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BBC News
an hour ago
- Business
- BBC News
US and China trade talks have stalled, Scott Bessent says
Trade talks between the US and China are "a bit stalled", the US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said. His comment comes less than three weeks after a temporary trade truce was agreed between the world's two largest economies, with both agreeing to reduce tit-for-tat told Fox News on Thursday: "I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require [leaders of both the countries] to weigh in with each other".Donald Trump's global tariff regime was dealt a blow on Wednesday following a ruling that he had exceeded his authority. His plans have been temporarily reinstated after the White House appealed the decision. Both the US and China confirmed they would reduce tariffs imposed on each other's imports earlier this month, following talks in deal involved both nations cancelling some tariffs altogether and suspending others for 90 days by 14 said talks on a further deal had lost momentum, but stressed that they were continuing. "I believe that we will be having more talks with [China] in the next few weeks and I believe we may at some point have a call between the president and [Chinese President Xi Jinping]," Bessent said on Thursday. He added that the pair had "a very good relationship" and he was "confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known". Under the deal struck earlier this month, the US lowered tariffs imposed on goods from China from 145% to 30%. China's retaliatory tariffs on US goods dropped from 125% to 10%. The US President has argued imposing tariffs on foreign goods would encourage US consumers to buy more American-made goods, bringing back manufacturing jobs while increase the amount of tax revenue raised. They have been used by the Trump administration as leverage in negotiations as it seeks to reduce trade deficits with other nations.A delegation from Japan are continuing trade talks with their US counterparts in Washington on Friday. Bessent said "a couple" of US trade deals were "very close", but "a couple of them are more complicated".Trump's tariff regime remains in the balance following the decision by the US Court of International Trade, which ruled that Trump had overstepped his power by imposing the analysts believe it will mean countries will be less likely to rush to secure trade deals with the US. A federal appeals court has granted a bid from the White House to temporarily suspend the lower court's order, which Trump described as "horrific"."Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country [sic] threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Business Times
an hour ago
- Politics
- Business Times
How an agonising relationship with his dad shaped Xi Jinping
The Party's Interests Come First By Joseph Torigian; Stanford University Press; 718 pages; US$50 and £41 BY THE time Xi Zhongxun was in his 70s, his teeth were failing him. Tough, chewy foods were a challenge, so during one family meal, he extracted some half-masticated garlic ribs from his mouth and gave them to his son to finish. Xi Jinping – by then in his mid-30s and a rising star in the Chinese Communist Party – accepted the morsel without hesitation or complaint. He took the remains of the ribs and swallowed them. Xi Jinping was used to leftovers. As a boy, he would wash in his father's bathwater. (The next morning the water would be used for a third time, to launder the family's clothes.) He also understood the importance of deference, for Xi Zhongxun had taught him that children who did not respect their parents were doomed to fail as adults. Every Chinese new year, Xi Jinping would perform the traditional kowtow ritual, prostrating himself before his parent in a display of reverence. If his technique was off, his father would beat him. These stories are recounted in The Party's Interests Come First, a biography of Xi Zhongxun by Joseph Torigian, an American scholar. Torigian draws on a decade of research using Chinese, English and Russian sources, including official documents, newspapers, diaries and interviews. The book is valuable not only for its portrait of its subject – who was a major figure in the party's history in his own right – but also for its insights into his progeny, now the supreme leader. As China's unquestioned ruler, possibly for life, Xi Jinping is arguably the most important person in the world. He will be wielding power long after Donald Trump has retired to Mar-a-Lago. Yet information about him is paltry. His every movement is choreographed by a fawning propaganda machine; in the accounts of his life, interesting details are expunged by overbearing censors. The book is valuable not only for its portrait of its subject – who was a major figure in the party's history in his own right – but also for its insights into his progeny, now the supreme leader. There are only a handful of ways to understand Xi Jinping, which involve poring over party records or leaked speeches, learning about key moments in Chinese history that he lived through and studying the people who most influenced him. Few people have shaped Xi Jinping more than his father. Xi Zhongxun's relationship to the party and his thwarted ambitions offer clues as to what his son wants for China. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Like many of his generation, Xi Zhongxun's life was marked by tragedy. Born in 1913 into a family of peasants, he was an ardent believer in communism from a young age. His belief strengthened in his adolescent years, he said, as he witnessed 'the tragic mistreatment of the labouring people'. He took part in violent student protests in 1928 and was imprisoned by the then anti-communist authorities. Xi Zhongxun's parents died when he was a teenager: the result, he thought, of the stress caused by his jailing. Two of his sisters died of hunger. After the civil war, Xi Zhongxun rose fast through the party's ranks and 'entered the very top echelon of the government', Torigian writes. Then, in 1962, he was purged by Mao Zedong for supporting the publication of a novel Mao considered subversive. Four years later, China's paranoid dictator launched the Cultural Revolution, unleashing frenzied gangs who killed between 500,000 and two million people and displaced many more. Xi Zhongxun was kidnapped, held in solitary confinement and tortured. Around 20,000 people were targeted for having supported Xi Zhongxun, the author estimates, and at least 200 'were beaten to death, driven mad or seriously injured'. His family suffered, too. They were forced to denounce Xi Zhongxun; one of his daughters committed suicide. A teenager at the time, Xi Jinping was branded a 'capitalist roader' (essentially, a traitor) because of his father's disgrace. On one occasion, the young Xi Jinping was forced to wear a heavy steel cap and subjected to public humiliation. A crowd ridiculed him, shouting slogans including 'Down with Xi Jinping'. His mother joined in the jeering. Xi Jinping was thrown in prison, where he slept on an icy floor during the winter. 