leading think-tanks in Germany. 'They emphasised India's message of zero-tolerance against terrorism. The delegation conveyed that India's response to the Pahalgam terrorist attack had been precise, measured and non-escalatory. They also explained India's clear position that there is no differentiation between terrorists and those who aid or shelter them,' the Indian Embassy said. During an interaction with leaders and key representatives of the Indian community in Germany, the multi-party parliamentary delegation appreciated the support and solidarity shown by the Indian diaspora in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. 'The participants observed two-minute silence in solemn memory of the victims and pledged to remain united against the menace of terrorism,' the Indian Embassy said in another post on X. Mr. Prasad said the Indian community in Berlin displayed "immense enthusiasm, drawing inspiration from India's growth story and its unwavering stance against terrorism". "Our visit to Germany was highly successful, with Germany strongly condemning terrorism. Across the six countries we visited, we received great respect and our concerns were given a hearing. #OperationSindoor," he said in an X post. Earlier in the day, the delegation met the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Parliament 'Bundestag', Armin Laschet, and lawmakers Ralph Brinkhaus and Hubertus Heil here. 'Grateful for today's exchange with the Indian All-Party Parliamentary Delegation. Germany and India share a trusted partnership, especially on global security. We also discussed the brutal 22 April terrorist attack in Pahalgam. I'm deeply shocked. Germany stands with India in the fight against terrorism,' Mr. Laschet said. 'Now it's vital the ceasefire holds and dialogue continues. Peace serves us all,' he said in a post on X. The delegation "conveyed India's unwavering united stand for Zero Tolerance for Terrorism and outlined its resolve to not give in to nuclear blackmail. Leaders noted momentum in India-German Strategic Partnership and joint role in ensuring global Peace and Security," the Embassy of India in Berlin said in a post on X. The delegation leaders 'noted momentum in India-German Strategic Partnership and joint role in ensuring global Peace and Security,' the Embassy of India said in a post on X. The Indian team also held a productive interaction with Omid Nouripour, Vice President of the German Parliament, and deeply appreciated Berlin's strong and unequivocal support for India's principled stand against terrorism. 'They conveyed India's firm response to Pahalgam terror attack and briefed about #OperationSindoor, reiterating the country's zero tolerance for terrorism in all its forms and manifestations,' the India mission said. The delegation arrived in Berlin on Thursday from Belgium to convey India's stance. India's Ambassador to Germany Ajit Gupte welcomed the delegation and briefed its members on India-Germany ties, with a focus on expanding strategic partnership and growing cooperation in trade and investment, defence, S&T and mobility. A statement from the Indian Embassy here said that the delegation interacted with senior members of the German Parliament (Bundestag) active in the fields of foreign policy and international affairs and a leading think-tank in Germany, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) on day one. Ending the day's engagements, the delegation also had an interaction with representatives from leading German think-tanks and eminent personalities at a reception hosted by Ambassador Gupte, the statement said. The delegation includes MPs Daggubati Purandeswari, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Ghulam Ali Khatana, Amar Singh, Samik Bhattacharya, M Thambidurai and former minister of state M J Akbar and former diplomat Pankaj Saran. In an X post, delegation member Ms. Chaturvedi said that she finished the visit with a sense of satisfaction that "India stands together, resolute in its fight against terrorism". She thanked senior officials of the governments of the countries that the group travelled for "unequivocally condemning terror". The delegation is one of the seven multi-party delegations India has tasked to visit 33 global capitals to reach out to the international community to emphasise Pakistan's links to terrorism. Tensions between India and Pakistan escalated after the Pahalgam terror attack, with India carrying out precision strikes on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on May 7. The on-ground hostilities from the Indian and Pakistan sides that lasted for four days ended with an understanding of stopping the military actions following talks between the directors general of military operations of both sides on May 10.
