China

BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Thursday held a phone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Lavrov briefed Wang on the evolution of the situation in Ukraine and Russia's position, saying that the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have broken their commitments, continuously expanded eastward, refused to implement the new Minsk agreement and violated the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2202.

BEIJING, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- China opposes any act of inciting war and has taken a responsible attitude from the very beginning to persuade all parties not to escalate tensions and incite war, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Thursday.

Spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to queries on the Ukraine issue, noting that the United States has sent at least 1.5 billion dollars' worth of over 1,000 tonnes of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.

BEIJING, Feb 23 (APP): Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying Wednesday opposed imposing unilateral sanctions on Russia and called for resolving the Ukraine situation through dialogue and consultation.

“Sanctions have never been an effective way to solve problems, and China has always opposed unilateral sanctions,” she said during her regular briefing when asked if China would join Western countries in sanctioning Russia over Ukraine.

BEIJING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Through joint efforts from compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, China's national reunification must be and will surely be realized, noted a mainland spokesperson Wednesday.

Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks at a press conference when replying to a media query about opinions on promoting national reunification voiced recently by scholars.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong residents are becoming increasingly annoyed with the administration’s insistence on sticking to China’s “zero-COVID” strategy as the city posted another record number of cases Wednesday, bristling at ever-stricter regulations and a plan to test everyone for the virus.

BEIJING (AP) — The Olympics have said goodbye to Asia after a star-crossed run, and it’s unclear when they’ll be back after the continent hosted four of the last eight Games.

The earliest the Summer Games could return is 2036, and the favorite could be the world’s most populous country — not China, as you might expect, but India.

India’s population is expected to overtake China’s 1.4 billion in the next decade, and it is lobbying for the western city of Ahmedabad to be the host city for 2036, with events elsewhere, including New Delhi, the capital.

BEIJING, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- China will intensify tax and fee cuts with targeted measures in 2022 to bring benefits for market entities and bolster economic growth, according to the Finance Ministry on Tuesday.

"China will see a larger scale of tax and fee cuts this year," the minister of finance Liu Kun told a press conference, citing that the country cut about 1.1 trillion yuan (about 173.9 billion U.S. dollars) of taxes and fees last year.

BEIJING, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday called on all parties on the Ukraine issue to remain calm, ease tensions and resolve differences through dialogue and negotiation.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin made the remarks at a daily press briefing.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had a telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier in the day, expounding China's stance on the Ukraine crisis.

BEIJING (AP) — The just-concluded Winter Olympics weren’t China’s big event of the year — internally, at least. For the Communist Party, that comes this fall at a major meeting that will likely cement Xi Jinping ’s position as one of the nation’s most powerful leaders in its seven decades of Communist rule.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong will test its entire population of 7.5 million people for COVID-19 in March, the city’s leader said Tuesday, as it grapples with its worst outbreak driven by the omicron variant.

The population will be tested three times in March, Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said.

She said testing capacity will be boosted to 1 million a day or more.

“Since we have a population of some 7 million people, testing will take about seven days,” she said.