'My entire body was covered in lice,' he wrote. One time, Xi Jinping managed to escape and make his way home. He begged his mother for some food. Not only did she refuse, she also reported him to the authorities, fearful that she would be arrested otherwise. Crying, Xi Jinping ran out into the rain. What doesn't kill you The anguish did not stop there. In 1969, aged 15, Xi Jinping was 'sent down' to the countryside with millions of other young people exiled from the cities. He lived in a cave in a desolate part of the country, where girls were sold into marriage for a dowry calculated by their weight. 'Even if you do not understand, you are forced to understand,' he later recalled of that time. 'It forces you to mature earlier.' Why did both men stay committed to a party that had caused them so much pain? Torigian suggests the answer may lie in What Is to Be Done?, a novel of 1863 by Nikolai Chernyshevsky, a Russian journalist. In the story, a young man named Rakhme sleeps on a bed of nails to strengthen his will. Xi Jinping imagined that he was Rakhme as he endured those cold floors, lice, rainstorms and blizzards. Both father and son may have been influenced by a Bolshevik political culture that glamorised 'forging' – the idea that suffering strengthens your willpower and dedication to the cause. Throughout his life, Xi Jinping has been loyal to two groups that demand absolute obedience: the family and the party. Both were often 'unfairly' strict, Xi Jinping has said, yet this did not dent his loyalty. Torigian shows how Xi Jinping balances dedication and realism. 'If I were born in the United States, I would not join the Communist Party of the United States. I would join the Democratic Party or Republican Party,' Xi Jinping once told Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister at the time. Abe concluded that Xi joined the party not because of ideology, but as a way to gain power. After Xi Zhongxun was rehabilitated under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, he was put in charge of Guangdong province and began to liberalise the local economy. When Xi Jinping became general secretary of the party in 2012 – the top job in China – many expected him to be an economic reformer like his father. But the assumption that Xi Jinping was any kind of liberal was wrong: he is not interested in creating an open and free country. He believes in restoring China's greatness and thinks that, to this end, the party should use any means necessary. His experience of injustice has not taught him that arbitrary power is undesirable; only that it should be wielded less chaotically than it was under Mao, by someone wise like himself. In a little over a decade, Xi Jinping has become the most autocratic Chinese leader since Mao. His regime ruthlessly represses dissidents at home and activists abroad; it enforces a stifling political conformity, forcing many to study 'Xi Jinping Thought'. Such methods are justified, he thinks, because he sees himself as a man of destiny, with a duty to generations past and future. He often speaks of himself as a protector of Chinese civilisation. 'Whoever throws away those things left behind by our ancestors is a traitor,' he told Ma Ying-jeou, a former president of Taiwan. That attitude is apparent in Xi Jinping's Taiwan policy, which bears his father's influence. Towards the end of his career, Xi Zhongxun was put in charge of unification with Taiwan. The party had ambitious dreams of reclaiming the island, which has been self-governing since China's civil war ended in 1949 and the losing side, the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party), retreated there. But Xi Zhongxun died in 2002 with this aspiration unfulfilled. His son yearns to fulfil it. Xi Jinping has made it plain he wants to take back Taiwan. Those who rule China must remember that 'the territory left by the ancestors must not shrink', he said in 2012. When or how he may try to seize Taiwan – through war, a blockade or other means – is unclear. What is clear, though, is that his family's suffering has shaped Xi Jinping's dark view of politics. 'For people who rarely encounter power and who are distant from it, they always see these things as very mysterious and fresh,' Xi Jinping once said. 'But what I saw was more than the surface of things. I didn't just see the power, flowers, glory and applause. I also saw the cowsheds (where people were confined during the Cultural Revolution) and the fickleness of the world.' Xi Jinping's formative years made him clear-eyed and cynical, hardened and imperious. The worldview he learned from his father will affect not only 1.4 billion Chinese people, but the whole of humanity. ©2025 The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved
NDTV
2 hours ago
- Science
- NDTV
China Launches First Mission To Retrieve Asteroid Samples For Research
China on Thursday launched a space probe on the country's first mission to retrieve samples from an asteroid and bring them home for research, the Xinhua state news agency reported. Beijing has ploughed billions of dollars into its space programme in recent years in an effort to achieve what President Xi Jinping describes as the country's "space dream". It has built a space station orbiting the Earth and plans to run a crewed mission to the Moon this decade ahead of establishing a permanent base there. A Long March-3B rocket carrying the Tianwen-2 probe blasted off from the Xichang launch site in southwestern Sichuan province "in the early hours of Thursday," Xinhua said. "Shan Zhongde, head of the China National Space Administration, stated that the Tianwen-2 mission represents a significant step in China's new journey of interplanetary exploration," the news agency reported. Tianwen-2 is tasked with collecting samples from the near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3, and exploring the comet 311P, according to the country's space agency. Discovered by scientists in Hawaii in 2016, the asteroid is roughly 40 to 100 metres (130-330 feet) in diameter and orbits relatively close to Earth. It is a "living fossil" consisting of ancient materials that can help scientists understand how the early solar system formed, Xinhua reported this week. The comet, meanwhile, orbits between Mars and Jupiter and is alluring to researchers because it exhibits some features more commonly associated with asteroids. The Tianwen-2 mission is expected to last around a decade. China's space programme is the third to put humans in orbit -- after the United States and the Soviet Union -- and has also landed robotic rovers on Mars and the Moon. Its space station, Tiangong -- whose name means "celestial palace" in Chinese -- is the jewel in its crown. Last month, China sent three astronauts to Tiangong for a six-month stint as part of the Shenzhou-20 mission.
