While foreign leaders and their families walk the iconic restored sections of the Great Wall around Beijing, the ancient stones of a remote Ming-era stretch of the structure in northern central China have been sacrificed for cheaper dumping of coal-mining waste. For nearly 20 years, a section of the wall in Ningwu county, Shanxi province, was used as a short cut to dump slag, despite whistle-blowers repeatedly raising the alarm to officials, according to a report by Chinese state broadcaster...

Han Zheng, China’s vice-president, called on “major countries” to respect the sovereignty and security of Middle Eastern nations and bring about a two-state solution for the “Palestinian question” on Saturday at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in an implicit dig at the US and Israel. This came as some analysts questioned why Chinese President Xi Jinping opted not to address the global body given his three-day summit in Washington with US President Donald Trump this week – despite the short...