Chinese auto makers have embarked on a major expansion in the Russian market and are expected to reach a 60% share of total sales this year, the newspaper Izvestia reported on Monday, citing car-dealer chain Autodom.
According to the report, in the first half of 2022 the share of Chinese car brands in the Russian market stood at 3.7%, a figure that rose to almost 33% in the second half. Overall car sales in Russia last year decreased by 58.8% to 687,000 units, the Association of European Businesses (AEB) calculated. Chery, Haval and Geely were named the most popular Chinese car brands in Russia. Their share in the country’s market will continue to grow in 2023, according to the CEO of Autodom Andrey Olkhovsky. Meanwhile, the Association of Russian Automobile Dealers told Izvestia that it expects around 785,000 new car sales in Russia this year, of which at least 250,000 (32%) will be Chinese made. According to market expert Viktor Kondrashin, the lack of competition leads to an increase in prices for models such as Geely and Haval. He told the newspaper that “new models of Chinese crossovers currently cost the same as Volvo or Skoda two years ago.” .Kondrashin believes that domestic car prices could moderate when deliveries of automobiles from Iran start to arrive. The popularity of Chinese automobiles in Russia has been rising amid the exodus of European, American, and Japanese brands. Many automakers found it difficult to continue operations in the country due to logistical disruptions resulting from Western sanctions, particularly after deliveries of cars and spare parts to Russia were stopped.
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Mr. Big have announced a farewell tour, taking place in 2023 and 2024. As of now the veteran rock band has unveiled dates for a run of Asia this summer, with US, European, and South American shows slated to be revealed for 2024. The tour, dubbed “The Big Finish,” will find Mr. Big playing its 1991 album Lean Into It in its entirety. The LP yielded the band’s smash ballad “To Be With You,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. In a press release, Mr. Big said that it’s the right to time to end their touring career following the passing of drummer Pat Torpey, who died in 2018 after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. The band also revealed that Nick D’Virgilio (Spock’s Beard, Big Big Train) will fill Torpey’s slot behind the drum kit. “We wanted to do a proper farewell, and this seems like the right way to do it,” stated bassist Billy Sheehan. Guitarist Paul Gilbert added, “We’re in the process of making sure we come up with a suitably big entertainment extravaganza to go along with our music. And since our music has resonated so wonderfully in places all over the world, we’re going to play in as many of those places as we can.” And lead singer Eric Martin concluded, “If we were in the movie business, we’d just put it all up in lights and say, ‘Welcome to The BIG Finish!’ Seriously, I’m glad we’re getting a chance to do it all onstage together as MR. BIG again and raise a flag to everything we’ve done as a band over the years.”As for welcoming D’Virgilio to the band, Sheehan noted, “We found a wonderful drummer in Nick, and he’s got a great voice too.
China has released its Global Security Initiative Concept Paper, which focuses on preventing conflicts and promoting global security, while blasting the use of sanctions in foreign policy. The initiative, which was unveiled by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, hinges on several core concepts and principles meant to help both China and the international community navigate in what the document describes as an “era rife with challenges.”
It prioritizes UN-centred security governance, stating that “the Cold War mentality, unilateralism, bloc confrontation and hegemonism contradict the spirit of the UN Charter and must be resisted and rejected.” Countries should also uphold the consensus that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the initiative reads, adding that the nuclear powers should strengthen dialogue and cooperation to mitigate the risk of a nuclear stand-off. The document went on to stress the need to take the “legitimate security concerns of all countries seriously,” while respecting their sovereignty and territorial integrity. The program paper also made an appeal to resolve international disputes exclusively through diplomacy. “War and sanctions are no fundamental solution to disputes; only dialogue and consultation are effective in resolving differences,” it said, adding: “abusing unilateral sanctions… does not solve a problem, but only creates more difficulties and complications.” Addressing the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, the paper highlighted the need to “support political settlement of hotspot issues such as the Ukraine crisis through dialogue and negotiation.” Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said the initiative strives to establish a human community with a shared future, and that it “is open and inclusive” for any nation to join. The idea of the initiative was first put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping in April 2022 as a means to “uphold the principle of indivisible security” in the world. This comes one day after China released a report titled ‘US Hegemony and its Perils’, blasting Washington for escalating the great power competition across the globe, staging ‘color revolutions’, and stoking regional tensions under the guise of promoting democracy. The history of China and Taiwan is complex and spans many centuries. Taiwan, also known as the Republic of China, was originally inhabited by Austronesian peoples, but was later colonized by the Dutch and the Spanish in the 17th century. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Taiwan was ceded to Japan by China as a result of the First Sino-Japanese War. After World War II, Taiwan came under the control of the Republic of China, led by the Nationalist government. However, in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party, led by Mao Zedong (毛泽东), won the Chinese Civil War and established the People's Republic of China. The Nationalist government, led by Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), and military fled to Taiwan and continued to rule there, with the support of the United States.
