Kinaforum

fredag 25. september 2026

How US blindly ceded its rare earth dominance to China

Look around you, and you’ll see rare earth elements at work. A phone vibrates because a magnet moves a weight. Its screen was polished with cerium powder. Its connection to the rest of the world crosses oceans on cables amplified with erbium. If you drove today, a rare earth magnet helped you steer, and a cerium compound scrubbed the exhaust.

All of these devices function because of 17 metals collectively known as rare earth elements. The scientists who gave the group that name in 1794 created a misnomer. Cerium alone is about as common in the Earth’s crust as copper. However, separating rare earth minerals from one another and from raw ore is intensely difficult. As a result, countries that control the processing of rare earth minerals have a lot of political leverage.

China processes most of the rare earth minerals used around the world, and it isn’t just consumer electronics that depend on Chinese exports. The US military’s F-35 fighter jets and Virginia-class submarines need rare earths too.

Cambodia an early warning of China’s AI surveillance exports

Chinese investment has long been a cornerstone of development policy for many Southeast Asian nations.

From roads and buildings to green energy that helps countries keep up with global environmental regulations, Beijing’s investment has created significant development opportunities. But it has also provided a safety net for authoritarian governments seeking to consolidate power while limiting the economic consequences of Western sanctions. Traditional spheres of authoritarian cooperation, including financial dependence, military coordination, and political alignment, now look set to be joined by another: artificial intelligence (AI).

At the World AI Conference in Shanghai earlier this year, President Xi Jinping warned of “new historical injustices” arising from unequal access to artificial intelligence, signalling Beijing’s ambition to shape the future governance of the technology.

China’s new Tibet Party chief vows to ‘intensify struggle against separatism’

The new Party chief of Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Mr Hu Changsheng, has on Sep 22 vowed to fully and absolutely implement Beijing’s top policy measures there that include building ethnic unity, opposing separatism and strengthening the management of religious affairs.

Hu, 62, has been the party chief of Gansu province since late 2022. Qinghai’s party chief, Wu Xiaojun, is taking over Hu’s ⁠post in Gansu, while Qinghai Governor Luo Dongchuan has been promoted to Qinghai party chief, reported China’s official Xinhua news agency Sep 22.

Both Gansu and Qinghai have significant Tibetan populations. The former includes Kanlho (Chinese: Gannan) prefecture, which was part of the traditional Tibetan province of Amdo (or Domey), while Qinghai constitutes the bulk of Amdo.

Trump hails deep friendship with Xi as China’s leader urges ‘healthy’ competition between 2 powers

President Donald Trump on Thursday hailed the “truly great friendship” he has forged with Xi Jinping as the Chinese leader began his highly anticipated state visit by pressing for the world’s two biggest economies to work more closely together to avoid friction as they compete. While Trump has many thorny issues to discuss with the president of America’s biggest economic rival, he focused on his long relationship with Xi as the two gathered with aides for opening remarks before formal talks.

“From the time of my first election in 2016, President Xi and I have forged a friendship, a truly great friendship, actually, built on mutual respect and the vital interests of our people,” Trump said.

Three Ts will dominate Trump-Xi summit

When Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping last sat down in May 2026, talk was centered on three Ts: trade, technology and Taiwan.

The latest summit looks set to focus on the same set of issues again. The main difference will be that the technology element has been given added urgency by the sudden and rapid shift in developments in artificial intelligence. What’s less clear is whether the two sides will be able to come to any sort of transformative agreement on that, or any other issue.

The most urgent issue, but also the simplest to solve, will be on trade. Nearly a year ago at Busan in South Korea, Trump and Xi hammered out an agreement whereby the US agreed to lift some export controls on high-end technology and to reduce the then three-figure tariffs on Chinese goods. For its part, China agreed not to restrict the flow of critical minerals and rare earths to US users.

U.S.-China trade truce extended for two months, Bessent says, as Xi begins state visit

The U.S. and China have extended a truce to keep tariffs lower for longer and rare earths flowing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday local time. He was speaking on Fox News, as Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Washington, D.C. for a state visit through Friday.

Xi and Trump agreed to a one-year trade truce at a meeting in South Korea last October. The deal, which was set to expire in November, will now be extended to Jan. 10, Bessent said. He added that Beijing needs to fulfill more deliverables.

