China accuses US secretary Pete Hegseth of ‘vilifying' remarks at defence forum
China
has protested to the
United States
over 'vilifying' remarks made by secretary for defence
Pete Hegseth
, the ministry for foreign affairs said on Sunday, while accusing it of deliberately ignoring calls for peace from regional nations.
China has objected to Mr Hegseth calling it a threat in the Indo-Pacific, the ministry added, describing his comments at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday as 'deplorable' and 'intended to sow division'.
'Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation, vilified China with defamatory allegations, and falsely called China a 'threat',' the ministry said on its website.
'The United States has deployed offensive weaponry in the South China Sea and kept stoking flames and creating tensions in the Asia-Pacific, which are turning the region into a powder keg,' the ministry said.
READ MORE
Mr Hegseth
had called on allies in the Indo-Pacific region
, including key security ally
Australia
, to spend more on defence after warning of the 'real and potentially imminent' threat from China.
Asked about the call to boost defence spending, Australian prime minister
Anthony Albanese
said his government had pledged an extra 10 billion Australian dollars (€5.6 billion) to defence.
'What we'll do is we'll determine our defence policy,' Mr Albanese told reporters on Sunday, a transcript of his remarks showed.
As part of Washington's long-standing defence ties with the Philippines, the US military this year deployed Typhon launchers that can fire missiles to hit targets in both China and Russia from the island of Luzon.
China and the Philippines contest sovereignty over some islands and atolls in the South China Sea, with growing maritime run-ins between their coast guards as both vie to patrol the waters.
The ministry also warned the US not to 'play with fire' on the
Taiwan
question.
In his speech at Asia's premier forum for defence leaders, military officials and diplomats, Mr Hegseth said any attempt by China to conquer Taiwan 'would result in devastating consequences'.
China has vowed to 'reunify' with the separately governed island, by force if necessary. Taiwan's government rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims, saying only the island's people can decide their future. – Reuters
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
Elon Musk's xAI seeks $113bn valuation in share sale
Elon Musk's xAI is launching a $300 million (€262 million) share sale that values the group at $113 billion, as the world's richest man returns to his business empire and the race to develop artificial intelligence. The deal will allow staff to sell shares to new investors, according to people close to the situation, validating the pricetag struck when Musk's xAI start-up acquired his social media service X in March. The secondary stock offering, known as a tender offer, is expected to be followed by a larger investment round in which the company will offer new equity to outside investors, one of the people said. The March takeover valued the overall group at $113 billion: pricing xAI at $80 billion with X at $33 billion. Musk bought X, formerly Twitter, for $44 billion in October 2022. READ MORE xAI declined to comment. The new share sale comes after Musk, who helped bankroll Donald Trump's presidential campaign, stepped back last week from his role heading the administration's cost-cutting initiative. His time at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) came to an end after he clashed with cabinet secretaries and criticised central parts of the Trump administration's policy agenda. The Tesla and SpaceX chief said he is refocusing on his business holdings after his companies suffered what he called 'blowback' over his ties to the president. 'Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,' Musk wrote on X late last month. 'I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla ... as we have critical technologies rolling out.' Musk has said the combined group will allow his two companies to benefit from combining models, computing power, distribution and talent. For instance, AI developers can better train their models on the social media group's data and tap its audience. However, he did not disclose further specifics on how the March deal was structured. The opaque transaction allowed X, which had alienated some advertisers after adopting Musk's hands-off approach to content moderation, to leverage the rising value of xAI. The AI start-up obtained a $45 billion valuation in a $5 billion private funding round late last year. Musk last year granted investors that backed his Twitter acquisition 25 per cent of the shares in xAI. Musk launched xAI in 2023 to take on Sam Altman's OpenAI and other Big Tech rivals. It quickly unveiled the Grok chatbot and built a supercomputer cluster dubbed Colossus, one of the biggest AI data centre projects in the US. As well as competing with Big Tech and the sometimes rough-and-ready image of Grok, Musk has also agreed partnerships. Last month, Microsoft announced it was making xAI models available to its cloud computing customers, while messaging app Telegram agreed to distribute Grok to its 1 billion users. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
China accuses US of violating trade deal, vows firm response
China accused the US of violating their recent trade deal and vowed to take measures to defend its interests, dimming the prospect of an immediate leadership call that Donald Trump wants to have to further bilateral talks. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce issued a statement rebuking the US president's claim that Beijing breached the consensus reached in Geneva last month. The dust-up threatened to upend trade relations even as Trump expressed hope on Friday he will speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping, with White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett expecting a call to take place this week. Beijing accused the US of unilaterally introducing new discriminatory restrictions, including new guidelines on AI chip export controls, curbs on chip design software sales to China and the revocation of Chinese student visas. 