Chiang Kai-shek was a Chinese political and military leader who played a major role in China's history during the 20th century. He was the leader of the Nationalist government of China from the 1920s until his death in 1975. He led the Nationalists in their fight against the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War and was the President of the Republic of China (ROC) which governs Taiwan, from 1949 until his death. When the People's Republic of China (PRC) was established in 1949, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist government were forced to flee to Taiwan. Chiang became the leader of the government in Taiwan, which was recognized as the legitimate government of China by many countries, including the United States, until the 1970s. Chiang Kai-shek led the government of Taiwan for more than two decades, during which time Taiwan underwent rapid economic development and modernization. However, his rule was also marked by authoritarianism and suppression of political dissent. Chiang's government also claimed to be the legitimate government of all of China, but this claim was not recognized by the international community, and the PRC refused to have any diplomatic relations with countries that recognize the ROC as the legitimate government of China. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, and his son, Chiang Ching-kuo, succeeded him as leader of Taiwan. Since then, Taiwan has evolved into a democracy and has developed a separate political and economic identity from mainland China. For several decades, the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan maintained that it was the legitimate government of all of China, and was recognized as such by the United States and many other countries. However, in the 1970s, the United States switched its official recognition to the People's Republic of China, and most other countries followed suit. Since then, Taiwan has developed into a separate political entity, with its own government, economy, and political system. However, the People's Republic of China still claims Taiwan as a part of its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to reunify the island with the mainland. The relations between the two sides have been complex and sometimes tense, but in recent years, economic ties have increased significantly. China’s population has decreased for the first time in more than 60 years, official data shows — a historic turn for the world’s most populous nation that is now expected to see a long period of population decline.
The country of 1.4 billion has seen birth rates plunge to record lows as its workforce ages, a drop that analysts warn could stymie economic growth and pile pressure on the country’s strained public finances. The mainland Chinese population stood at approximately 1,411,750,000 at the end of 2022, Beijing’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported on Tuesday, a decrease of 850,000 from the end of the previous year. The number of births was 9.56 million, the NBS said, while the number of deaths stood at 10.41 million. Men also continued to outnumber women in China by 722.06 million to 689.69 million. The new figures mark the first fall in China’s population since 1961, when the country battled the worst famine in its modern history, caused by Mao Zedong’s disastrous agricultural policy known as the Great Leap Forward. The decline in population could have significant economic consequences for China. The country's workforce is shrinking, and the proportion of elderly people is increasing. This could lead to a decline in economic growth and a strain on the country's social security systems. The Chinese government has implemented a number of measures to address the population decline, such as the two-child policy and measures to support families with children. Additionally, the government has also emphasized the importance of increasing the birth rate and has called for more support for families with children. China has long been the world’s most populous nation, but is expected to soon be overtaken by India, if it has not already. Estimates put India’s population at more than 1.4 billion. The head of the NBS, Kang Yi, said people should not worry about China’s population decline as the country’s overall labour supply still exceeds demand. China’s population could reduce by 109 million by the year 2050, more than triple the decline of their previous forecast in 2019. The issue of the creation of a BRICS reserve currency has taken on particular significance in recent months after President Putin declared that the creation of such a currency was in the process of discussion. This was followed by a series of statements coming from Russia’s legislative branch on the expediency of creating a new reserve currency — most recently from the Federation Assembly speaker Valentina Matvienko. While the debate on the possibility of creating such a reserve currency is only starting in Russia and more broadly across the global economy, the implications of such a move on the part of the BRICS could have transformational consequences for the global financial system.