Ahead of this week’s summit, many had expected the truce would be extended by six months or longer. The U.S. and China should discuss their differences on trade issues on the basis of mutual benefit, without actively imposing restrictions, said Dong Shaopeng, senior researcher at Renmin University of China. He expected the trade truce could be continually improved and extended.

China’s AI chip blitz arms Xi with a message for Trump: ‘You can’t choke us off’

Chinese President Xi Jinping has kicked off his first U.S. state visit in more than a decade with a confidence boost — a run of chip and model launches that could give Washington pause before tightening tech export controls further.

Recent releases of new chip and AI models from national champions, including Huawei Technologies and Alibaba Group, have sharpened Beijing’s case that a key lever used by Washington against Chinese AI has limits: its technology restrictions can slow China’s ambitions but not stop them. “For Xi, the leverage is not ‘we have caught up with you’ — it’s ‘you can’t simply technologically choke us off,’” said Lizzi Lee, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

Why the Trump and Xi summit will struggle to live up to its grand pageantry

The lavish fanfare President Donald Trump is laying on for China’s leader Xi Jinping implies that a grand global moment is at hand.

In an unusual move, Trump traveled to a blustery Joint Base Andrews to greet Xi at the foot of the steps to his plane when he arrived Wednesday for a two-night stay. The leaders chatted, together with their wives, before strolling down a red carpet side by side. There was one blip in the choreography, however, when a jet performing a flyover split the sky with a thunderous roar during the national anthem, causing Trump to flinch and grimace.

Still, the imagery suggests two great leaders of the world’s most powerful nations meeting to chart the planet’s destiny. The timing could not be more propitious as the US and China push across a new technological frontier amid warnings from industry chiefs that artificial intelligence may soon race out of control.

Trump is giving China’s Xi a warm welcome. But criticism is loud on Capitol Hill

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington is getting a much chillier reception on Capitol Hill than at the White House as lawmakers from both parties use the visit to denounce China’s actions on the world stage.

Lawmakers have long found little downside to taking a hawkish tone on China, but the U.S.'s war with Iran has inflamed tensions as U.S. officials accuse China of propping up Iran’s economy and supplying its military with components and intelligence, endangering U.S. service members in the Middle East.

Trump and Xi Jinping head into Washington summit with both leaders thinking time is on their side

Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have no shortage of difficult issues to cover when they sit down for talks on Thursday at the White House.

China has resisted the Trump administration’s urgings — and economic threats — to use its considerable leverage to prod Iran to agree to U.S. terms to end the nearly seven-month war. Xi wants to see Trump permanently halt arms sales to Taiwan and loosen export restrictions on cutting-edge advanced chips. And the two sides on Wednesday agreed to extend a one-year trade truce set to expire Nov. 10 for two months, kicking the can on finding a more durable agreement.

All the while, both leaders seem to believe that time is on their side as they look to outmaneuver the other in what is expected to be the world’s most significant economic and national security competition for years to come.

Some climb for faith, others for the views. This Chinese sacred mountain draws them all

A banknote clasped between her hands, Liu Haiyan prayed to the protector of the Wudang mountains. The range in central China has long been considered sacred in Taoism. “I asked him to bless our motherland with favorable weather and to make it even more prosperous,” Liu said while sitting outside the Golden Hall, a Taoist temple at the summit of Tianzhu Peak. “This place watches over our country,” she added. “We’re Chinese and this is part of our faith.”

Tourists and pilgrims in a steady stream make their way through Wudang every day. Its scenic peaks, ancient palaces and religious sites drew 14 million visits in 2025, according to government figures.

POLITICS & POLICY South Korea pushes for Trump summit with renegade North Korea, seeing opportunity for peace

A U.S.-North Korea summit might bring peace, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said, in advocating for a meeting with the renegade state. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly at New York, Lee said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s resolve for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was “a hard won opportunity for change,” and said he hopes that the “long suspended dialogue” between Pyongyang and Washington would resume.

Trump has said he has plans to meet Kim “later this year.”

It was not clear if any meeting was actually planned. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, said that she was not aware of any communication between the two leaders. Trump met Kim three times in his first term, including in Singapore and Vietnam, but did not appear to make any headway at denuclearization.

