China vows tougher action against smuggling of strategic minerals
The remarks by the commerce ministry came a day after the state security ministry accused foreign spy agencies of having tried to "steal" rare earths and pledged to crack down on infiltration and espionage targeting the critical sector.
The world's largest supplier of dozens of strategic minerals, China began imposing export curbs in 2023 on supplies vital to sectors ranging from chipmaking and the energy transition to defence.
The commerce ministry remarks, describing smuggling and export of strategic minerals as a severe problem to be combated, came at a meeting of officials responsible for export control coordination and other government bodies.
"Cases of smuggling by a small number of criminals for their own selfish interests and collusion between domestic and foreign parties are still occurring," it said in a statement.
Evasive methods such as false declarations and third-country transshipment were taking on increasingly covert forms, it added, urging government bodies to prevent illegal outflows of strategic minerals and related technologies.
China has adopted a "zero-tolerance" approach to smuggling and export of strategic minerals, which it will fight with a heavy hand, through special efforts to toughen law enforcement, the ministry said.
In May China said it would strengthen controls on the entire supply chains of strategic mineral exports while tightening its grip on materials deemed crucial to national interest.
Earlier, Beijing launched a special campaign to tackle smuggling of strategic minerals such as gallium, germanium, antimony, tungsten and some rare earths.
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The Independent
15 minutes ago
- The Independent
Tariffs threaten Asian beauty product boom in US
When Amrita Bhasin, 24, learned that products from South Korea might be subject to a new tax when they entered the United States, she decided to stock up on the sheet masks from Korean brands like U-Need and MediHeal she uses a few times a week. 'I did a recent haul to stockpile,' she said. 'I bought 50 in bulk, which should last me a few months.' South Korea is one of the countries that hopes to secure a trade deal before the Aug. 1 date President Donald Trump set for enforcing nation-specific tariffs. A not-insignificant slice of the U.S. population has skin in the game when it comes to Seoul avoiding a 25% duty on its exports. Asian skin care has been a booming global business for a more than a decade, with consumers in Europe, North and South America, and increasingly the Middle East, snapping up creams, serums and balms from South Korea, Japan and China. In the United States and elsewhere, Korean cosmetics, or K-beauty for short, have dominated the trend. A craze for all-in-one 'BB creams' — a combination of moisturizer, foundation and sunscreen — morphed into a fascination with 10-step rituals and ingredients like snail mucin, heartleaf and rice water. Vehicles and electronics may be South Korea's top exports to the U.S. by value, but the country shipped more skin care and cosmetics to the U.S. than any other last year, according to data from market research company Euromonitor. France, with storied beauty brands like L'Oreal and Chanel, was second, Euromonitor said. Statistics compiled by the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, show the U.S. imported $1.7 billion worth of South Korean cosmetics in 2024, a 54% increase from a year earlier. 'Korean beauty products not only add a lot of variety and choice for Americans, they really embraced them because they were offering something different for American consumers,' Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said. Along with media offerings such as 'Parasite' and 'Squid Games,' and the popularity of K-pop bands like BTS, K-beauty has helped boost South Korea's profile globally, she said. 'It's all part and parcel really of the same thing,' Lovely said. 'And it can't be completely stopped by a 25% tariff, but it's hard to see how it won't influence how much is sold in the U.S. And I think what we're hearing from producers is that it also really decreases the number of products they want to offer in this market.' Senti Senti, a retailer that sells international beauty products at two New York boutiques and through an e-commerce site, saw a bit of 'panic buying' by customers when Trump first imposed punitive tariffs on goods from specific countries, manager Winnie Zhong said. The rush slowed down after the president paused the new duties for 90 days and hasn't picked up again, Zhong said, even with Trump saying on July 7 that a 25% tax on imports from Japan and South Korea would go into effect on Aug. 1. Japan, the Philippines and Indonesia subsequently reached agreements with the Trump administration that lowered the tariff rates their exported goods faced — in Japan's case, from 25% to 15% — still higher than the current baseline of 10% tariff. But South Korea has yet to clinch an agreement, despite having a free trade agreement since 2012 that allowed cosmetics and most other consumer goods to enter the U.S. tax-free. Since the first store owned by Senti Senti opened 16 years ago, beauty products from Japan and South Korea became more of a focus and now account for 90% the stock. The business hasn't had to pass on any tariff-related costs to customers yet, but that won't be possible if the products are subject to a 25% import tax, Zhong said. 