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China announced a series of measures to protect its economy and workers from the impact of an intensifying trade war with the United States on Monday, as officials said they remained “fully confident” of hitting the country’s annual economic growth target of about 5 per cent.

Beijing will encourage companies to maintain stable hiring, stepping up vocational training schemes, expanding employment through public works programmes and other supportive projects, and strengthening public employment services, according to Zhao.

Sheng Qiuping, deputy minister of commerce, said Beijing would increase support for companies affected by US tariffs by helping them pivot to the domestic market and providing fiscal and financial services.

The government has already allocated 160 billion yuan (US$22 billion) for trade-in programmes to encourage consumers to spend on a range of big-ticket consumer goods so far this year, with another 140 billion yuan of investment to follow, according to Zhao.

It is also working on a range of other consumption-boosting policies, including a childcare subsidy scheme, targeted re-lending tools, expanded support for the services and elderly care sectors, and moves to relax municipal restrictions on car license plates to allow more households to buy vehicles, Zhao added.

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Taiwan has launched a crackdown on holders of illegal Chinese identity documents, revoking the Taiwanese status of more than 20 people and putting tens of thousands of Chinese-born residents under scrutiny.

Under Taiwan law it is illegal for Taiwanese people to hold Chinese identity documents. In the past decade, hundreds of people have had their Taiwanese papers or passports cancelled for also holding Chinese ID, effectively revoking their citizenship.

But a renewed hunt for dual ID-holders has drawn controversy after the public expulsion of three women and threats to the permanent residencies of more than 10,000 Chinese-born people, including many who had built lives and families in Taiwan over decades.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping has agreed to finance the construction of Kenyan roads and railways including the rebuilding of a notorious accident black spot.

Xi made the pledge when he welcomed his Kenyan counterpart William Ruto to Beijing on Thursday, promising also to support “high-level connectivity, and sustainable trade”.

The funding he pledged will include work to rebuild the Nithi Bridge in central Kenya, a notorious death trap that has claimed hundreds of lives since its commissioning four decades ago. The plan involves the building of a viaduct that will remove the steep descents and sharp corners that make the bridge so dangerous.

Kenya is a key partner for China’s Belt and Road Initiative – a transcontinental infrastructure project – that has already helped build a rail link between Mombasa, Nairobi and the Central Rift Valley at a cost of around US$5 billion.

Apart from railway projects, China also agreed to allow Kenya to explore the issuing of yuan-denominated panda bonds while Xi pledged to continue talks about a free-trade agreement and to “import more fine Kenyan products and promote the balanced and sustainable development of bilateral trade”.

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The US commerce department has announced the new tariffs, targeting companies in Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, after an investigation begun a year ago when American manufacturers of solar panels accused Chinese companies of flooding the market with subsidised, cheap goods.

Products from Cambodia would face the highest tariffs, of 3,521%, because its companies did not cooperate with the US investigation, while products made in Malaysia by the Chinese manufacturer Jinko Solar face duties of just over 41%; rival Trina Solar’s products from Thailand will incur tariffs of 375%.

However, critics, including the Solar Energy Industries Association trade group, have said tariffs would harm US solar producers because they would raise prices on the imported cells that are assembled into panels at American factories.

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Nearly a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin called Afghanistan’s Taliban an “ally” in countering terrorism, Moscow lifted a two-decade-old ban on the group, aiming to bolster ties with Kabul to crush a joint enemy — the Islamic State.

The move was “no surprise,” given Putin has spoken of growing cooperation with the Taliban on terrorism, said John Herbst, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. Those comments were “specifically directed against ISIS,” which claimed responsibility for the bloody Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in March 2024, he said.

The decision will also “open the door for official recognition of the Taliban government,” which has remained a pariah since taking power in Afghanistan nearly four years ago, said Faizullah Jalal, an independent Afghan political analyst and human rights activist.

Normalizing relations could increase economic activity between the two countries. Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said late last year it’s looking to hammer out projects in the energy and agriculture sectors with the Taliban, according to the Tass news agency, and by the end of last year Afghanistan had become the top buyer of Russian flour.

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Ukraine said on Thursday that it had failed to reach a deal with holders of $2.6bn of its debt, in a blow to its hopes of securing a restructuring ahead of a payment deadline next month.

The country’s finance ministry said it would “consider all available options” and continue negotiations after the failure of opening talks in Washington this week with holders of its so-called GDP warrants.

Last month the IMF said that “if left untreated” the warrants “constitute an important risk” for the stability of an ongoing $15.5bn bailout and Kyiv’s restructuring of more than $20bn in bonds last year.

“The GDP warrants were designed for a world that no longer exists,” said Ukraine’s finance ministry on Thursday. “Ukraine’s modest economic growth in 2023 was not a sign of surging prosperity but a fragile rebound from a nearly 30 per cent downturn caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion.”

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Beijing has called on the US to “completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures” if it wants trade talks, in some of China’s strongest comments yet on the impasse between the world’s two economic superpowers.

“The unilateral tariff measures were initiated by the US,” said He Yadong, a Chinese commerce ministry spokesperson. “If the US truly wants to solve the problem, it should . . . completely cancel all unilateral tariff measures against China and find a way to resolve differences through equal dialogue.”

Beijing has maintained that the US must make the first move to de-escalate the crisis, which is threatening to spark a hard decoupling between the two countries’ economies.