'If the US insists on its own way and continues to damage China's interests, China will continue to take resolute and forceful measures to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,' the ministry said. It also said the US violated the consensus reached between Trump and Xi on January 17, when they last spoke, without elaborating. READ MORE Asian shares dropped along with US stock-index futures, with a gauge of Chinese stocks traded in Hong Kong falling as much as 2.9%, the most in nearly two months. Tensions between the world's largest economies are ratcheting up again after the tariff thaw in May. The Trump administration last week said it planned to start revoking visas for Chinese students while moving to restrict the sale of chip design software to China. They have also barred the export of critical US jet engine parts and technology to China, the New York Times reported. Beyond strains in economic ties, geopolitical friction is also growing. China's Foreign Ministry over the weekend protested US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's assertion at a gathering of military chiefs that China poses an imminent threat to Taiwan, a self-ruled island claimed by Beijing. Trump didn't elaborate when he accused Beijing of violating the tariff truce on Friday, but US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer complained that China had not sped exports of critical minerals needed for cutting-edge electronics. China has been loosening the grip on its exports of rare earths over the past week at a pace that's 'slower than industry would like,' said Michael Hart, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. In the statement, the Commerce Ministry said it 'resolutely rejects' the US accusations and that the country has strictly and sincerely implemented the consensus. Trump's comments came a day after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said talks with China on trade had stalled and suggested that a call between Trump and Xi might be necessary to break the deadlock. The US president 'is going to have a wonderful conversation about the trade negotiations this week with President Xi,' Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said on Sunday on ABC News. 'That's our expectation.' Trump has signaled a wish to have a call with his Chinese counterpart as early as February and later said he was willing to travel to the Asian nation to meet with Xi, although no such engagement has been scheduled so far. --Bloomberg
Irish Examiner
13 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
ECB set for last easy rate cut as trade fuels inflation discord
The European Central Bank is set to lower interest rates for the final time on Thursday, before an increasingly complicated inflation outlook risks bringing internal divisions to the fore. As price risks recede, officials have cut seven times in the last year with little friction on the 26-strong Governing Council. An eighth move is expected this week, bringing the deposit rate to 2%. But while some would like that to be the bottom — wary of a glut of spending to come by European governments — others want more to underpin flimsy economic growth. The key sticking point is Donald Trump's tariffs — specifically, their knock-on effects for eurozone prices. The ECB is mapping out various scenarios to try to better grasp what is coming, but confidence in any given outcome is in short supply. One policymaker puts the chances of the baseline materialising at less than 50%. The upshot is the ECB is shifting away from tackling elevated inflation to a phase characterised by the kind of unpredictability seen during covid and Russia's war in Ukraine. That means it must be attuned to the risk of price gains coming in either side of 2%, according to Katharine Neiss, chief European economist at PGIM Fixed Income. 'It's very possible that the macro picture warrants near-term cuts to support the economy through this period of uncertainty, but that higher rates are needed further out, assuming other policy levers such as fiscal come into play,' she said. That said, it will be important for the ECB to remain alive to the risk of returning to too-low inflation, as was the case in the decade before 2020. With price growth nearing the 2% goal, investors still reckon there will be one more decrease in rates after this week, but are not sure when. Analysts in a Bloomberg poll are more certain — predicting moves in June and September for a terminal rate of 1.75%. Trump's actions on trade could yet upend those views. While most European Union goods are currently subject to a 10% US levy, that could jump to 50% in July. The ECB's scenario analysis, due as part of its quarterly outlook, underscores the uncertainty. As things stand, the near-term inflation picture looks benign: Energy costs have cratered and the euro has strengthened since the US first unveiled 'reciprocal tariffs' in April. Eurostat figures for May will arrive on Tuesday, likely showing an on-target reading of 2%. But how prices evolve will hinge on possible retaliation from Brussels and how the US-China relationship pans out. In the longer term, European spending on defence and infrastructure, fractured supply chains and an aging workforce could feed inflation pressure. Against this backdrop, hawkish executive board member Isabel Schnabel has cautioned against more easing, arguing the ECB is 'in a good place to evaluate the likely future evolution of the economy' and act as needed. Dutch central-bank chief Klaas Knot and Bundesbank president Joachim Nagel have also warned the medium-term inflation outlook is murky. For Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg, the future will be dominated by upside threats to prices. 'The main reasons are demographics and the structural labour shortage,' he said. At the moment, much is overshadowed by Trump's policies. But monetary policy is already working, and there's no need to add significantly more stimulus now. Some Governing Council members are open to more forceful action. Belgium's Pierre Wunsch has said the ECB may need to support the economy 'a little bit' to ensure inflation does not fall below target. Lithuania's Gediminas Simkus said there were increasing risks of an undershoot on prices. Should the outlook start to point in that direction, it is not clear what the optimal strategy would be. While some may back more rate reductions to guard against price expectations falling too low, others would probably opt for Schnabel's 'steady-hand' approach. Investors may not get a lot more guidance from ECB president Christine Lagarde on Thursday. Rather than hinting what may happen, the ECB has recently preferred to highlight the factors on which its decisions will be based. 'There are massive uncertainties littering the road ahead and the ECB will take great care not to pre-commit itself during the next press conference,' said Sonja Marten, head of currency and monetary-policy research at DZ Bank. She sees two more cuts this year, with little reason to turn stimulative because growth should look rosier again in 2026. Some analysts expect more easing. AXA Group chief economist Gilles Moec said the continued headwinds from the US and the danger of Chinese goods being diverted to Europe point to softer inflation and rates dropping as low as 1.25% — even if policymakers will find it difficult to get there. 'Every single cut from now on is going to be much tougher,' he said. 'There'll be growing resistance, so it'll come down to the data to convince the Governing Council to go as far as I think they'll have to end up going. It'll make for complicated conversations after the summer.' Bloomberg Read More EU prepared to retaliate to Trump's steel and aluminum tariff hikes
