China’s aims for a supercomputing nation

Foreign ambassadors in Beijing laud the ‘Two Sessions’; Beijing to Pyongyang direct train links

Observing China is the essential newsletter to understand the UK-PRC relationship, explained in the context of global developments.

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As the United States (US) and European nations send warships to the Middle East, Beijing is perched on a hill far away like a lofty older cousin looking down at the playground squabbles unfurling before it. Wang Yi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), called for an ‘immediate ceasefire’, stating that Beijing supports the Gulf countries in ‘taking the future of the region into their own hands’.

For the PRC, its stance on Iran fits into its discourse on Taiwan – the definitive issue in its foreign policy, and a country which the PRC considers its own. Beijing expects reciprocity on this issue when it says ‘the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of the Gulf Arab countries should be respected’.

Interestingly, the two issues recently converged; the PRC claimed it helped to repatriate 93 Taiwanese who were stranded in Turkey, unable to catch their connecting flights to return home as conflict raged in the Middle East. But Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated it was not made aware of this specific incident by any of its representative offices (de facto embassies) abroad. Is one side being entirely dishonest, or is the truth muddled somewhere in between the two?

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