Kinaforum

søndag 27. september 2026

China has kept its promise to stop funding overseas coal, but loopholes are helping coal expand

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly in 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to stop funding overseas coal power plants in an effort to help curb climate change. Five years later, as the assembly meets this week, the world’s climate commitments are dangerously offtrack, and the phase down of coal is inching along.

So far, China has canceled the majority of the coal plans it had planned in 2021, according to a new report released this week to align with the General Assembly and New York Climate Week. This is a small bright spot in global efforts to counter climate change, which has driven deadly disasters in Asia in recent months.

But experts have warned that Chinese companies are taking advantage of regulatory loopholes to skirt Xi’s promise and continue investing in overseas coal.

China, as usual, uses UN speech to promote global development as solution to world’s challenges

A day after his boss met with President Donald Trump in Washington, China’s vice president unfurled the nation’s familiar list of global talking points, emphasizing development, issuing mild statements about the U.S. war with Iran, artificial intelligence and protectionism, and making no direct mention of Taiwan.

Han Zheng’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Saturday landed somewhat anticlimactically after Chinese President Xi Jinping met Trump for a state dinner and a visit to the National Archives. Most noteworthy about the address was the presence of Han himself: China has often used high-profile public events to position its rising leaders on the global stage.

“China has created two miracles at home, namely fast economic roles and long-term social stability,” Han said.

China, US agree to set up channel for AI safety incidents

Beijing and Washington promised to expand dialogue on AI safety and between the countries' militaries while also cutting tariffs on about $30 billion (€26.3 billion) of "non-sensitive goods." The pledges follow the three-day summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping in the US.

US President Trump described the summit in an online post as "one of Friendship, Strength, and Success" for both nations.China's President Xi was more constrained, saying the two sides agree on "strategic stability on the basis of respect, fairness, and reciprocity." On Saturday, with Xi back in Beijing, China said the two sides agreed to a mutual tariff reduction on roughly $30 billion of "non-essential" goods. This applies to exports such as agricultural products or holiday decorations.

The US wants the world to pick a side on AI. But for many countries, China’s pitch may be more compelling

The rapid advances of Chinese artificial intelligence over the past year seem to have alerted Washington to the real possibility that the world’s second-largest economy could pull ahead of the United States in an increasingly tight technology race.

“We’re leading China in AI…and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins,” US President Donald Trump said earlier this month.

Trump’s comments underscore the stakes of a US-China tech competition that is increasingly being framed in existential terms. The US has an obvious edge, with pioneering AI labs, the most advanced chips and deep-pocketed investors. Leveraging that dominance, Washington is also forcing countries around the world to pick a side.

Chinese AI models surge in global popularity — and Washington is worried

AI was a major focus as U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met this week. The most advanced U.S. models lead most benchmarks, but Chinese companies like DeepSeek, Z.ai and Alibaba have released new models with major performance gains in tasks such as coding.

According to usage data shared with CNBC, the global adoption of Chinese models by companies has increased substantially in 2026.

Chinese AI models have gone from a relatively small share of usage to a majority on two major developer platforms that provide gateways for companies to access models from different providers. On OpenRouter, they accounted for 57%-67% of tokens used in the week of Sept. 14, up from 6%-13% in February. On Vercel, their share rose to 55% in August from 11% in January.

Why Xi believes the U.S. and China can overcome the ‘Thucydides Trap’

China is embracing the idea of competition without confrontation, by invoking an academic concept. “The Thucydides Trap can be overcome,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said on arriving at the White House to meet U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, according to the Chinese side’s official readout.

That framing contrasts with the rhetorical question he posed at the May summit of whether the two countries could avoid the Thucydides Trap. The Thucydides Trap, popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison in the early 2010s, refers to how tensions between a rising and ruling power have historically often resulted in a war.

Thucydides was an Athenian general in ancient Greece. His historical record of the Peloponnesian War described how Athens’ rapid rise in power alarmed Sparta and made war between the two city-states inevitable.

