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Soriek  1yr ago (text post)   1204 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 21

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. Feel free to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the the Ukraine War, or even just whatever you’re reading. Megathread for the Israel-Palestine conflict is here though if you want to talk about it in this thread as well feel free.

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China

American Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer recently met with President Xi Jinping to prepare and agenda set for of an anticipated dialogue between the Chinese leader and Joe Biden. Apparently the meeting also resulted in a stronger statement of condemnation against the Hamas attacks from China, although their public wording was still careful. China also welcomed the European Union’s top diplomat yesterday and has said they hope to work to increase relations, a day after the EU announced that it would pursue a probe into Chinese steel subsidies, in hopes of not renewing American’s own steel and aluminum tariffs.

The government has finally released figures for the toll from the biblical plague-like series of natural disasters the country has been going through:

China suffered direct economic losses of 308.29 billion yuan ($42 billion) over the first nine months of 2023, the government said, from natural disasters such as torrential rains, deadly landslides, freakish hailstorms and a string of typhoons.

The emergency management ministry unveiled on Sunday the unprecedented toll wrought on the nation of 1.4 billion by calamities that ranged from sandstorms to rains that brought massive flooding and historic rainfall in Beijing, the capital.

Officials said 499 people were reported dead and missing in natural disasters during the nine-month period, with more than 89 million affected, while over 2.75 million had to be evacuated and resettled.

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