Emerging Stocks Plunge on Trump's Latest Moves Against China
By and Zijia Song
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Emerging-market stocks plunged Monday, falling the most in more than three weeks, as US President Donald Trump's latest executive order targeting China stirred up a new round of risk aversion.
MSCI Inc.'s benchmark for EM equities ended the day 1% lower, after rallying 10% in the past six weeks driven by bets that Chinese technology companies, especially Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., are making strides in artificial intelligence. That had taken the index's valuation to a four-month high, positioning it near highs that have sparked selloffs over the past two years.
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Business Insider
34 minutes ago
- Business Insider
African countries excluded as China expands visa‑free transit to 55 nations
China has expanded its 10-day visa-free transit policy to 55 countries, but notably excluded all African nations, raising questions about the scope of its global engagement. China has expanded its 10-day visa-free transit policy to 55 countries, excluding all African nations. It facilitates stays of up to 240 hours for travelers transiting to a third destination, with certain restrictions. The exclusion of African nations sparked debates about China's geopolitical strategies and diplomatic priorities. China's visa-free transit policy, which grants a 10-day stay for travelers in transit, now includes 55 countries but excludes all African nations—a move that has sparked disappointment and raised questions about Beijing's travel diplomacy and its Africa policy. The absence of African nations, despite China's strong economic and diplomatic ties across the continent, has surprised analysts and travel industry stakeholders alike. China's new transit policy allows travelers from select countries to stay visa-free for up to 240 hours if transiting to a third destination. Visitors must remain in the city or region of entry and have a confirmed onward ticket. While not a general tourist visa, the policy permits short-term activities like tourism, business, and family visits. Aimed at boosting convenience for businesspeople, tourists, and frequent travelers, it also helps save on visa fees and processing time. China-Africa relations threatened? China's recent visa-free travel policy for over 50 countries has sparked debate over the exclusion of African nations, raising questions about Beijing's stance toward the continent. This move appears contradictory given China's deepening trade ties with Africa, including zero-tariff treatment for 53 African countries and import duty exemptions for products from 33 least developed nations. However, the omission may not signal waning interest. Rather, it could reflect strategic prioritization of diplomatic and economic relationships. China's investments in Africa focused on trade, infrastructure, and development, suggest a long-term commitment. Understanding Beijing's approach requires considering the broader geopolitical and economic context in which its Africa policy operates. Observers note that this exclusion could be interpreted as a missed opportunity for people-to-people exchange, especially given Beijing's consistent rhetoric about its 'win-win' cooperation with Africa. With African countries hosting massive Chinese investments and infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative, the lack of reciprocal travel ease underscores a gap in the relationship that some believe needs urgent attention. Full list of eligible countries The countries included under China's 10-day visa-free transit policy are: Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. These travelers are eligible for entry at any of the approved 60 transit points, which include international airports in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Shenzhen, as well as a select number of seaports. Authorities have clarified that travelers must be in direct transit, meaning they must travel from Country A, transit through China, and continue to Country B. A return trip to the country of origin would not qualify under this policy.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
No More Student Visas? No Problem.