Mapping Power: What Xi Jinping’s Travels Reveal About China’s Global Strategy

Diplomatic travel is never just travel. Where a head of state goes, how often, and in whose company reveals more about a country’s priorities than almost any speech. Xi Jinping’s itinerary since taking power in 2012 – more than 55 trips to over 70 countries – is a map of Beijing’s ambitions: a durable partnership with Russia, a firm grip on Central Asia, a long courtship of the “Global South,” and an increasingly assertive footprint in regions the United States once treated as its own backyard.

The frequency of Xi’s visits is itself a signal. He has now visited Russia eleven times – more than any other country by a wide margin – including a high-profile appearance at Moscow’s 2025 Victory Day parade even as the war in Ukraine ground on. This is not sentimentality; it reflects a “no-limits” partnership built on cheap Russian energy, a shared interest in weakening US-led alliances, and coordinated pushback against Western sanctions regimes. Every Xi-Putin meeting reinforces a message to Washington and Brussels: isolating Russia has not isolated it from China.

China’s New Defence Mobilisation Law: How Beijing Is Preparing Civilian Technology for Future War

China’s first major revision of its national defence mobilisation law in 16 years signals a significant shift in how Beijing intends to prepare for modern conflict. The revised framework expands the concept of military preparedness beyond conventional weapons and government stockpiles, bringing artificial intelligence, drones, data, software, civilian technology companies, specialised talent and private logistics networks into the country’s potential wartime mobilisation system.

China has spent years building a closer relationship between its civilian technology sector and the military. The latest revision to its defence mobilisation law provides a legal framework that could make that relationship considerably more systematic.

The amendment, passed by China’s top legislature and scheduled to take effect on October 1, places new emphasis on advanced technologies and emerging fields.

Here’s why South Korea wants more control over future regional wars

At the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung used a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to revisit one question in their countries’ military alliance: who would lead their combined forces if war resumed on the Korean Peninsula?

The two sides’ 30-minute summit covered strategic investment, shipbuilding and nuclear cooperation, as well as the transition of wartime operational control, or OPCON, to South Korea. The renewed attention on OPCON comes after Trump abruptly curtailed the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercise between the two countries last month, prompting concerns about combined readiness.

The topic appeared again most recently as new defense minister Kang Shin-chul took office on Tuesday, after he argued that a structure in which Korean commanders take the lead, backed by the U.S. military, would make the combined defense system “much stronger”.

India’s viral Cockroach Party calls election panel head ‘biggest threat’ to democracy. Here’s why it matters

Cockroach Janta Party, the viral pseudo-political movement behind the Gen Z protests that rattled Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in July, has demanded the resignation of India’s chief election officer after claiming he had undermined the country’s democracy.

On Friday, Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the CJP, said the party will begin a nationwide protest from Oct. 2 if the chief election officer does not resign by Saturday. In a press conference on Thursday, Dipke said the country’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, “is the biggest threat to India’s democracy,” raising questions over his role in a recent electoral roll revision exercise that has led to the deletion of millions of voters.

US-China rivalry remains frozen after Trump-Xi summit

The US president showcased White House construction projects and hosted a lavish dinner with tech CEOs, but the summit made little progress on key issues such as trade tensions and AI regulation.

When US President Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for Chinese leader Xi Jinping at Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday evening, it was a rare diplomatic gesture that has only happened a handful of times in US history. Generally, world leaders are received by the president at the White House. Xi's VIP reception underlines the importance Trump places on his personal rapport with China's most powerful leader in a generation.

After 90 minutes of bilateral talks in the Oval Office, Trump spent Thursday afternoon showing his "good friend" Xi his various White House construction projects, including the helipad completed just days earlier over the South Lawn. He then welcomed Xi aboard the presidential helicopter Marine One for a brief tour.

Trump then told reporters "we had a great meeting," adding that Xi "loves good granite."

Has China’s Panda Diplomacy Lost Its Charm? It’s Not So Black-and-White

“This move is a diplomatic all-timer,” Santi Ruiz, a policy-focused writer for the Institute for Progress and editorial team member at AI company Anthropic, posted on X. “It's like Messi cutting inside. You know it’s coming. It doesn’t matter how many times they run it. You’re getting those pandas, and you’ll like it.”

