In a striking sign of the Chinese economy’s stagnation, the central bank said on Friday that it had temporarily stopped buying government bonds. The central bank’s unexpected action is aimed at braking a recent shift by investors toward purchasing bonds while shunning riskier assets like stocks and real estate. That shift has driven China’s long-term […]

Shiu Ka-chun, a former social worker and pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong who devoted his last years to helping protesters imprisoned after a crackdown on dissent, died Friday in Hong Kong. He was 55. His wife, Kelly Hui, said his death, in a hospital, was due to stomach cancer. As a social worker, civil rights […]

The United States ambassador to China, R. Nicholas Burns, said the Biden administration is making a last push to try to persuade China to stop transferring equipment to Russia for the war in Ukraine. Mr. Burns, in an interview at the U.S. embassy in Beijing, asserted that nearly 400 Chinese companies have supplied Russia with […]

Russia fined TikTok for not removing prohibited content. The results of a presidential election in Romania were thrown out over concerns the app had been used to spread foreign influence. Albania banned TikTok for a year following the stabbing death of a teenager by another one after the two quarreled online. “Either TikTok protects the […]

When Donald J. Trump won a return to the White House, many countries thought they knew what to expect and how to prepare for what was coming. Diplomats in world capitals said they would zero in on what his administration does, rather than what Mr. Trump says. Bigger nations developed plans to soften or counter […]

Christian Ulloriaq Jeppesen remembers how this all started. In 2019, during Donald J. Trump’s first term as president, Mr. Trump floated the idea of the United States buying the island of Greenland. At the time, most people in Greenland (and Denmark, the European country that controls it) thought his suggestion was a joke. “Everyone said, […]

South Korea’s Presidential Security Service, a​n agency​ assigned to protect the president, prides itself on being the “last bastion for a safe and stable state administration.” It is now at the heart of South Korea’s biggest political mess in decades, acting as a final line of defense to prevent criminal investigators from detaining President Yoon […]

U.S. officials made a new offer to the Taliban over the weekend to try to secure the release of Americans held in Afghanistan, according to people familiar with the matter. American officials declined to discuss the negotiations or the offer. But people briefed on the conversations said the White House had been working on a […]

Reports of a surge in cases of a respiratory virus in China have evoked dark echoes of the start of the Covid-19 pandemic almost exactly five years ago. But despite the surface similarities, this situation is very different, and far less worrisome, medical experts say. The Chinese cases are reported to be infections with human […]

The Pentagon on Monday labeled Tencent, the Chinese social media and gaming giant, as a Chinese military business operating in the United States, the latest action in an escalating series of retaliatory moves between the world’s two superpowers. Tencent’s shares in the United States plunged by nearly 10 percent following the decision by the Defense […]