Just how mad is Beijing about President Donald Trump's decision to revoke student visas for Chinese nationals? Not as mad as it says, and not as mad as one might expect. Publicly, China's leadership will likely complain that Trump's action is yet another attempt to thwart the country's rise. But in reality, Beijing would probably just as soon keep its smartest kids at home. Late last month, the U.S. State Department announced that it would 'aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,' and that it would 'enhance scrutiny' of the applications it received in the future. The new visa policy, a spokesperson said, is meant to prevent China from exploiting American universities and stealing intellectual property. A spokesperson for the foreign ministry quickly registered Beijing's objection to the new policy. But when Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke with Trump by phone last week, either he didn't raise the new visa policy or his foreign ministry didn't regard his comments on the matter worth including in its official summary of the call, which suggests that the issue is not a top priority in Beijing's negotiations with Washington. One reason for this underwhelming response may be that re-shoring its university students serves Beijing's current agenda. China first opened to the world in the 1980s; in the decades that followed, securing a Western education for its elite helped the country bring in the technology and skills it needed to escape poverty. China was 'sending people out, learning from other places, finding the best quality wherever it was, and bringing that quality back to China,' Robin Lewis, a consultant for U.S.-China education programs and a former associate dean at Columbia University, told me. Now that period has given way to one of nationalism and self-reliance, which means promoting China's own companies, products, technologies—and universities. Rose Horowitch: Trump's campaign to scare off foreign students Xi has consistently stressed the importance of education in sustaining China's rise. His government has invested heavily in China's schools and lavished resources on science and technology programs, with some success. Some of China's top institutions, such as Tsinghua University in Beijing, have gained international recognition as serious competitors in scientific research. China would like to have its own Harvards, rather than sending its elite students to the United States, for political and cultural reasons as well as economic ones. Chinese authorities have long worried that the hundreds of thousands of students it exports to America will absorb undesirable ideas about democracy and civil liberties—and that they will access information about China that is suppressed at home, such as the story of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In fact, many young Chinese who study in the United States seem to enjoy American freedoms and seek to stay rather than return to serve the motherland. Beijing has tried to deal with this in part by monitoring the activities of its students in the U.S. and attempting to hold them firmly to the party line, including by harassing the families back home of those who stray. Within China, authorities can more easily confine students inside the government's propaganda bubble, which in recent years has become more airtight. Domestic media seek to portray the U.S. as unsafe, especially for Asians, by highlighting incidents of racial discrimination, violence, and disorder. One story published last year by the state news agency Xinhua, under the headline 'Chinese Students' Dreams Turned Into Nightmares at U.S. Doorstep,' tells the harrowing tale of a Chinese student detained and deported at an airport and claims that others had suffered the same fate. China's top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, warned Chinese students at universities abroad against being recruited as foreign agents, and told of one such unfortunate national who was discovered and punished. Even before Trump's announcement, this climate of mutual distrust had led to a drop-off in Chinese students enrolled in American universities. The number had reached an all-time high during the 2019–20 academic year, topping 372,000, according to the Institute of International Education. But that figure has fallen since—by a quarter, to 277,000, in the 2023–24 academic year. Now India, with more than 331,000 enrolled, sends more students to American institutions than China does. The Trump administration appears to believe that curtailing Chinese access to American technology, money, and, in this case, education will give the U.S. the edge over its closest competitor. In some areas, this might work: Restricting the export of advanced U.S. semiconductor technology to China seems to have helped hold Beijing's chip industry back. So why not do the same with higher education? A case can be made that keeping Chinese students out of some of the world's top research institutions will hold back their skills acquisition and, with it, the country's progress. Adam Serwer: Trump is wearing America down In practice, though, the effect of this policy could be hard to gauge. The engineers behind the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek, which wowed Silicon Valley by developing a competitive chatbot on the cheap, were mainly locally trained. And the skills that Chinese students can't find at home they can seek in any number of places. There may be only so many Harvards, but Chinese students can receive a good education—and a warmer reception—in countries other than the United States. Universities in Japan and Hong Kong are already trying to capitalize on Trump's harassment of international students to lure them. The idea that any American policy can effectively dampen Chinese ambition may be far-fetched. 'People wake up in the morning and it's all about education here. There is nothing more important,' James McGregor, the chair for China at the consulting firm APCO, told me. 'You're going to stop Chinese people from learning the top skills in the world? No. They'll just deploy them somewhere else.' For now, the Trump team can't seem to decide whether it wants to get tough on China or make deals with China, and the new student-visa policy reflects this confusion. 'Chinese students are coming. No problem,' Trump said in a briefing after his call with Xi. 'It's our honor to have them, frankly.' China's leadership surely knows that many Chinese families still aspire to send their young-adult children to American universities. But Beijing is much more single-minded than Washington about the future of relations between the two countries: Xi appears to see Washington as the primary impediment to China's rise, and ties to the U.S. as a vulnerability best eliminated. From that viewpoint, relying on Harvard to train China's most promising students is a national-security risk. That means that Trump may be doing Xi a favor.