Initially, the proposal to create a new reserve currency based on a basket of currencies of BRICS countries was formulated by the Valdai Club back in 2018 — the idea was to create an SDR-type currency basket composed of BRICS countries’ national currencies as well as potentially some of the other currencies of BRICS+ circle economies. The choice of BRICS national currencies was due to the fact that these were the among the most liquid currencies across emerging markets. The name for the new reserve currency — R5 or R5+ — was based on the first letters of the BRICS currencies all of which begin with the letter R (real, ruble, rupee, renminbi, rand). The recent debates concerning the prospects for the creation of a new reserve currency focused more on the risks, fragilities and outright impossibility of the R5 project. Less attention has been accorded to estimating the benefits (including in terms of hard figures) to BRICS economies and EM more generally. There has also been scant attention with respect to the actual modalities of launching the BRICS reserve currency. What is clear at this stage is that the BRICS reserve currency will not be created to replace the national reserve currencies of the BRICS economies — rather it will complement these national currencies and will serve to improve the possibilities for more EM currencies to attain reserve status. Accordingly, the attainment of high trading shares among the BRICS economies is a desirable but not altogether an indispensable condition for launching the new reserve currency. In fact, the new BRICS currency does not have to service all trade transactions among BRICS economies in the very near term. Initially, the new BRICS currency could perform the role of an accounting unit to facilitate transactions in national currencies. In the longer run, the R5 BRICS currency could start to perform the role of settlements/payments as well as the store of value/reserves for the central banks of emerging market economies. Within the composition of the R5 currency basket the share of the Chinese renminbi may be initially set at a relatively high level in order to take advantage of the already advanced reserve status of the Chinese currency. This share may be reduced progressively in stages later on along with the inclusion of new EM national currencies. Outside of the BRICS economies some of the potential candidates that with time could be included into the R5+ currency basket may feature the Singaporean dollar or the UAE’s dirham. One of the potential risks associated with the use of EM currencies in reserves is their high volatility. The basket mechanism of the BRICS reserve currency will allow for reducing some of this volatility via averaging out the exchange rate dynamics of currencies that follow different market trends — if the currencies of Russia, South Africa and Brazil follow the commodity cycle, the opposite is true with respect to commodity importers such as India and China. Importantly, the scope for employing the new reserve currency in the world economy is sizeable given the tremendous potential for de-dollarization. The new BRICS reserve currency can act in concert with the stronger role performed by BRICS national currencies to take on a greater share of the total pie of currency transactions in the world economy. This greater role can be gradually extended from servicing foreign trade transactions to investment flows across the developing world. In line with the original R5 concept developed by Valdai Club in 2018 one of the possible venues for boosting the use of national currencies and the BRICS reserve currency could be the creation of a platform for regional development banks in which BRICS economies are members. Such a platform could develop a portfolio of common/integration projects that may be financed in national currencies. In the end, the launching of a new reserve currency if successful will impart a transformational effect on the international financial system. The Central Banks in the global economy are experiencing a notable shortage of reserve currencies in managing their reserve holdings. In this respect, the emergence of additional reserve currencies from among the EM economies will serve to expand the possibilities for diversifying reserve holdings and reducing the vulnerabilities associated with the dependence on a narrow range of currencies. The R5 project can thus become one of the most important contributions of emerging markets to building a more secure international financial system. The global economy had a rocky year in 2022. As the worst of COVID-19’s effects on public health receded, the war in Ukraine and China’s tough “zero COVID” curbs injected new chaos into global supply chains. Food and energy prices soared as inflation in many economies hit four-decade highs.
China’s reopening After nearly three years of punishing lockdowns, mass testing and border closures, China earlier this month began the process of unwinding its controversial “zero COVID” policy after rare mass protests. With draconian restrictions inside the country a thing of the past, China’s international borders are set to reopen from January 8. The reopening of the world’s second-largest economy — which has slowed dramatically during the last year — should inject new momentum into the global recovery. A rebound in Chinese consumer demand would give a boost to major exporters such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, while the end of restrictions offers relief to global brands from Apple to Tesla that suffered repeated disruptions under “zero COVID”. At the same time, China’s rapid U-turn away from “zero COVID” carries significant risks. While Beijing has stopped publishing COVID statistics, hospitals across China have been flooded with the sick, while morgues and crematoriums have reported being overwhelmed with the influx of bodies. Some medical experts have estimated that China could see up to 2 million deaths in the coming months. With the virus spreading rapidly among China’s colossal population, some health experts have also expressed concerns about the emergence of new and more dangerous variants. “Barring this very disruptive opening up, I think that the market will do great,” Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis. “I would say once people see the end of the tunnel, so maybe the end of January, the end of the Chinese New Year, I would argue that’s when markets are really going to read a rapid recovery of the Chinese economy,” Garcia-Herrero added. “The other thing to watch is if there’s a major mutation, and mutations can be either less lethal but they could also be more lethal, and I think if the latter happens, and we start seeing closures of borders again, that would be traumatic for investor confidence.” Bankruptcies Despite the economic devastation wrought by COVID-19 and lockdowns, bankruptcies in fact declined in many countries in 2020 and 2021 due to a combination of out-of-court arrangements with creditors and large government stimulus. In the United States, for