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The resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has overseen deteriorating ties with China over the past nine years, has rekindled hopes for "a rebound" in bilateral relations despite mutual distrust, according to Chinese pundits.

Trudeau, currently the longest-serving leader of any Group of Seven (G7) country, said on Monday he would step down when his ruling Liberal Party chooses a new leader in the coming months.

The changes in Canada's political leadership may provide a window of opportunity for both sides to ease tensions if Ottawa is willing to soften its anti-China stance, said Shen Dingli, a Shanghai-based international relations expert.

During the first term of the Donald Trump administration, the Trudeau government did a lot of dirty jobs for it, including the political kidnapping of Huawei's Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou.

Although the next prime minister of the Liberal Party might not see enough immediate reasons to overhaul the country's China policy that has largely been formed during the Trudeau government's tenure, he or she should realize if Canada resolutely defends its interest in the face of the next US administration's tariff threats, Trudeau's China policy will naturally expire as it was originally made to curry favor with the US, although it ultimately failed to achieve that end.

Predictably, Trump and his allies have spread rumors that the zouxian immigrants are spies or drug smugglers sent by the Chinese government to harm American society, and that they are part of an attempt to establish a Chinese army within the United States. Like the rumors about pet-eating Haitians, these claims are baseless. Once he takes office, Trump has vowed to declare a national emergency and deploy the military to deport unauthorized immigrants. According to news reports, undocumented Chinese immigrants of military age will be the first group targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.

The president-elect’s overture – which his staff said might also be extended to other leaders – broke with historic precedent, which holds that no foreign heads of state are expected to attend US presidential inauguration ceremonies.

Published: December 14, 2024
Written by: CTOL Editor Yasmine

On December 2024, at the prestigious Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) 2024 conference, Professor Rosalind Picard—founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab—delivered an invited talk titled, “How to Optimize What Matters Most?” Her presentation centered on pioneering advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), affective computing, and wearable technology. 

However, the talk took a controversial turn when Picard mentioned a specific incident involving a “Chinese student” who was allegedly expelled from a top university for admitting to unethical behavior—“I did it to make my paper results look better. Nobody at my school taught us morals or values.” Although Picard added disclaimers, clarifying that “most Chinese who I know are honest and morally upright” and repeating “Most, let me just be very clear. Most Chinese who I know are extremely upright. I hope this is an exception,” the inclusion of the student's nationality and perceived moral shortcomings triggered immediate backlash. Some attendees felt that referencing the student’s ethnicity was an unnecessary generalization and risked reinforcing harmful stereotypes at a top-tier conference meant to celebrate diversity and global collaboration.

Videos aired by China's state broadcaster CCTV showed houses destroyed with the official Xinhua News Agency saying more than 1,000 houses were damaged. The epicentre of the quake was Shigatse, one of the holiest cities of Tibet.

The remote Shigatse is far from China's main cities. This, combined with the extreme cold, has hindered rescue efforts, according to Al Jazeera's Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing

Published: January 7, 2025

The recent high-level Central Economic Work Conference in Beijing laid out a comprehensive and ambitious workplan for China. One of the agreed-upon focus areas is to continue to “cut carbon emissions, reduce pollution, pursue green development and boost economic growth in a concerted manner, and ramp up the green transition in economic and social development”.[1] In an opinion piece for Caixin Global, UNEP FI co-authors Peiyuan Guo and Shouqing Zhu review China’s progress on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure in 2024, and point out policy directions and priorities for 2025. Here, they summarize their analysis and discuss how UNEP FI can support members in aligning with China’s disclosure policies while working with the government on the green transition.

The year of 2024 is sometimes dubbed in China as the “Year for Disclosure”, because several government policy instruments simultaneously set the country on a path for increased mandatory and voluntary sustainability information disclosure.

Right now, dozens of giant pandas are living in zoos across the globe, which brings joy to people, generates economic benefits for the institutions they inhabit, and contributes to biodiversity conservation. 

However, the cute, fluffy animal has also faced malicious criticism and even smears, with some Western media outlet reports accusing China of using pandas as a diplomatic tool to open doors to diplomatic relations.

In this third installment, we enter rural communities that overlap with the giant panda's habitat, where residents now hold the new identity of panda guardians. Since the establishment of the Giant Panda National Park in 2021, an organic and coordinated protection of both the pandas and the flora and fauna around which their habitat has been also built.

Just over a year ago, Xi Jinping told China's national women's congress that the Communist party must “actively foster a new type of marriage and childbearing culture”. For the last two years, there has been not one woman on the 24-strong politburo (no women have ever reached its standing committee, China’s most senior political body). Activism on women’s issues, as in other areas, has been pushed underground.

Yet while the political environment is dismal, the unexpected success of a low-budget comedy speaks volumes about the way that feminism has gone mainstream in China. This winter's surprise hit has been Her Story, the tale of a do-it-all single mother’s unexpected friendship with an artsy, sentimental neighbour, which topped the Chinese box office.

On a bright January morning in 1979, then US president Jimmy Carter greeted a historic guest in Washington: Deng Xiaoping, the man who unlocked China's economy.

The first leader of Communist China to visit the United States, Deng had arrived the previous evening, to light snow and a welcome by the US vice-president, the secretary of state and their spouses.

It was the start of a diplomatic relationship that would forever change the world, setting the stage for China's economic ascent - and later, its rivalry with the US.

Establishing formal ties with China was among Carter's more remarkable legacies, during a turbulent presidency that ended with one term.

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