China

FUZHOU, China/TAIPEI, April 8 (Reuters) - Seventy-one Chinese military aircraft crossed the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait on Saturday as China began drills around Taiwan in anger at President Tsai Ing-wen's meeting with the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The three-day drills, announced the day after Tsai returned from the United States, had been widely expected after Beijing condemned her Wednesday meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles.

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese health officials defended their search for the source of the COVID-19 virus and lashed out Saturday at the World Health Organization after its leader said Beijing should have shared genetic information earlier.

The WHO comments were “offensive and disrespectful,” said the director of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Shen Hongbing. He accused the WHO of “attempting to smear China” and said it should avoid helping others “politicize COVID-19.”

BEIJING (AP) — China sent warships and dozens of fighter jets toward Taiwan on Saturday, the Taiwanese government said, in retaliation for a meeting between the U.S. House of Representatives speaker and the president of the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing as part of its territory.

BEIJING/TAIPEI, April 7 (Reuters) - China has imposed further sanctions on Hsiao Bi-khim, Taiwan's de facto ambassador to the United States, prohibiting her and family members from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau, state media reported on Friday.

The sanctions announced by China's Taiwan Affairs Office also ban investors and firms related to Hsiao from cooperating with mainland organisations and individuals.

They come after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen's meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during a stopover in the United States this week.

GUANGZHOU/HONG KONG, April 7 (Reuters) - China's Xi Jinping has given French President Emmanuel Macron an unusually lavish welcome on a state visit, which some analysts see as a sign of Beijing's growing offensive to woo key allies within the European Union to counter the United States.

The two leaders visited southern China together on Friday, where Macron was due to drink Chinese tea with Xi in a former residence of his father in the city of Guangzhou, capital of the economic and manufacturing powerhouse of Guangdong province.

BEIJING (AP) — Asian stock markets followed Wall Street higher on Friday ahead of a U.S. job market update that traders hope might encourage the Federal Reserve to ease off plans for more interest rate hikes.

Shanghai, Tokyo and Seoul gained. Hong Kong and Australian markets were closed for a holiday.

Beijing, Apr 6 (PTI) China and the US flexed their naval might by deploying aircraft carriers in a rare showdown in the Taiwan Strait, as Beijing on Thursday fumed over US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's high-profile meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen.

The Taiwanese defence ministry said a Chinese naval fleet led by the Shandong aircraft carrier passed through the Bashi Channel - which runs between the self-ruled island and the Philippines - before reaching waters southeast of Taiwan.

BEIJING, April 6. /TASS/: China's position on the Ukrainian crisis is ‘supporting talks for peace’, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday during a trilateral meeting with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Beijing.

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese leader Xi Jinping called Thursday for peace talks over Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron appealed to him to “bring Russia to its senses,” but Xi gave no indication Beijing would use its leverage as Vladimir Putin’s diplomatic partner to press for a settlement.

Xi gave no sign China, which declared it had a “no limits friendship” with Moscow before last year’s invasion, had changed its stance since calling for peace talks in February.

BEIJING, April 5 (Xinhua) -- Twenty years on, Iraqis remain aggrieved over the U.S. invasion of their home country, which has left hundreds of thousands of people dead and almost 10 million displaced.

They still remember the scene in which former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held a test tube filled with white powder, claiming it to be the evidence of Iraq's possession of "weapons of mass destruction" at a UN Security Council meeting on Feb. 5, 2003.