example, 16,140 businesses filed for bankruptcy in 2021, and 22,391 businesses did so in 2020, compared with 22,910 in 2019. That trend is expected to reverse in 2023 amid rising energy prices and interest rates. Allianz Trade has estimated that bankruptcies globally will rise more than 10 percent in 2022 and 19 percent in 2023, eclipsing pre-pandemic levels. “The COVID pandemic forced many businesses to take on substantial loans, worsening a situation of increasing dependence on cheap loans to make up for the loss of Western competitiveness due to globalisation,” Tziamalis said. “The survival of highly indebted businesses is now called into question as they face a perfect storm of higher interest rates, higher energy prices, more expensive raw materials and less consumption spending by consumers … It is also worth pointing out that the appetite of Western governments for any direct help to the private sector has been curbed by their increased deficits and prioritisation of support for households.” Fraying globalisation Efforts to roll back globalisation accelerated this year and look set to continue apace in 2023. Since its launch under the Trump administration, the US-China trade and tech war has deepened under US President Joe Biden. In August, Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act blocking the export of advanced chips and manufacturing equipment to China — a move aimed at stifling the development of the Chinese semiconductor industry and bolstering self-sufficiency in chip making. The passage of the law was just the latest example of a growing trend away from free trade and economic liberalisation towards protectionism and greater self-sufficiency, especially in critical industries linked to national security. In a speech earlier this month, Morris Chang, the founder of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s biggest chip manufacturer, lamented that globalisation and free trade are “almost dead”. “The West, and particularly the US, are increasingly threatened by China’s economic trajectory and respond with economic and military pressure against the emerging superpower,” Tziamalis said. “An outright war over Taiwan is highly unlikely but more expensive imports and slower growth for all countries involved in this trade war are a near certainty.” The global economy had a rocky year in 2022. As the worst of COVID-19’s effects on public health receded, the war in Ukraine and China’s tough “zero COVID” curbs injected new chaos into global supply chains. Food and energy prices soared as inflation in many economies hit four-decade highs. After a tumultuous year, the global economy heads into 2023 in choppy waters. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine continues to roil food and energy markets, while rising interest rates threaten to smother the still-fragile post-pandemic recovery. On the positive side of the ledger, China’s reopening after three years of strict pandemic curbs offers a confidence boost for the global recovery — albeit tempered by fears that the rampant spread of the virus among the country’s 1.4 billion people could give rise to more lethal variants.
Inflation and interest rates Inflation is expected to decline globally in 2023 but nonetheless remain painfully high. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has predicted global inflation will hit 6.5 percent next year, down from 8.8 percent in 2022. Developing economies are expected to have less relief, with inflation projected to only ease to 8.1 percent in 2023. “It’s likely that inflation will remain stubbornly higher than the 2 percent that most Western central banks have set as their benchmark,” Alexander Tziamalis, a senior economics lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University. “Energy and raw materials will remain expensive for some time. The partial reversal of globalisation means more expensive imports, shortages of labour in many Western countries leads to more expensive production, and green transition measures to combat the greatest threat our species faces are all leading to higher inflation than we’ve been used to through the 2010s.” Slowing growth and recession While price growth is expected to ease in 2023, economic growth is certain to slow sharply alongside rising interest rates, too. The IMF has estimated that the global economy will grow just 2.7 percent in 2023, down from 3.2 percent in 2022. The OECD has projected a less lofty performance this year of 2.2 percent growth, compared with 3.1 percent in 2022. Many economists are more pessimistic and believe a global recession is likely in 2023, barely three years after the downturn caused by the pandemic. In a column last month, Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, painted a grim picture that was summed up by the article’s unequivocal title: “Why a global recession is inevitable in 2023”. Even if the global economy does not technically fall into recession — broadly defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth — the IMF’s chief economist recently warned that 2023 may still feel like one for many people due to the combination of slowing growth, high prices and rising interest rates. “The three largest economies, the US, China and the euro area, will continue to stall,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said in October. “In s China and Saudi Arabia have discussed the creation of a free-trade zone between Beijing and the member states of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), Al-Arabiya reported on Friday, citing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
“We have discussed the creation of a free-trade zone between China and the countries of the Persian Gulf,” the crown prince announced, speaking at a Chinese-Arab summit that kicked off in Riyadh. The Gulf states and Beijing are also planning to cooperate on solving “problems of food and energy security,” and “...exploring the possibility of cooperation with China in the field of supply chains,” bin Salman added. China's President Xi Jinping arrived in the Saudi capital on Wednesday, holding separate talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the following day. He is attending the Sino-Arab summit that will reportedly bring together 30 leaders of Arab nations and organizations. China and Saudi Arabia have signed 12 agreements and memorandums of understanding on co-operation in hydrogen energy, judiciary, language education, housing, direct investment, broadcast media, digital economy, economic development, standardization, news coverage, tax administration, and anti-corruption. After a period of unprecedented protests, China is going to relax corona rules across the country. People with mild symptoms and people who have tested positive but have no symptoms can remain in quarantine at home from now on. Until now, entire neighbourhoods and factories have been completely cut off from the outside world due to massive lockdowns. People were also transferred to quarantine facilities, which were overcrowded and unhygienic.
