Opinion

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, have signed a joint statement on deepening the comprehensive strategic partnership between their two nations at a summit that framed their relationship as a stabilising force in a chaotic world. Speaking at a joint press conference on Thursday, Xi said: “China is willing to … jointly achieve the development and rejuvenation of our respective countries, and work together to uphold fairness and justice in the world.” Reporting from Beijing, Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu said Xi “made the point that Russia-China cooperation did not target any third party, that it was a mutually respectful, beneficial partnership and that he hoped that the war in Ukraine … would be solved peacefully”. The Chinese president described

President Vladimir Putin has signalled approval of China’s plan as a “genuine desire” to end the war in Ukraine as he travels to Beijing to shore up support from his vital international partner. In an interview with China’s Xinhua state news agency published on Wednesday ahead of a two-day visit to the country to meet President Xi Jinping, Putin praised Beijing’s approach, saying that it truly understood the conflict’s “root causes” and its “global geopolitical meaning”. China’s 12-point paper for ending the war received a lukewarm reception when it was made public last year. However, Putin hailed additional measures made public last month as “realistic and constructive steps” that “develop the idea of the necessity to overcome the Cold War mentality”. Xi’s additional p

From ‘Golden Era’ to deteriorating relations Over the last several years, the largely cordial relationship between the UK and China has deteriorated sharply. In the previous two decades, regardless of the political make up of successive UK governments, the trend had been towards closer engagement and cooperation. The high-point of UK-China relations was during the 2015-17 Conservative Government, when there was talk on both sides of a “golden era”. However, growing controversy in the UK over China’s human rights clamp-down against the Muslim Uighur population in the Western province of Xinjiang, as well as concerns about the erosion of the “one country, two systems” status quo in Hong Kong and the threat of espionage and influence operations by China i

China is often credited with a successful application of industrial policy. One important particularity of China’s industrial policy is that it aims at levelling the playing field between the state economy and the private economy in access to finance, yet within a framework of strategic goals. This aim is not relevant for market economies, such as those of the European Union, but only for those where state enterprises are clearly privileged. Notwithstanding the difficulties in making valid comparisons, our analysis of how China conducts industrial policy in a variety of sectors points to success in some sectors but not all. More importantly, productivity growth in China has already been declining for two decades. Given the very large resources that China has put into industrial poli