China Project

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, April 11, 2025

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) raised tariffs on the United States from 34 percent to 125 percent and imposed export controls on seven critical minerals that are essential to the US defense industry. The PRC was retaliating for the United States increasing tariffs on the PRC. These export controls encompass seven materials with extensive military applications. The United States cannot produce the designated minerals at a sufficient scale and exempted them from tariffs in recognition of their importance.

China-Taiwan Weekly Update, January 30, 2025

The Taiwanese government has created a blacklist of 52 PRC-owned ships that warrant greater scrutiny to keep track of the PRC’s growing “shadow fleet” of ostensibly commercial vessels that act on behalf of the PRC. The Tokyo Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), an inter-governmental co-operative organization in the Asia-Pacific devoted to ensuring effective port state control, passed on a list of “problematic” ships to Taiwan, which the Taiwanese government later narrowed down to certain ships owned by PRC individuals or entities. The list focuses on cargo ships that are registered in Cameroon, Tanzania, Mongolia, Togo, and Sierra Leone. These five countries have the largest number of ships with problematic documentation, violations of maritime safety and labor regulations, or evasion of sanctions, according to Tokyo MOU.

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