According to China's National Health Service, most infections are asymptomatic or result in mild symptoms, meaning those infected don't need any special treatment. "They can go into isolation at home and if their situation worsens, they can be transferred to a hospital." Whether this means the end of the zero-covid strategy, the health service has not said. Since the start of the corona pandemic, China has regarded covid-19 as an extremely dangerous virus in the same category as cholera or the bubonic plague. That attitude changed last week when experts concluded that the omikron variant is considerably less dangerous than previous mutations. The deputy prime minister responsible for fighting the virus confirmed this. Frustration and grievances over China’s zero-COVID policy have led to large protests in more than a dozen cities, on a scale unseen since the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. These youth-led social protests involved open calls for a change not just in COVID-19 policies but in governance and politics as well. The big message from the scenes coming out of China: The suppression of policy debates in an increasingly centralised bureaucracy can ignite social unrest overnight despite intensified censorship and security enforcement. For the moment, the Chinese Community Party has responded by moving to ease some virus restrictions despite high daily case numbers, signalling softened positions in the face of mounting protests. But the key test for President Xi Jinping lies ahead: What has he really learned from the outpouring of anger on China’s streets, in its universities and at its factories?
After the student-led Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, which were triggered by the death of pro-reform leader Hu Yaobang, the ruling CCP drew lessons from the incident by adopting a collective leadership model that was more open towards policy debates in government and in society. The Chinese leaders who followed, including Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, moved away from strongman politics towards a power-sharing model at the top. More broadly, the CCP underwent a thorough shift — what was labelled “re-institutionalisation” — led by senior leaders like Zeng Qinghong (China’s vice president under Hu Jintao), Li Yuanchao (vice president during the early years of Xi’s rule), and political theorist Wang Huning. This move towards a semblance of inner-party democracy encouraged policy debates at various levels and pushed forward a decentralisation process that empowered local officials to promote economic development. Some observers described the process as an example of the CCP’s “authoritarian resilience”, in which a single leader could not dominate policy-making in all realms and had to share power with other colleagues in the Politburo and its Standing Committee — the party’s top bodies. The political game was transformed from the conventional winner-take-all model to a power-balancing model, in which all of the Politburo Standing Committee members were vested with almost equal political authority, resulting in more power-sharing and high-level checks and balances. The regime’s authoritarian feature was lessened by fragmented policy enforcement, relatively subdued censorship and abundant policy debates. Xi became a game changer in 2012, when he replaced Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary and started a “re-centralisation” process that consolidated his power as the core leader of the party. Facing a disgruntled society vexed by yawning income disparity and corruption, Xi borrowed from Mao Zedong’s tactical playbook and urged civil servants and military officers to reconnect with the common people — while tightening limits to discussions of ideas such as democracy and freedom of speech. With the ruling party’s tightening control of the media and the rectification of ideology, opinion leaders in China have appeared more cautious than before about voicing different views over public policies or human rights. This has brought the move towards more robust policy debates within the CCP under Jiang and Hu to a screeching halt. The result: increased risks from policy blunders, since there are fewer checks and balances in place.
The city had been a British colony for almost a century as a result of the Opium Wars. Beijing pledged to maintain a “one country, two systems” arrangement after the return of its territory. The scheme allowed Hong Kong to maintain a large degree of self-rule in internal affairs, while ceding to the central government issues of national defense and foreign policy. Jiang stepped down from his leadership positions over the course of several years from 2002 onward, making way for the Hu Jintao administration. He is credited with overseeing a peaceful transition of power, in contrast to the more chaotic shifts seen previously in China’s modern history.