Chinese analysts argue that the US imposition of high tariffs make it difficult for Beijing to find a way to defuse the crisis.

China’s President Xi Jinping would find it difficult to engage personally with Trump on the trade war unless this was preceded by extensive negotiations to hammer out a deal, they say.

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China is preparing to lift sanctions on European lawmakers as it tries to revive an investment deal with the EU after losing most of its access to the US market in Donald Trump’s trade war.

A spokesperson for Roberta Metsola, president of the European parliament, confirmed the move, first reported by German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Beijing took the measures against several MEPs in 2021 after the EU placed sanctions on some Chinese entities because of alleged human rights violations against the Uyghur Muslim minority in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.

The European parliament then refused to ratify an EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment that would have deepened trade ties between the two.

“The president will first inform group leaders once the Chinese authorities officially confirm that sanctions have been lifted. It has always been the European parliament’s intention to have the sanctions lifted and resume relations with China.”

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Donald Trump said during a White House news conference that high tariffs on goods from China will “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero”.

Trump’s remarks were in response to earlier comments on Tuesday by treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who said that the high tariffs were unsustainable and that he expects a “de-escalation” in the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

The US president said that the final tariff rate with China would come down “substantially” from the current 145%.

“It won’t be that high, not going to be that high,” Trump said.

China’s government was yet to respond to the news, but has consistently criticised Trump’s tariffs. On China’s social media platform, Weibo, Trump’s remarks trended under various hashtags including “Trump admitted defeat”.

Trump has shown no public indications that he plans to pullback his baseline 10% tariff, even as he has insisted he’s looking for other nations to cut their own import taxes and remove any non-tariff barriers that the administration says have hindered exports from the US.

China on Monday warned other countries against making trade deals with the United States that could negatively impact China.

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China’s domestically developed C909 passenger jet has expanded its regional presence, with two of them beginning commercial operations with Vietnam’s budget airline VietJet on Saturday.

Their debut makes Vietnam the third Southeast Asian country to sign on the planes made by the state-owned Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (Comac), after Indonesia and Laos.

According to a statement from Comac on Saturday, the civilian jets have been leased from Chinese regional carrier Chengdu Airlines, and will operate on domestic routes between Vietnamese capital Hanoi and Con Dao Island off southern Vietnam, and between Con Dao Island and business hub Ho Chi Minh City.

News of the VietJet lease came days after Vietnamese regulatory reforms allowing airlines to import aircraft certified by Brazil, Canada, Russia, Britain and China. The government decree, which took effect on April 13, expands a previous policy that restricted imports to aircraft certified by Vietnam, the United States or the European Union.

Comac, which aims to advance China’s goal of technological self-sufficiency, is seen as a potential challenger to the Airbus-Boeing duopoly in the global market. Comac’s narrowbody C919 passenger jet – viewed as a direct competitor to the single-aisle Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families – is rapidly expanding production and commercial operations, while the widebody C929 is reportedly in the detailed design stage.

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Ecommerce giants Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo are leading Chinese internet groups in launching multibillion-dollar initiatives to help traditional exporters switch to domestic sales, as part of a national campaign to cushion the country’s economy from an escalating trade war with the US.

Alibaba has set up a task force to source goods from exporters in more than 10 provinces across China. Taobao and Tmall, its ecommerce marketplaces, have promised to offer higher commissions and better exposure on their platforms to encourage at least 10,000 exporters to sell 100,000 items. Alibaba’s supermarket chain Freshippo also said it had created special “green channels” for export suppliers to sell their products on its shelves.

As well as the cancelling of the “de minimis” duty exemption on small packages worth less than $800, Chinese sellers face tariffs of 125 per cent on many of the goods they have been shipping to the US, making such sales uneconomical.

Li Chengdong, founder of Beijing-based ecommerce consultancy Haitun, said “political” considerations had driven Chinese tech giants to “voluntarily take on social responsibilities”.

Chinese tech groups have been reined in and reminded of their social responsibilities by Beijing since a government crackdown in 2020. President Xi Jinping met leading entrepreneurs in February, including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, Tencent’s Pony Ma and Meituan’s Wan Xing, in a sign that the sector was back in favour.

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Chinese and Indonesian foreign and defence ministers will meet on Monday for the first “2+2” dialogue of its kind in Beijing.

“That is the first ministerial‑level ‘2+2’ mechanism that China has set up, showing the strategic nature and high level of China‑Indonesia cooperation,” ministry spokesman Lin Jian said.

Lin said the discussions would cover political security and defence ties between Beijing and Jakarta, as well as international and regional issues.

The talks reflect China’s renewed efforts to strengthen engagement with Southeast Asia as a bulwark against worsening ties with the United States.

The region is increasingly being seen as a geopolitical chessboard for the China-US rivalry and China appears to be broadening its long-standing foreign policy focus on relations with big powers, particularly Washington, by fostering stronger ties with neighbouring countries.

The Biden administration also sought to upgrade America’s strategic and defence dialogue arrangement with Thailand to the ministerial level and established an economic version of the “2+2” meeting with Japan.

However, since US President Donald Trump took office in January, Washington has not moved forward with new talks under those established mechanisms.

Meanwhile, China and Indonesia agreed in November to hold their first ministerial-level 2+2 dialogue – one of various commitments reached during Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s trip to the Chinese capital.

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