China has voiced its concerns regarding Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment in South Korea, offering Seoul to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) launched by Beijing in 2014.

The consequences of China’s continued strong growth, and prolonged economic weakness in much of the west, have been more than financial. In terms of perceptions, many international publics believe the global economic balance of power has swung sharply toward the country.

On Sunday evening, Prince William arrives in Beijing at the start of a three day visit to China.  At state level, the objective is to promote brand Britain, and at a personal level, it's an opportunity to talk about his abiding passion: elephant protection.

U.S. President Barack Obama will appear in public at an event attended by the Dalai Lama in Washington in the coming week, the White House said Friday, a move sure to anger Beijing.

Beijing has previously said its cooperation with African nations covers farm, health and infrastructure-related projects. In July, China said more than half its foreign aid, of more than $14 billion between 2010 and 2012, went to Africa. China says there are no strings attached to its aid, but some of its projects have drawn attention for their support of governments with poor human rights records and lack of transparency, such as Zimbabwe, Sudan and Angola. 
 

A sold-out tour of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” ended in Beijing last week. Meanwhile, a Chinese publishing house has nearly finished translating Shakespeare’s works into Mandarin – both signs of the English playwright's surging popularity in China.  

Weeks before the summit, environment unfriendly industries within Beijing and the adjacent regions were suspended as required to reproduce the long lost blue sky and as short as the APEC meeting, the blueness was gone with the closure of the summit.

The frosty handshake between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Beijing is providing an opportunity for the two countries to end the downward spiral of the last two years, but this is by no means assured. Both sides had their respective domestic audiences in mind at the historic meeting.