The statesman’s last public appearance was in October 2019, when he stood beside President Xi Jinping and other dignitaries during a parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. According to his obituary, he battled with leukemia and suffered from multiple organ failure prior to his passing. Netherlands, U.K. and Spain among countries investigating claims the stations are used to force Chinese to go home. Portugal became the latest nation to open a probe into allegations that China has been running “illegal police stations” in the country just as Ireland ordered Beijing to shut down its "overseas Chinese police service centre" in Dublin. Portuguese police launched an investigation into China's alleged overseas police "service stations", the Attorney General’s Office confirmed to the Expresso newspaper on Thursday. The authorities are paying “special attention” to the Chinese Embassy in Lisbon after Portuguese lawmakers raised concerns about a report by human rights group Safeguard Defenders in September that Chinese authorities operate 54 “police stations” overseas, including three in Portugal. A growing number of governments including Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands are investigating reports about Chinese police offices overseas that are accused of coercing emigrants to return home to China to face criminal charges or silencing dissent abroad. Until now, no cases of immigrants living in Portugal having been forced to travel to China are yet known, the Expresso quoted a police source as saying. Also on Thursday, Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs ordered the so-called Fuzhou Police Service Overseas Station in Dublin city center to close, Irish media reported. The office opened earlier this year and Chinese authorities said it offered services to Chinese citizens in Ireland such as driving license renewals. However, Ireland’s Foreign Ministry said Chinese officials have never sought permission to set up the station in Dublin. "The Department noted that actions of all foreign states on Irish territory must be in compliance with international law and domestic law requirements," the Irish Times quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying. "On this basis, the Department informed the Embassy that the office on Capel Street should close and cease operations.” The Chinese Embassy confirmed that the office has now ceased operations.
China denies reports The Irish statement came after the Dutch government said it would probe service centres in the Netherlands in response to two reports run by broadcaster RTL Nieuws earlier this week. "Appropriate action will be taken. We take this very seriously," a Dutch foreign ministry spokesperson told the station. Both LNG and oil deliveries have surged since the start of the year, Chinese customs data shows. Russian shipments of gas and oil to China grew significantly over January-October of this year compared to the same period in 2021, China’s General Administration of Customs reported on Sunday.
According to its data, liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries jumped by 32% in annual terms, to 4.98 million tons. In dollar terms, the increase was 157% and exceeded $5.3 billion. Russia is currently China’s fourth-largest LNG supplier after Australia, Qatar, and Malaysia. While data shows that China’s imports of the fuel from Qatar also grew over the first ten months of the year, shipments from both Australia and Malaysia have been dropping. While the customs agency does not currently list the physical volume of China’s pipeline gas imports, its data shows that the value of pipeline gas flows from Russia in January-October 2022 soared by 182% compared to the same period in 2021, to $3.1 billion. This makes Russia the second largest supplier of pipeline gas to the Asian nation after Turkmenistan ($8.23 billion). China’s oil imports from Russia also surged over this period, rising by about 9.5% to 71.97 million tons. Deliveries were up 53% to $49.19 billion in dollar terms. As follows from the published data, in both October and September Russia was China’s second largest oil supplier. Saudi Arabia remains the leader, having sold 73.76 million tons of the fuel to China for $55.5 billion over January-October. China has been boosting energy imports from Russia, having taken advantage of discounts Moscow offered earlier this year in an attempt to secure buyers for Russian oil and gas. This came as many traditional importers began shunning supplies from the country amid Ukraine-related Western sanctions. The Argentine foreign ministry has confirmed that Chinese mining company Tibet Summit Resources will invest $2.2 billion in two lithium exploration projects in the South American country. The Shanghai-based company is expected to create around 10,000 jobs in Argentina, according to the statement released on Friday. The ministry noted that the plans were shared by Jianrong Huang, the president of Tibet Summit Resources, with Argentine ambassador Sabino Vaca Narvaja at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai. Under the plan, the Chinese firm will invest around $700 million into the Salar de Diablillos project in Salta province, which is expected to produce 50,000 tons of battery-grade lithium carbonate starting next year. Meanwhile, another $1.5 billion will be used for construction of a plant at the Arizaro salt flat, also located in Salta, which is expected to produce between 50,000 and 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2024.
Argentina, along with Bolivia and Chile, is part of the Lithium Triangle, a region of the Andes that accounts for around 54% of the world’s white metal reserves. Globally, the South American nation is ranked the fourth biggest lithium producer, after Australia, Chile and China, according to a report from the Argentine Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs (CAEM). |
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