Irish Times
2 hours ago
- Business
- Irish Times
US-China trade talks ‘stalled', says Scott Bessent
Trade talks between the US and China are 'a bit stalled' and may need to be reinvigorated with a call between US President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping , US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has said. The comments suggest that the two sides have made little progress since they agreed two weeks ago during talks in Geneva to a truce that would reduce tit-for-tat tariffs that had soared to as high as 145 per cent. 'I believe we will be having more talks in the next few weeks and I believe we might at some point have a call between the president and party chair Xi,' Mr Bessent said. 'Given the magnitude of the talks ... this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,' he said. 'They have a very good relationship and I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known.' READ MORE China's ministry of foreign affairs on Friday declined to comment on Mr Bessent's remarks. Mr Trump has on various occasions raised the possibility of a phone call with Xi. He insisted before the talks on May 12th that they had spoken but China has consistently denied this. [ In the game of chicken between the US and China, round one goes to Beijing Opens in new window ] After the talks in Switzerland, the two countries said they would slash tariffs on each other's goods for at least the next 90 days, with the extra levies the US imposed on China this year falling to 30 per cent and China's declining to 10 per cent. As part of the deal, China also agreed to 'suspend or cancel' non-tariff measures against the US, but did not provide any details. Ford Chief Lisa Brankin on accelerating the switch to EVs Listen | 41:35 The Chinese ministry of commerce said after the talks that both sides had agreed to set up a 'China-US economic and trade consultation mechanism, to maintain close communication on respective concerns in the economic and trade fields and to carry out further consultations'. It said the two sides would hold consultations regularly or as needed, 'alternating between China and the United States, or in a mutually agreed third country'. But since then, there have been few public announcements on the talks from either side, with the Trump administration instead imposing further restrictions on the use of US technology by Chinese companies. Shortly after the Geneva talks, Washington warned companies around the world that using artificial intelligence chips made by Huawei could trigger criminal penalties for violating US export controls. The US commerce department has also told US companies that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, in the latest attempt to make it harder for China to develop advanced chips. 'From the perspective of the long-term and complex nature of the struggle with the US, we should not only be fully prepared for negotiations but also be ready for a prolonged confrontation,' wrote Huo Jianguo, a vice-chair of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies on Beijing, in Communist Party affiliated media China Economic Net. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Forbes
2 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
US Futures Down As Bessent Says US-China Talks Have ‘Stalled'
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said trade talks between China and the U.S. have stalled and a direct call between the two countries' presidents may be needed to close a deal, adding to the uncertainty around tariffs as U.S. stock futures dropped slightly in early trading on Friday. In an interview with Fox News on Thursday evening, Bessent told Fox News host Bret Baier that talks with China 'are a bit stalled,' but he believes U.S. officials will be 'having more talks with them in the next few weeks.' Bessent did not mention any specific sticking point in the trade negotiations, but said, 'I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other.' The Treasury secretary said Xi and Trump have a 'very good relationship' and added: 'I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known.' After the U.S. and China agreed to roll back most retaliatory tariffs on each other for 90 days after talks in Geneva earlier this month, Trump said he was looking forward to talking with his Chinese counterpart. Bessent's comments about stalled talks with China add to the uncertainty around the tariff situation, after an appellate court allowed the levies to remain in effect and temporarily paused a federal trade court order deeming them unlawful. The S&P 500 Futures index was down 0.12% to 5,915 points, while the tech-centric Nasdaq Futures fell 0.14% to 21,377 points. Top Chinese indexes saw steeper drops, with the Shanghai Composite nearly 0.5% down, while the Hong Kong stock exchange's benchmark Hang Seng Index dropped 1.20%.
