Who would have thought that as Xi and Cheng were talking of ‘peace’? /s

So China stops its war games around Taiwan now? What does the CCP understand by ‘peace’?

As per Wikipedia citing a DW interview,

Cheng stated her worry that Taiwan under the presidency of Lai Ching-te would become like Ukraine under the Russian invasion. When the interviewer responded that “the dictator caused the war”, she rejected the claim and described Vladimir Putin as “a leader with democratically elected”, blaming the invasion on NATO enlargement. Source - Here is the interview (in Chinese)

She perfectly echos Chinese-Russian narratives.

So China stops its war games around Taiwan now? What does the CCP understand by ‘peace’?

As per Wikipedia citing a DW interview,

Cheng stated her worry that Taiwan under the presidency of Lai Ching-te would become like Ukraine under the Russian invasion. When the interviewer responded that “the dictator caused the war”, she rejected the claim and described Vladimir Putin as “a leader with democratically elected”, blaming the invasion on NATO enlargement. Source - Here is the interview (in Chinese)

She perfectly echos Chinese-Russian narratives.

In the last couple of weeks alone, Bloomberg published a series of articles with, say, similar headlines:

Deutsche Bank Says China Is Energy ‘Winner’ in Age of War (9 April)

How China Is Winning The War With Iran (1 April)

China Can Win Big With Little Treats (29 March)

It is the prolongation of a series of similarly worded headlines with similar narratives over the last years, maybe best presented in one of Bloomberg’s article in December 2025, titled, “Give Up On Winning Against China”.

You’ll easily find these examples and ample evidence of similarly worded headlines by Bloomberg, a media company that has been collaborating with China for some time now.

Examples:

• China Universal Asset Management and Bloomberg Establish Strategic Collaboration
• China Construction Bank and Bloomberg Deepen Collaboration

Does the independent media outlet’s collaboration with China pay off? Who is the winner?

[Edit typo.]

I don’t know what went wrong. Here I can see the archived link and its clickable.

So here again, hope that helps: https://web.archive.org/web/20260408064343/https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/stanford-university-chinese-spies-china-cxk8gn2mr

The SCMP is a propaganda outlet under the direct censorship rule of the Chinese Communist Party. This means it supports unconditionally the Chinese government’s aggression against Taiwan.

Addition:

As per Wikipedia citing a DW interview,

Cheng stated her worry that Taiwan under the presidency of Lai Ching-te would become like Ukraine under the Russian invasion. When the interviewer responded that “the dictator caused the war”, she rejected the claim and described Vladimir Putin as “a leader with democratically elected”, blaming the invasion on NATO enlargement. Source - Here is the interview (in Chinese)

She perfectly echos Chinese-Russian narratives.

This is not true.

Borrowing from Beijing is not cheap: whereas a typical rescue loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) carries a 2% interest rate, the average interest rate attached to a Chinese rescue loan is 5%.

In addition, Chinese loans come with opaque terms and many clauses that put the borrower at a disadvantage.

We find widespread use of “No Paris Club” and “no comparability of treatment” clauses—that expressly prohibit the borrower country from restructuring their outstanding debts to China in coordination with Paris Club creditors and/or on comparable terms with them. This practice suggests that Chinese state-owned banks are effectively seeking to position themselves as “preferred creditors” exempt from restructuring. More generally, we find that Chinese contracts give lenders considerable discretion to cancel loans and/or demand full repayment ahead of schedule. Such terms give lenders an opening to project policy influence over the sovereign borrower, and effectively limit the borrower’s policy space to cancel a Chinese loan or to issue new environmental regulations. [Emphasis mine.]

A new report reveals many of these hidden structures of Chinese loans in global lending:

In a typical transaction, debtors promise to route their principal commodity export revenues through overseas bank accounts that remain out of public sight and largely beyond their control until the debts are repaid. The cash balances in these accounts, mostly located in China and controlled by the lenders, can be very large; in low-income, commodity-exporting countries, they average more than 20% of annual public debt service to all external creditors.

These and may other investigations clearly show that Chinese is a bad borrower, putting creditor at their peril.