Pentagon investigates after China obtains parts from F-35 stealth fighter jet

The Pentagon is investigating how parts of the nation’s most advanced fighter jet ended up in Hong Kong, with a news outlet reporting Wednesday that China has obtained the F-35 equipment. The F-35 Joint Program Office said in a statement that it and the Defense Department are aware of “a shipment issue” with F-35 components.

“We are actively working with U.S. authorities and industry partners to retrieve these components, investigate the incident, and place safeguards to avoid a future occurrence,” the office said.

Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles acknowledged that the jet components ended up in Hong Kong when responding to questions from reporters Tuesday. But he denied that the missing parts were “sensitive equipment.” Australia is one of several nations whose militaries operate the stealth fighter jet.

A lot’s changed since Xi Jinping’s last US state visit. Mostly in China’s favor

When Chinese leader Xi Jinping visits Washington this week, he will be sitting down with President Donald Trump in a vastly different position than the last time the two men met face-to-face in the United States nearly a decade ago.

At that 2017 summit at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort China was lagging America on multiple fronts and vulnerable to the tech and trade frictions Trump would unleash on it in the coming year.

Now, Xi arrives at the helm of a country that’s transformed. The world’s second largest economy has emerged as a tech heavyweight. Home-grown tech talent is spurring Chinese AI models ever closer to Silicon Valley’s frontier. Beijing-based space firms are launching and landing reuseable rockets with their sights on global champion SpaceX. Companies from energy to AI, robots and memory chips have launched blockbuster stock debuts over the past year.

Tibetan testifies at ranking US Congressional Committee members’ hearing ahead of President Xi Jinping’s arrival

Ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit later this week and as Tibetan groups and others prepare protest receptions for him, Ranking Member Ro Khanna of the US House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Ranking Member Jim McGovern of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China jointly held a shadow hearing titled “The Void in China Policy: Why Human Rights Must Be on Trump’s Agenda with Xi at the White House”.

Those who testified at the hearing included Palden Gyal, President of International Tibet Media Organization; Tahir Imin, Founder and Director, Uyghur Post; Yaqiu Wang, Fellow at the Penn Project on the Future of US-China Relations at the University of Pennsylvania; and Jonathan Stivers, US Director, Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong; Commissioner, US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

Taiwan is watching closely as Xi and Trump meet and hopes US will keep up its arms sales

As China’s Xi Jinping arrives in Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, Taiwan expressed confidence that U.S. arms sales to the island that Beijing claims as its own will continue — despite China’s pressure.

China has pressed Washington to halt the arms sales, most prominently during a summit in May between Trump and Xi in Beijing. After that meeting, the United States paused the sale of a record-breaking $14 billion package — and Trump described arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with China. Still, the U.S. government and Congress have “repeatedly expressed support for Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities,” Taiwanese Defense Ministry spokesperson Maj. Gen. Chiao Fu-chun told reporters in the southern city of Tainan.

China’s Xi kicks off state visit to Washington on Wednesday with a rare planeside welcome from Trump

When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Washington on Wednesday, he’s expected to get a rare greeting from President Donald Trump, who will be on the tarmac to welcome his counterpart’s plane instead of waiting for him to drive up to the White House.

Trump’s decision to greet Xi at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington rather than receiving him at the executive residence shows how far the U.S. president is going to honor China’s leader as he makes his first state visit in more than a decade.

The White House has not released many details about Wednesday’s greeting, but Trump is expected to participate in an arrival ceremony at the base with Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan. The salutation will kick off a three-day visit that’s expected to be saturated with pomp, even by White House standards. The state visit, complete with a formal state dinner at the White House on Thursday, is supposed to reciprocate for the ceremonial grandeur that marked Trump’s May visit to China.

Climate disasters are growing. So are cuts to programs that prepare for them

Sitting on the floor of a makeshift shelter for survivors of Nepal’s deadly recent floods, Tenzin Dolma Ghale said she had nothing left but the clothes she was wearing. Her entire village and members of her family were washed away by the surge of water and debris that killed over 1,450 people and left more than 6,000 missing.

After speaking, she waved a hand and looked at the ground. “It’s all finished,” she said.

Ghale is among millions of people living with the deadly consequences of climate-related disasters. As such disasters intensify, international climate adaptation and disaster preparedness aid programs have been slashed, leaving countries facing billions of dollars in avoidable damage and dwindling recovery funds.