The tried-and-tested offering came once again on Thursday as Chinese President Xi Jinping announced during his state visit to the U.S. that Ping Ping and Fu Shuang, two giant pandas from a research base in Chengdu, would be lent to Zoo Atlanta in the state of Georgia—but whether this so-called panda diplomacy remains as welcome as it has over the decades is less clear, eliciting mixed reactions in 2026.

The Trump-Xi meeting was heavy on pomp, light on substance. China is just fine with that

Four months after their last meeting, President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping traded niceties during the Chinese leader’s first visit to the US capital in over a decade. The two leaders extended a trade truce, exchanged gifts and compliments, and acknowledged the possibility of working together to contain the dangers of AI development.

For a historic summit meant to address rising tensions between the world’s largest economic and geopolitical powers, the Washington trip was relatively uneventful. But for Xi’s own ambitions, China didn’t need much else.

Xi says he’ll see Trump again soon as he wraps up US visit with a look at the Constitution

Chinese President Xi Jinping wrapped up his state visit to Washington on Friday by announcing that he will meet President Donald Trump two more times before the end of the year, doubling the number of face-to-face discussions between the leaders of the world’s two largest economies in 2026.

The promise of more meetings to come capped off a three-day state visit that has been criticized by some in the U.S. for being heavy on pomp and light on substance, though Trump said they discussed the war in Iran. The two leaders have made a show of working to preserve harmony, but there were no major breakthroughs this week on issues such as trade or the safety of artificial intelligence.

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy says he urged Trump to enlist China’s help in ending Russia’s invasion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that he asked U.S. President Donald Trump to press China’s leader to use Beijing’s influence over Moscow in a diplomatic effort to get Russia to end its 4½-yearlong invasion of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy told reporters he has not yet received feedback from the White House about Trump’s talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping but expects to learn the outcome. Zelenskyy, who is keen to muster more international support for Ukraine’s defense, was in the United States this week on a trip coinciding with the U.N. General Assembly. He met with Trump on Tuesday.

NATO countries have called China a “decisive enabler” of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Zelenskyy shared more details of his U.S. trip in voice messages to a group of journalists.

In China, the Xi-Trump summit is seen as projecting image of the country’s rise

It’s unclear if U.S. President Donald Trump’s elaborate reception of his Chinese counterpart in Washington dazzled President Xi Jinping, but for the Chinese public, it made quite an impression.

Trump’s rare welcome of Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, at the airport, as well as the bilateral and cultural events the leaders attended were closely covered — and praised — by Chinese state media. Those who watched at home saw a China elevated in status. “I read the news that the U.S. reception standards for President Xi are very high,” Xiang Ziyu, a postgraduate student in Beijing, told The Associated Press. “I’m quite impressed because it shows that our country has become really powerful.”

That takeaway was shared by several people interviewed by the AP as well as in comments on Chinese social media, which praised China’s cooperation with the United States.

Takeaways from Trump-Xi summit: Lots of pomp and even more punting on tensions in US-China relations

Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have wrapped up a three-day Washington summit that was heavy on pomp but light on substance. The U.S. president delighted in the personal rapport he says he’s built with Xi, while the Chinese leader emphasized the two sides “must hold the line” to ensure there is “no conflict and no confrontation between us.”

The two leaders discussed the wars in Iran and Ukraine as well as artificial intelligenceand Taiwan. The biggest policy announcement of the visit was modest: an agreement to extend by two months a trade truce that had been set to expire in November.

Here are seven key takeaways from the visit.

From ‘cheats’ to ‘great friendship’: How Trump’s rhetoric on China changed

When Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington on Wednesday evening, United States President Donald Trump rolled out a warm and unusually lavish welcome for his Chinese counterpart.

Trump went down to Joint Base Andrews near Washington to greet Xi on the tarmac – the first time a US president has greeted a foreign leader in such a way since 1962, when John F Kennedy welcomed UK Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Though the Xi-Trump meeting delivered little significant shift in relations beyond extending a fragile trade war truce for another two months, Washington laid on hours of pageantry, more pomp and lavish tours for Xi’s entourage, and praise for the Chinese president and his wife.