Tonga is the latest sad example. Let’s hope that New Zealand and possibly other democracies and/or Western institution will support them.

Yes.

Addition:

[Tonfa PM] Lord Fakafanua said his country will not be accepting any more Chinese loans.

And:

[New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher ] Luxon said he supports Tonga’s focus on fiscal restraint, and it “goes without saying” that New Zealand was ready to help when needed.

Conclusion: Tonga would ve better off if and when it partnered with a Western democracy in the first place rather than China.

The US is repaying its debt as all others do.

China’s move ahead of the U.S. more broadly reflects a decline in U.S. ratings rather than an increase in China’s ratings. Approval of China’s leadership increased by double digits over the past year in 23 countries (versus 44 showing a similar decrease for the U.S.). However, many of China’s increases occurred in countries where U.S. approval fell.

If such surveys have a meaning at all, it basically says that the U.S. is more and more becoming like China: a dictatorship.

But it makes a good geadline for OP’s propanda.

Oh, and btw,

Germany — which has ranked as the most positively viewed major power for nine consecutive years in Gallup’s trend, spanning the chancellorships of Merkel, Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz — receives the highest approval in 2025, at 48%.

Canada’s Finance Minister says he raised the importance of labour standards during meetings with top Chinese officials

What exactly did he raise? Will Canada improve its laws and ban imports made by forced labour?

Canada’s Finance Minister says he raised the importance of labour standards during meetings with top Chinese officials

What exactly did he raise? Will Canada improve its laws and ban imports made by forced labour?

If an apps poses a threat to people or something, the state should have the right to prohibit that very much as other things in the ‘real’ world. But Russia, China, and other autocracies ban apps to increase surveillance and foster their own dictatorial policies. China, for example, banned gay dating apps as far as I remember, along with tens of thousands other apps. Now Russia is banning Signal and other messengers. The regimes are trying to protect themselves and limit their own people’s freedom.

Can you really fix social issues with technology?

No, you can’t imo so I fully share you scepticism. As I said in my other comment, it may help by providing some sources, but it’s not the solution itself imo.

Putin and his war economy need more than a couple of match boxes. They need funds to prevent state-controlled non-military industries from collapsing (railways, Gazprom, …).

For at least the second time since 2014, the Kremlin takes money away from current and future (!) pensioners to fund short term projects, not in the least because Russia reached almost its entire planned 2026 budget deficit in the first quarter.

Future generations of Russians will suffer from this.

[Edit typo.]

They should freeze all funds dedicated for Hungary imo. This money benefits almost exclusively Orban & friends. I do hope for the 12th of April …

I am also sceptical, though it may help if the bot provides a sources. The major problem is not so much the AI but the people who control the the AI algorithms and the training data.

Yes, the Deutsche Bank should know that as the company has traditionally strong ties with China. It’s a decades-long history. For example, in 2019, it accepted a fine after Deutsche Bank hired the relatives of foreign government officials in China and Russia in exchange for business.

Deutsche Bank is a big player in China, and it started years ago when he bank launched a brazen campaign to win business in China by charming and enriching the country’s political elite:

The bank gave a Chinese president a crystal tiger and a Bang & Olufsen sound system, together worth $18,000. A premier received a $15,000 crystal horse, his Chinese zodiac animal, and his son got $10,000 in golf outings and a trip to Las Vegas. A top state banking official, a son of one of China’s founding fathers, accepted a $4,254 bottle of French wine — Château Lafite Rothschild, vintage 1945, the year he was born.

Millions of dollars were paid out to Chinese consultants, including a business partner of the premier’s family and a firm that secured a meeting for the bank’s chief executive with the president. And more than 100 relatives of the Communist Party’s ruling elite were hired for jobs at the bank, even though it had deemed many unqualified.

This was all part of Deutsche Bank’s strategy to become a major player in China, beginning nearly two decades ago when it had virtually no presence there. And it worked. By 2011, the German company would be ranked by Bloomberg as the top bank for managing initial public offerings in China and elsewhere in Asia, outside Japan.

What the report refers here is before the full-scale invasion in 2022, Russia deported children already before that (as the war began already in 2014 by invading Crimea).

It’s paywalled.