- Biden wants to put G7 on track against China
- Charging infrastructure for EVs grows at record pace
- Security index: Germans see China as small risk
- Australia: WTO should punish Beijing
- Steel exports increase by 20 percent
- Record growth in producer prices
- Opinion: China’s three-child policy won’t help
The sum of $170 billion played a geopolitical role in two different events worldwide. That’s how much money the US Senate wants to spend to upgrade the research and technology sector to compete against China. This comes, not coincidentally, just days before the G7 summit. US President Joe Biden wants to ally against China, as Felix Lee analyses. State and party leader Xi Jinping counters in a congratulatory letter at the start of the China-Central and Eastern Europe Expo: $170 billion is the value of imported goods from participating European countries over the next five years, he promises. Let’s see how the investments pay off.
The circumstances for EV drivers range from annoying to adventurous when they want to charge their batteries. Although it all starts very promisingly: China has installed two-thirds of the world’s public charging points for EVs in recent years. The country is moving strictly along the path of progress and has set ambitious goals for itself. But even the self-proclaimed home of electromobility suffers from the pitfalls of everyday life, reports Nico Beckert. Many of the charging stations are defective – or they only provide electricity after long phone calls with the operator.
Ning Wang
Feature
Biden wants to put G7 on track against China
The G7 call themselves the world’s leading industrialized nations. Yet one particularly big player is not among them: China. At least not as a participant; as a topic, however, it will dominate. When the heads of government of the US, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Canada and Italy convene for their three-day meeting in Carbis Bay in Cornwall, the People’s Republic will be the main topic of discussion alongside the pandemic.
The seven Western industrialized nations want to agree on a global infrastructure partnership at the summit. The aim is to drive forward major construction projects in emerging and developing countries, reports Handelsblatt, which has a paper to this effect that the G7 states are currently negotiating. At first glance, this sounds harmless. But what lies behind it is nothing less than a counter-model of the Western industrialized countries to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, officially known as the Belt and Road Initiative.
The Chinese leadership, pursuing this program since 2013, wants to span much of the world with a trade network: building ports, airports, railways, pipelines and roads – all with Chinese money. What many thought unimaginable until recently is already a reality. The leadership in Beijing had announced around $1 trillion for this comprehensive program by 2025. It has already invested or firmly planned nearly $730 billion until 2019, suspects trade economist Alexander Sandkamp of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). “Fact is that a lot of money has already been put in hand and will continue to be.”
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