China expresses its willingness to import more German goods

Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang expressed to visiting German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier that China is ready to import more high-quality German products, as the two countries seek to strengthen trade relations in light of the escalation of protectionism between Europe and Beijing.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement issued late Friday said Li also urged the two countries to firmly adhere to free trade and open cooperation.

Li said China is willing to work with Germany to use intergovernmental consultation mechanisms to expand cooperation in the fields of automobiles, chemicals, artificial intelligence, digital and green industries.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday urged Germany to pursue a “rational, practical and friendly” policy towards China, using his talks with Steinmeier to push for closer relations despite increasing trade disputes between Beijing and Europe.

China's reserves of strategic resources, including gold, nickel and rhenium, rose sharply after a comprehensive reassessment of deposits nationwide, Bloomberg News reported, citing the New China News Agency (Xinhua) on Saturday.

The agency explained, citing data from the Ministry of Natural Resources, that the reserved rhenium resources increased by more than 200 percent, while the volume of additions to gold reserves amounted to 50 huge deposits and to nickel reserves 30 huge deposits.

The report revealed a huge jump in reserves of gallium, indium, tantalum and vanadium equivalent to more than 10 huge deposits, following a re-evaluation of their associated, low-quality and difficult-to-extract deposits.

The project, which lasted a full year, focused on 17 strategic minerals in more than 1,800 operating mines and large and medium-sized mining areas, with the participation of more than 100 institutions and about 2,000 survey team members in 27 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.

The agency noted that China also discovered the country's first deposits of ancient river-lake zircon sand in the Baicheng region of Xinjiang, which could lead to a significant increase in domestic supplies of zircon.

China has long relied on importing zircon, the primary source of zirconium used in coating fuel rods in nuclear reactors and in high-temperature aviation alloys.

The World Bank reported that India saw about 496 million people lifted out of poverty between 2011 and 2023, one of the fastest rates of decline for this indicator in the world, although these gains are still unequal among all groups and regions.

The percentage of people living below the poverty line (those with lower-average income) (set at $4.20 per day) decreased from 57.7 percent to 16.1 percent, which means that about half a billion people have exceeded this level, according to Bloomberg News Agency.

The bank indicated in a report published this month that the decline was more rapid in the extreme poverty category (measured by $3 per day), where the percentage fell from 27.1 percent to 2.6 percent.

The World Bank's South Asia poverty economists, led by Iago Wambili, wrote in the report that this improvement was due "primarily to strong growth in consumption, rising employment rates, especially among women, and an expansion in social transfers, including food subsidies."