Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will meet with China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing on Friday, in an attempt to hold together a fractious relationship despite disputes over the economy, national security and geopolitical frictions in East Asia, the Middle East and Ukraine. Both China and the United States have said they were hoping […]
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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cheered on the sidelines at a basketball game in Shanghai on Wednesday night, and spent Thursday chatting with students at New York University’s Shanghai campus and meeting American business owners. It all went to emphasize the kind of economic, educational and cultural ties that the United States is pointedly […]
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Inside a canteen for seniors in downtown Shanghai, a worker brandishing a sponge inched closer to Maggie Xu, 29, as she was finishing her rice and garlic-and-oil-soaked broccoli. Ms. Xu ignored her. “If you come at 12 o’clock, the aunties will give you less food,” Ms. Xu said, speaking softly. After 1:30 p.m., they give […]
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Its towering smokestacks once puffed out clouds of steam. In gigantic machine rooms, turbines whirled around the clock. Furnaces burned trainloads of coal. In the Soviet era, the Kurakhove Heating and Power Plant gave rise to the town around it in Ukraine’s east, driving the local economy and sustaining the community with wages and heating […]
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In the early hours of Friday, Mehrdad, an engineer in Isfahan, Iran, woke to the sound of explosions rattling the windows and shaking the ground. In Tehran, passengers about to board flights were abruptly told the airspace was closed. Israel, they soon learned, had attacked Iran. As booms and gunfire went off in the distance, […]
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Consumer prices in Britain rose at the slowest rate in two and a half years, the country’s Office for National Statistics reported on Wednesday. Inflation was 3.2 percent in the year through March, down from 3.4 percent in February but a touch higher than the 3.1 percent economists expected, a sign that the path to […]
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Meeting outside Paris last week, top officials from France, Germany and Italy pledged to pursue a coordinated economic policy to counter stepped-up efforts by Washington and Beijing to protect their own homegrown businesses. The three European countries have joined the parade of others that are enthusiastically embracing industrial policies — the catchall term for a […]
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The global economy is approaching a soft landing after several years of geopolitical and economic turmoil, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday. But it warned that risks remain, including stubborn inflation, the threat of escalating global conflicts and rising protectionism. In its latest World Economic Outlook report, the I.M.F. projected global output to hold […]
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When Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, took office in 2021, he pledged that his government would shift his country’s relationship with China away from one of economic dependence. Three years later, talk of scaling back reliance on China has been replaced with calls for equal access to China’s market for foreign firms. That strategy puts the […]
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The Chinese economy grew strongly in the first three months of the year, new data shows, as China built more factories and exported huge amounts of goods to counter a severe real estate crisis and sluggish spending at home. To stimulate growth, China, the world’s second-largest economy, turned to a familiar tactic: investing heavily in […]
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The European Central Bank held interest rates steady on Thursday, keeping the deposit rate at 4 percent, the highest in central bank’s history. It was the fifth consecutive decision to leave rates untouched as inflation closes in on the central bank’s 2 percent target. Last month, inflation in the eurozone slowed to 2.4 percent. But […]
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Oil prices have climbed in recent weeks, spurred by concerns over supplies and geopolitical risks, including wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. Analysts say the momentum could carry prices higher. The price of a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, has risen more than 20 percent since mid-December. It has jumped more […]
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When Markus Wingens created the position of “energy manager” for the metal heat-treatment company he runs in southwestern Germany, his idea was to increase energy efficiency and attract customers interested in sustainability. But the job has become as much a task of filling out paperwork and studying seemingly ever-changing laws as it is ensuring that […]
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Four days of top-level economic meetings between the United States and China concluded in Beijing on Monday with no major breakthroughs, but the world’s two largest economies agreed to hold more discussions to address rising friction over trade, investment and national security. The conversation is poised to become even more difficult, however, as hopes of […]
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After three hours of meetings on Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and Vice Premier He Lifeng of China sat down for a working dinner at the White Swan Hotel in Guangzhou, China. They planned to follow that with a scenic boat cruise along the city’s Pearl River. The evening activity was intended to give […]
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China wants young people to put money away for retirement. Tao Swift, an unemployed 30-year-old, is not interested in hearing it. “Retire with a pension?” he asked. “I don’t hold much hope that I can definitely get my hands on it.” Mr. Tao, who lives in the southern city of Chengdu, is not alone in […]
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As the clock struck noon on Thursday, the doors to dozens of polling stations across Kuwait opened and voters rushed in to elect one of the Middle East’s most robust parliaments. Candidates set up makeshift headquarters in tents, and coffee shops pledged discounts to voters. Swarms of people waited to cast their ballots — even […]
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As Narendra Modi was storming to victory in the election of 2014, he said that “acchhe din aane waale hain” — good times are coming. Now as Mr. Modi stands set to secure another term as prime minister in elections starting on April 19, the value of India’s stock market has grown threefold since he […]
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Narendra Modi has big money behind him as he appears set to win a third term as India’s prime minister. His party has collected more political cash than the others combined, and the country’s richest business leaders support him. The campaign is fueled partly by a winning story Mr. Modi tells about India’s economy, some […]
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In the years before war and hunger upended daily life in Yemen, Mohammed Abdullah Yousef used to sit down after a long day of fasting during Ramadan to a rich spread of food. His family would dine on meat, falafel, beans, savory fried pastries and occasionally store-bought crème caramel. This year, the Islamic holy month […]
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Gazing out from his 265-acre farm to the silhouetted Jura mountains in the distance, Jean-Michel Sibelle expounded on the intricate secrets of soil, climate and breeding that have made his chickens — blue feet, white feathers, red combs in the colors of France — the royalty of poultry. The “poulet de Bresse” is no ordinary […]
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