At the UN General Assembly, China’s leader pledged to end support for coal projects overseas in favor of green and low-carbon energy. But while the single sentence effectively marked the end of coal financing abroad, China continues to build new coal power plants at home.
It sounds like the name of a frequent flyer program, but the new European initiative, “Global Gateway,” seeks to compete with the BRI by creating “links and not dependencies.” Can a Western “values-based” approach really hope to compete with the cold cash and hard infrastructure capacity from China?
China did not fund any overseas coal projects in the first half of 2021, the International Institute of Green Finance said. This marks a milestone in the greening of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which since its inception in 2013 had included generous funding of coal every year.
China’s reach and influence in the Middle East and North Africa continue to grow.
The G7 world leaders concluded their first in-person summit since the beginning of the pandemic by criticizing China over several issues, including human rights. They also agreed to compete with China in infrastructure and vaccine distribution in developing countries.
Beijing, casting itself as the victim of “insane suppression” from Canberra, suspended its participation in one of the few remaining high-level diplomatic forums between Australia and China. Relations between the two countries still might not have hit bottom.
Security risks remain high for Chinese interests in Pakistan: The Tehreek e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a hotel where the Chinese ambassador was due to stay. Five were killed as Chinese officials were minutes away from the location.
In the run-up to last Friday’s U.S.-Japan summit at the White House, there had been a lot of talk that President Joe Biden and Prime...
The U.S. and China continue to express mutual distrust or even disdain on many issues today, but tackling climate change could be an area of healthy competition, or even policy coordination.