Business Insider
2 hours ago
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Rare earth minerals are the biggest card China can play in its negotiations with Trump
China has a significant card to play in its trade negotiations with the US, which could not only put the Trump administration in a bind but also impact a wide range of consumer goods. Rare earth minerals, namely scandium, yttrium, and 15 types of lanthanides, usually sit unnoticed at the bottom of the periodic table. But experts in rare earths have told Business Insider that a shortage of these minerals — which mainly come from China — could induce a shortage in everything from aircraft parts to TV remotes. "It's not industry agnostic because rare earths are used in everything from TVs and laptops and phones to cancer treatments and MRI scanners to automotives to defense," said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Especially as a bedrock to the automotive industry, it is really critical because our automotive manufacturing industry was getting to a point where it had to halt operations and close manufacturing plants without access to these rare earths," Baskaran added. The importance of critical minerals came into focus when China cut off its supply to the US after Trump imposed tariffs, as high as 245% for some goods, on the manufacturing hub in a trade war that escalated between February and May. The two countries have since de-escalated tensions through trade talks after Trump agreed to lower duties on China to 30% for 90 days starting from May 14. After the latest trade talks in London in mid-June, China has agreed to reopen export channels of its critical minerals to the US — at least for now. "China built up its industry in a cheap and not necessarily ecologically refined manner, and the US said, 'That's very inexpensive, so we do not need to have this kind of industry in our country,'" Laura Lewis, professor of chemical engineering at the Northwestern University College of Engineering, saud. "And that was the case for many years." Bilateral relations with China remain fragile According to data from the 2024 US Geological Survey, 70% of critical mineral imports to the US came from China, followed by 13% from Malaysia. China also processes nearly 90% of the world's rare earth minerals, according to the International Energy Agency. Though the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, did not directly confirm how long rare earth licenses will remain issued to US manufacturers, a spokesperson told BI in a statement that "China has reviewed and approved a certain number of export license applications for rare-earth-related items." "Rare-earth-related items have dual-use attributes, with both military and civilian purposes, imposing export controls on such items is in line with international practices," the spokesperson added. Drew DeLong, lead in geopolitical dynamics practice at Kearney, a global strategy and management consulting firm, told BI that manufacturers are going to stockpile as much rare earth material as possible during the brief reprieve in US-China relations, in anticipation of more supply chain disruptions. DeLong said that by August, when the tariff suspension expires, the US-China relation would reach a critical decision point where it "must either coalesce or collapse." "Markets now wait to see whether Beijing actually resumes outbound shipments, and whether Washington delivers on its part of the rollback, " DeLong added. "There already appears to be hedging on trade tensions flaring up again." America may need to work with what it has The US once had a single operating rare earth mine in Mountain Pass, California, but it went bankrupt in 2015. Molycorp, its operator, filed for bankruptcy protection due to slumping rare earth prices and ballooning costs. Meanwhile, China has spent decades building its capacity to process rare earths. Other countries, like Japan, have diversified where they get their rare earth metals to avoid relying on China. Lewis, of Northwestern University, told BI that the US not only has a long way to go, but it may simply lack certain types of metals, even if it could extract others. Lewis said that the US lacks a category of heavy rare earths necessary for magnets to endure hot environments like motors. "We're going to have to work with our allies and nature to get what we need," said Lewis, "Because I cannot possibly imagine that the investment it would take to get our rare minerals from asteroids is going to be less than what we can already achieve on earth through recycling and a thoughtful use of resources." "The philosophy in Silicon Valley is just throw enough time and money at it, and you'll get it and fast, but nothing that we can do to get the rare earth industry healthy is going to happen fast," Lewis added. "Nature's smarter than we are."
