Katie Zacharia was “let go” as White House press secretary on Friday, a White House official said, five days into a tenure dominated by questions over her claimed legal career in China, where she said she had passed a bar exam. Her exit came on the same day Beijing invited her to visit China more often, responding to her remark that the country “doesn’t even have proper toilets”. US President Donald Trump said he had urged her to reconsider the job but denied firing her. “I told her: ‘I think...

A Republican lawmaker is requesting the Pentagon blacklist 58 Chinese universities and 62 technology labs as national security threats, a move Beijing calls Cold War-style overreach and critics warn could freeze US-China scientific collaboration and ultimately undermine American innovation itself. In a letter to US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, House Select Committee on China Chairman John Moolenaar urged the Pentagon to add several prestigious Chinese institutions – some linked to Nvidia,...

China and America are talking again. There are leaders’ meetings, phone calls and a new channel for discussing artificial intelligence. Officials are cautiously trying to keep the relationship from veering into crisis. And yet some of the hardest questions remain untouched. Neither side is giving much ground on advanced chips, export controls remain a battlefield and neither Washington nor Beijing appears ready to slow its race to develop increasingly powerful AI. So what, exactly, does it mean...

In talks with Israel’s president on Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called for an immediate easing of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and for Israel to reverse its West Bank settlement expansion. “The imperative priority is to fully open access routes into Gaza. Two million civilians must not be left to struggle on the brink of survival, nor can this humanitarian catastrophe be allowed to spread,” Wang said, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement on Friday. The meeting with...

Beijing has invited White House press secretary Katie Zacharia to visit the country more often after she said in an interview that China “doesn’t even have proper toilets”. The newly appointed spokeswoman for the Trump administration made the controversial remarks in an interview on Thursday with conservative commentator Jack Posobiec, when talking about the perception around 2016 that “the gold days, the glory days of the US were over and China was on the horizon”. “I remember this very...

European Union leaders supported creating a tool to potentially shut out Chinese goods as a growing flood of low-cost imports pushed the bilateral trade deficit to a record. Officials could start work on developing a trade “kill switch”, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signalled to EU leaders at a Brussels meeting on Thursday, the South China Morning Post reported, citing unidentified people briefed on the talks. Leaders requested a proposal by year-end, Bloomberg News said....

Manila has called for diplomatic restraint in response to suggestions from the Chinese ambassador to the Philippines that Beijing could “easily win” a military showdown in the region but had instead chosen peace. The war of words comes amid rising tension over the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Beijing has repeatedly driven away Philippine aircraft over the shoal in recent months, while accusing Manila of violating Chinese airspace. Ambassador Jing Quan made his comment on Thursday as...

The most consequential outcome of President Xi Jinping’s Washington visit might be his US counterpart Donald Trump’s unusually lavish welcome. It told Beijing, US allies and global markets that, however fierce the strategic rivalry, China’s importance makes sustained diplomatic engagement essential. The airport greeting, lavish banquet at the White House and flyover by military aircraft restored the appearance of a workable relationship between two powers. Even so, Beijing has learned not to...

A 500-year-old Buddha statue that was found buried by a roadside in Australia has been returned to China, leaving an ongoing mystery about how it arrived in the country. The 15cm (six-inch) bronze figurine was formally handed over to Chinese consular representatives during a ceremony in the coastal town of Denham in Shark Bay on Tuesday, the public broadcaster ABC reported. It will be taken to China for further evaluation to establish its history before being displayed at a museum in...

Japan’s hopes for a visit by Donald Trump during his trip to Asia next month may be hanging in the balance as relations between China and the United States steadily improve. The US president spent three days in Japan ahead of last year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, and his meeting with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was hailed as a sign of a “new golden age” in the countries’ relationship. But since then Trump’s growing rapport with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping has caused...

China said on Thursday that the recent government approval allowing American bank card payment giant Visa to operate in the country was the “direct outcome” of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States last month. “The Visa card was granted permission to establish a banking card clearing institution,” said Qiu Wenxing, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the Chinese embassy in Washington. “It is a direct outcome of the presidential summit.” Visa received administrative approval...

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia has acknowledged that she never passed a bar exam, days after telling reporters she had passed one “when I moved to China”. In an interview with the conservative commentator Jack Posobiec on right-wing streaming channel Real America’s Voice on Thursday, Zacharia said she sat the California bar exam after graduating from Pepperdine University’s law school in 2011 but did not pass. She said the results were “somewhat inconsequential, because I knew I...