US President Joe Biden on Saturday said he would be talking to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) “soon,” and is weighing possible action on US tariffs on China that were imposed by the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
Asked whether he had decided to lift any of the tariffs, Biden said: “We’re in the process of doing that... I’m in the process of making up my mind.”
Biden’s administration is weighing what to do about Trump’s tariffs on about US$300 billion of goods imported from the US economy’s biggest competitor. While some businesses have benefited from protection from Chinese imports, companies that use the goods as inputs in areas including manufacturing have been hurt.
Photo: AFP
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen last week told lawmakers that the Biden administration is looking to “reconfigure” the tariffs and said that they were contributing to higher prices for goods with US inflation running at the hottest pace in 40 years.
Biden declined to say when he would talk to Xi, saying only: “I’m going to be talking to him.”
US officials are working to set up a possible call this summer as tensions run high between the world’s two biggest economies, including on Taiwan, Ukraine and human rights matters.
One person familiar with planning said a potential summer call could come as soon as next month, but any in-person meeting of the two leaders would wait until after the China’s National Party Congress later in the year.
Xi, who is seeking to secure a third term, has also halted international travel since COVID-19 emerged more than two years ago.
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
FIRST TRIAL: Ko’s lawyers sought reduced bail and other concessions, as did other defendants, but the bail judge denied their requests, citing the severity of the sentences Former Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) was yesterday sentenced to 17 years in prison and had his civil rights suspended for six years over corruption, embezzlement and other charges. Taipei prosecutors in December last year asked the Taipei District Court for a combined 28-year, six-month sentence for the four cases against Ko, who founded the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP). The cases were linked to the Core Pacific City (京華城購物中心) redevelopment project and the mismanagement of political donations. Other defendants convicted on separate charges included Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Angela Ying (應曉薇), who was handed a 15-year, six-month sentence; Core Pacific
J-6 REMODEL: The converted drones are part of Beijing’s expanding mix of airpower weapons, including bombers with stand-off missiles and UAV swarms, the report said China has stationed obsolete supersonic fighters converted to attack drones at six air bases close to the Taiwan Strait, a report published this month by the Arlington, Virginia-based Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies said. Satellite imagery of the airfields from the institute’s “China Airpower Tracker” shows what appear to be lines of stubby, swept-winged aircraft matching the shape of J-6 fighters that first flew with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force in the 1960s. Since their conversion to drones, the aircraft have been identified at five bases in China’s Fujian Province and one in Guangdong Province, the report said. J.
China used fake LinkedIn profiles to harvest sensitive data from NATO and EU institutions by soliciting information from staff, a European security source said on Friday. The operation, allegedly orchestrated by the Chinese Ministry of State Security, targeted dozens of employees at the military alliance or EU organizations through fictitious accounts, the source said, confirming reports in French and Belgian media. Posing as recruiters on the online professional networking platform, Chinese spies would initially request paid reports before later soliciting non-public or even classified information. One particularly active fake profile used the name “Kevin Zhang,” claiming to be the head
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