'I'm not really sure where the direction of K-beauty will go to with the tariffs in place, because one of the things with K-beauty or Asian beauty is that it's supposed to be accessible pricing,' she said. Devoted fans of Asian cosmetics will often buy direct from Asia and wait weeks for their packages to arrive because the products typically cost less than they do in American stores. Rather than stocking up on their favorite sunscreens, lip tints and toners, some shoppers are taking a pause due to the tariff uncertainty. Los Angeles resident Jen Chae, a content creator with over 1.2 million YouTube subscribers, has explored Korean and Japanese beauty products and became personally intrigued by Chinese beauty brands over the last year. When the tariffs were first announced, Chae temporarily paused ordering from sites such as a shopping platform owned by an e-commerce company based in Hong Kong. She did not know if she would have to pay customs duties on the products she bought or the ones brands sent to her as a creator. 'I wasn't sure if those would automatically charge the entire package with a blanket tariff cost, or if it was just on certain items,' Chae said. On its website, YesStyle says it will give customers store credit to reimburse them for import charges. At Ohlolly, an online store focused on Korean products, owners Sue Greene and Herra Namhie are taking a similar pause. They purchase direct from South Korea and from licensed wholesalers in the U.S., and store their inventory in a warehouse in Ontario, California. After years of no duties, a 25% import tax would create a 'huge increase in costs to us,' Namhie said. She and Greene made two recent orders to replenish their stock when the tariffs were at 10%. But they have put further restocks on hold "because I don't think we can handle 25%,' Namhie said. They'd have to raise prices, and then shoppers might go elsewhere. The business owners and sisters are holding out on hope the U.S. and Korea settle on a lower tariff or carve out exceptions for smaller ticket items like beauty products. But they only have two to four months of inventory in their warehouse. They say that in a month they'll have to make a decision on what products to order, what to discontinue and what prices will have to increase. Rachel Weingarten, a former makeup artist who writes a daily beauty newsletter called 'Hello Gorgeous!,' said while she's devoted to K-beauty products like lip masks and toner pads, she doesn't think stockpiling is a sound practice. 'Maybe one or two products, but natural oils, vulnerable packaging and expiration dates mean that your products could go rancid before you can get to them,' she said. Weingarten said she'll still buy Korean products if prices go up, but that the beauty world is bigger than one country. 'I'd still indulge in my favorites, but am always looking for great products in general,' she said. Bhasin, in Menlo Park, California, plans to keep buying her face masks too, even if the price goes up, because she likes the quality of Korean masks. 'If prices will go up, I will not shift to U.S. products,' she said. 'For face masks, I feel there are not a ton of solid and reliable substitutes in the U.S.' ___ AP audience engagement editor Karena Phan in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Telegraph
15 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Chinese hackers have seized control. How did we let this happen?
A civilisation that cannot defend itself really should not expect to survive, and after the latest cybersecurity news, I wonder how it can. An official advisory was recently sent out to the US military, warning that all forces must now assume their networks have been breached. The enemy is inside the house. What it means is that no system connected to the internet can be defended. Our own national cybersecurity agency asked UK businesses to make this presumption in 2020. The reason this hasn't been bigger news is that we've become fatalistic and weary, as one cybersecurity attack follows another. So when we discovered in early July that Chinese hackers had gained control of Microsoft servers at hundreds of US government agencies – including the US nuclear weapons agency – it was just another hacking story. What made this one noteworthy was that there wasn't immediately a fix or a patch, Microsoft admitted last Tuesday. Incredibly, confirmation of the US military's 'assume breach' alert had to be dragged out of the Department of Defense via Freedom of Information Act requests by a campaigning non-profit called Property of the People. These developments are the latest stage in an ongoing state-sponsored Chinese campaign, in which hacking has evolved from widespread commercial espionage a decade ago into something far more threatening. The latest phases, Salt Typhoon and now Volt Typhoon, are meticulous and sophisticated. They target not just government agencies like the National Guard, and China-critical MPs like Sir Iain Duncan Smith, but also private sector companies in the energy, telecoms, transport and water sectors. Ciaran Martin, former head of NCSC, the cybersecurity centre based at GCHQ, says that China's capabilities have been transformed. 'Now think of dozens or even hundreds of [individual] hacks at the same time – 'everything, everywhere, all at once' in the words of Jen Easterly, recently departed head of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.' Software attacks on our computer systems can create unique damage in ways that conventional warfare cannot. Let's consider two. While aerial bombing can produce spectacular instant results, targets can be disassembled prior to attack, and can be quickly rebuilt after the attack. Both happened with the recent attack on Iraq's nuclear facilities. But recovering from cyber attacks is much harder. Ask the British Library, which has still not restored all of its services. 