News

Chinese retail platform handed penalty over listings for items such as counterfeit products and unsafe toys

The Chinese online retail platform AliExpress has been fined a record €550m (£470m) by the EU over its failure to stop illegal goods including harmful clothing, cosmetics and kitchen gadgets being sold through its site.
The European Commission fine is the biggest imposed by the bloc under Digital Services Act (DSA) legislation to protect consumers from illegal goods and deceptive or addictive marketing techniques.

Chinese artificial intelligence models now account for the majority of tokens processed by U.S. firms on OpenRouter, overtaking American rivals for the first time as developers increasingly adopt ...

Startling new research shows that in many countries – including old US allies – the public prefers Beijing to Washington
Earlier this year, a spate of western TikTok and Instagram creators – drinking hot water and wearing slippers around their homes. The primarily reflected the constant need of influencers for novel content. But social media trends also reflect a growing fascination with China, as the economic historian Adam Tooze .
While it broods over China’s economic, military and advance, the Trump administration is accelerating Beijing’s diplomatic progress, as striking new polling by the Pew Research Center shows. For the first time, China and Xi Jinping are and its president in most of the 36 major countries surveyed – including Canada, Mexico and Australia. Only in six countries did people rate the US more highly. While Beijing has seen significant improvements in some places, the slump in Washington’s standing is more dramatic. Across 20 countries, the median percentage with a favourable view of China and this year; for the US, it fell from 58% to 36%. Views of China were much more positive in than in wealthier European and east Asian countries.

The president no longer treats the people who defeated him as voters. He treats them as suspects
There is a version of this country in which Donald Trump tells Americans the truth he has been handed: that their elections are secure. Once, he apparently wanted to.
after that a February 2020 election-security briefing pleased Trump so much he wanted to announce the news himself. The press conference never happened. The election did, and Trump lost it.

The Chinese community in West Des Moines celebrated America's 250th with a unique event that blended American and Chinese traditions.

The Trump administration has recently sought to scale back sanctions as adversaries develop workarounds that some believe could erode the U.S. dollar’s supremacy.

As the bombing starts again, it’s clear the president has dragged the US into a limitless fiasco – and the world into an economic quagmire
Feckless and clueless, Donald Trump is lost in Iran, unable to find a way out of the disastrous war he started. Once again, the US military is and, increasingly, its civilian infrastructure. As before, this unlawful bludgeoning strengthens the resistance of a hardline regime that cares little for its people’s suffering. How often have Trump and Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon’s wildling lord of bones, hailed a bogus victory? The president claimed this week to be “winning big”. No one believes him. Even as it counts the vast human and economic cost of his Persian folly, a watching world scoffs at US impotence.
Control of the strait of Hormuz, closed due to Trump’s belligerence, is now the White House’s limited, elusive objective. The grander US and Israeli war aims – eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme, degrading its regional militias, regime change – are less attainable than ever. It’s Trump’s craven leadership that renders US forces ineffective, not the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. If Iran really is the existential menace he claims, the logical course would be all-out conquest. When George W Bush decided Iraq posed unacceptable dangers, he invaded with 170,000 ground troops. It was a catastrophe. But at least Bush had balls.
Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

This blog is now closed.



Trump also took to Truth Social today to claim that there were “great reviews” of his address to the nation on Thursday – where he repeated baseless claims undermining the electoral integrity of the 2020 election, and the safety of the election process at large in the US.
During his speech, Trump also tried to unveil new information – with scant evidence – that China’s interfered in the race that he lost to Joe Biden. This despite assessments from intelligence officials that no foreign actor, including China, attempted to alter any technical aspect of the 2020 voting process.

Donald Trump delivered a primetime address to the country on Thursday, claiming that declassified intelligence showed Chinese interference in US elections. The US president revived long-running attacks on election security, despite a US intelligence assessment that found no evidence Beijing altered the 2020 vote, which he lost. The Guardian's voting rights reporter Sam Levine factchecks some of Trump's claims

One of five booksellers kidnapped by Chinese officials in 2015, Mr. Lam spoke out after his release and became an international cause célèbre.

The UK government said taking the firm into public hands would safeguard "a vital national capability".

Community leaders warn US president's explosive China election-interference allegations may see rise in anti-Asian hate crimes Asian-American groups on Friday slammed US President Donald Trump's ...