Chinese President Xi Jinping

Despite outrage over Beijing’s initial coverup of the Chinese coronavirus outbreak, the country is already attempting to leverage the global pandemic at a time the U.S. finds itself in survival mode.

Prime Minister Imran Khan, while in Beijing on Friday to request more financial aid, indicated that Islamabad wants to emulate and “learn” from China’s “phenomenal achievements” in tackling poverty and corruption as it comes to grip with Pakistan’s “very difficult economic situation.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday and agreed to strengthen bilateral relations. “We confirmed that we are cooperative partners and absolutely do not pose a threat to each other,” Abe said after the meeting.

The Wall Street Journal on Friday published a lengthy article about the “new Cold War era with China,” relating a number of tense incidents that explain why so many Trump administration officials are sounding alarms about the Chinese.

After meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and a senior Chinese cabinet official named Yang Jiechi.

A number of religious freedom advocates have stepped forward to criticize the Vatican’s new “provisional agreement” with China on the appointment of bishops, arguing that it betrays naïveté concerning “the evil of communism.”

South Korea’s Yonhap News on Monday noticed North Korea’s state-run newspaper Rodong Sinmun lavishing extraordinary praise on China’s ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, an international infrastructure program China has invested a great deal of pride and money in.

October 1 is National Day in China, kicking off a week-long holiday marking the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen has called for the resignation of Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, saying a deal he is brokering with the Chinese Communist party amounts to an “incredible betrayal” of the Catholic faith.

Russia’s biggest military exercise since the end of the Cold War is now underway, with a sizable contingent of elite Chinese and Mongolian troops participating. Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok on Tuesday for a bilateral summit on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum.

The Chinese government’s campaign to “Sinicize” organized religion – in other words, make religion completely subordinate to the Communist Party – grew more aggressive this year and featured the destruction of Bibles, crosses, and entire churches. Religious freedom activists call it the worst crackdown on Christianity since religious freedom was nominally granted by the 1982 Chinese constitution.

The Vostok 2018 military exercise in eastern Russia was already billed as Russia’s largest war game since 1981. China’s Defense Ministry announced on Thursday it will send 3,200 troops from the People’s Liberation Army to join over 100,000 Russians in exercises from September 11 to 15.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed announced the cancellation of two major infrastructure projects that were part of China’s international “Belt and Road” initiative, rejecting the projects as too expensive since Malaysia is already grappling with a debt crisis.

Several sources close to the Chinese government said an escalating trade war with the United States is creating serious divisions in Beijing, all the way up to the office of the seemingly unassailable President Xi Jinping, according to a Reuters report Thursday.

Angry parents and teachers demonstrated outside government buildings in Beijing over the past two days, lodging an unusually vigorous public complaint against the communist government for its handling of defective vaccines from one of China’s largest biotech firms.

Bishops of China’s state-controlled Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) have told dioceses to draft local versions of a national “Sinicization” program to bring the Catholic Church into line with the ideals of the Communist party.

A huge scandal involving hundreds of thousands of defective vaccines given to Chinese children rocked the world of Chinese medicine in July, leading to multiple arrests. Chinese President Xi Jinping called the vaccine scandal “vile and shocking” and ordered a “thorough investigation” by both the Chinese Food and Drug Administration and anti-corruption agencies.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met on Friday with a delegation of Taiwanese that included Lien Chan, the former chairman of the Kuomintang party (KMT), which is currently the opposition but ran the country until the year 2000. Supporters of the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) complain that the trip to China undermines President Tsai Ing-wen, whose election two years ago enraged mainland China and prompted it to begin an aggressive campaign of diplomatic and economic isolation against Taiwan.

At a meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping offered $23 billion in loans and financial aid to Arab states and said China will pursue free trade deals with all 22 members of the Arab League.

North Korean officials said on Friday they expect Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Pyongyang on September 9, which will mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the communist state.

The city of Changchun in northeastern China offered an unusual “gift” to the Communist Party on its 97th birthday: a train festooned with quotes from President-for-Life Xi Jinping and crewed by rappers who preach Xi’s ideology to the beat of bamboo instruments.

Although Chinese media strove to portray Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s meeting with visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis as polite and productive, the condescending tone of its coverage paints a picture of Xi delivering a lecture on China’s sacred territorial rights while Mattis listened quietly.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Wednesday. “We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors. What is other people’s, we do not want at all,” Xi informed his American guest.

China’s state-run Global Times unloaded on President Donald Trump in a Thursday editorial, preemptively accusing him of botching the yet-to-be-held denuclearization summit with Kim Jong-un by attempting to bully the North Korean leader with belligerent threats.

While President Donald Trump and Western leaders attend an exceptionally tense G7 summit in Quebec this weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping and visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin will be at the annual Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping awarded Communist China’s first “friendship medal” to visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony in Beijing on Friday.

In an interview broadcast on Wednesday before departing for China, Russian President Vladimir Putin reflected on his close relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping by recalling Xi as the only world leader who celebrated Putin’s 61st birthday in 2013.

China’s state-run Global Times did its part to put Beijing at the table with President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un via an editorial Monday stating it is “essential” for China to be involved in any peace deal that officially ends the Korean War.

China launched its International Big Data Industry Expo 2018 on Saturday in the city of Guiyang with remarks by Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology Chen Zhaxiong, who boasted of his nation’s establishment of massive data platforms for manufacturing, commerce, finance, transportation, and medical care. The conference is expected to have about 40,000 guests.

China deploys cruise and surface-to-air missiles in South China Sea; China’s military attacks US pilots in Djibouti with high-grade blinding lasers