'Printed catalogues and handlists are available in our Reading Rooms', it still advises visitors to its website. The attack took place in October 2023. A second way in which cyber attacks now present a unique challenge is the ability of Chinese hackers to 'live off the land' after they break through. Rather like special forces embedded behind enemy lines, hackers conceal themselves undetected for months or years. To the guardians of the network, they are just another innocent user. 'Both Salt and Volt Typhoon were in play for years before being detected,' writes Martin. 'And they are strategic compromises of the West on a scale hitherto unseen by any other cyber power.' Not only do we not know when the attack is over, we don't even know when it has begun. How did this happen? If I haven't depressed you enough, this is where it gets particularly troubling. Cybersecurity is a gnarly failure of accountability and regulation that spans decades of indifference, and implicates business complacency and government apathy. The internet protocols (IP) we use today are completely rotten. The great and the good of the IT and telecommunications industries spent the entire 1980s in international committees devising complex secure networking protocols, only to be met with mistrust and specifications no one really wanted. Fed up with waiting, we adopted today's protocols, which were cheap and simple to implement, but not secure. Now, the international standards bodies that might devise a successor to IP are dominated by China. When they fail, suppliers can hide behind licensing agreements and expensive lawyers. No one goes to prison for bad security design. Their customers – us – are guilty of negligence too. Salt Typhoon took advantage of a bug in Cisco routers that users had not bothered to fix for seven years. As a society, we rush to implement technologies without thinking too hard about externalities. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) opens up lots of new holes, and also lowers the bar so that even the technically unskilled can plant hacks. All in all, then, this may not seem a good time to force Britons to use a new government identity service. Especially when you know that 'red team' penetration testing proved in March that this could be penetrated by hostile foreign agents without them being detected. This is what Baroness Neville Jones calls 'a piece of critical infrastructure'. Chinese agents may already be 'living off the land' inside the One Login system, on which your government wallet has been built, and soon perhaps, your digital ID. But don't expect Peter Kyle, the Science and Technology Minister, to put the brakes on the One Login project when he's its biggest fan. To survive and prosper, we need serious and technically aware people in his position, who listen to the security professionals. Kyle appeared on Newsnight last week wearing jeans and a T-shirt and trainers, all of which were intended to signal to viewers his youthful love of digital technology. He is 54.
Reuters
15 minutes ago
- Reuters
GSK, China's Jiangsu Hengrui strike $500 million drug-development deal
July 28 (Reuters) - Britain's GSK (GSK.L), opens new tab and China's Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals ( opens new tab have agreed on a $500 million deal to develop up to a dozen new medicines, including a promising candidate for a chronic lung condition, the drugmakers said on Monday. The deal comes as GSK focuses on growing its pipeline to offset declining revenues from top drugs and vaccines amid slowing demand and rising competition. It is hoping to reach annual sales of over 40 billion pounds ($53.7 billion) by 2031. Under the deal, GSK will gain an exclusive licence to Hengrui's HRS-9821, which is being studied as a treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, with an option for 11 other treatments once they have cleared early-stage trials. Hengrui said, opens new tab it could earn up to $12 billion in milestone payments if all options are exercised and targets are met under the GSK deal, which would cover therapy areas such as oncology, immunology, and inflammation. GSK will pay the Chinese firm $500 million upfront. "This deal reflects our strategic investment in programmes that address validated targets, increasing the likelihood of success, and with the option to advance those assets with the greatest potential for patient impact," GSK Chief Scientific Officer Tony Wood said. Access to HRS-9821 would support GSK's ambition to treat patients across the widest spectrum of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the company said, adding that the drug provides an opportunity for a formulation in the form of a convenient, dry-powder inhaler. GSK's existing therapies for COPD include antibody treatment Nucala, opens new tab and the Trelegy Ellipta inhaler. Shanghai-listed shares of Jiangsu Hengrui climbed 6.6% and its Hong Kong-listed stock jumped 8.5%, outperforming the blue-chip CSI 300 Index's (.CSI300), opens new tab 0.1% fall and the Hang Seng Index's (.HIS), opens new tab 0.3% gain. GSK shares were up 1.5% in London by 0830 GMT, against the 0.2% gain in the wider, blue-chip FTSE 100 (.FTSE), opens new tab index. ($1 = 0.7455 pounds)
