Global News Podcast - Biden meets Xi Jinping as concerns over a US-China trade war grow

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

Joe Biden has met Xi Jinping as concerns over a US-China trade war grow. Also: the discovery of ancient volcanoes on the Moon, and a secret garden in Venice is opened to the public for the first time in 500 years.

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T's and C's apply. going to unravel this all. From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel and in the early hours of Sunday the 17th of November these are our main stories. Joe Biden has held what's likely to be his last meeting as US President with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping as concerns grow about a possible US-China trade war. The Spanish weather agency has contradicted Valencia's regional leader, saying it had warned him about floods last month that claimed more than 200 lives. Eight people have been killed in a mass stabbing at a college campus in eastern China.

Also in this podcast. The near side and the far side of the moon are very different. The near side and the far side of the moon are very different and this is the first samples from this far side and they reveal that volcanism occurred as recently as 2.8 billion years ago on the far side. The discovery of ancient volcanoes on our moon. The leaders of the world's two biggest economies, the US and China, have met on the sidelines of a summit in Peru, a day after both leaders warned of turbulent times ahead. It's likely to be the last time that President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping meet

in person before Donald Trump takes over from Mr Biden in January. Mr Xi told Mr Biden that China would, quote, strive for a smooth transition in relations with the US. Mr Trump has threatened to impose tariffs of up to 60 percent on Chinese imports at a time when China's economy is already struggling. Steve Tsang, the director of the China Institute at Soas University here in London, says nothing will change now until Mr Trump takes over. China will not make any concessions to the Biden administration now. If Xi Jinping is planning to make any concessions to the United States, he will offer them to Donald Trump after Donald Trump became president

and not to the outgoing president Biden now. A correspondent in Washington, Rowan Bridge, told us more about the meeting. The United States have been briefing that they're going to use the occasion to challenge China on issues where they have concerns, things like hacking, human rights violations, threats against Taiwan. But as you say, this is really part of the Biden swan song and you know, President Xi doesn't have to worry about things like term limits. He's very secure in his position and you can sort of feel the Chinese sort of metaphorically already looking over Joe Biden's shoulder at the incoming Trump administration and what

that might mean for them. Exactly, because the big fear for them is a trade war given Mr Trump's threats to impose hefty tariffs on China. Donald Trump made big play of this during his election campaign. I watched a number of his rallies and you would hear him speak repeatedly about this idea of imposing tariffs on Chinese goods as a way of defending US manufacturing and jobs. The idea being that you make Chinese goods more expensive, that makes it more attractive to buy domestic products and boost the US

economy. The flip side of that, the argument against that is you end up with a tit for tat situation effectively where both sides start to impose tariffs on each other, international trade slows down. And also, you know, if there is no domestic production, if you are relying on China for your goods, that makes them more expensive for US customers. I think the issue is how significant an impact will tariffs have? And that will come down to how widespread they are

and how far afield they go. So, you know, are they not just on China, but are they on the EU, for example, or UK? There is a warning from the International Monetary Fund, which is an agency of the UN, that a major trade war on that scale could affect the world economy by around 7 percent. And to give you an idea of scale, that's the size of the French and the German economies combined. So I think it really depends on how all this stuff plays out over the coming months. And the fact that they're meeting in South America, where China has

expanded its influence in recent years is significant too for the Trump administration because this is a region that the US has long regarded as its backyard. Yeah, I mean, President Xi inaugurated this deep sea port about 40 miles north of Peru before the meeting today. And that, I think, was really sort of symbolic of the way the Chinese have spread their economic influence into what is almost sort of the United States backyard and a real sign of their growing influence in the region and something that clearly the United States is

going to be very much aware of. Well, as Rowan was saying there, the Trump administration's economic policies will also very likely affect Europe, with the eurozone economy set to fall further behind the US. The European Commission has downgraded its 2025 growth forecast from 1.4 to 1.3 percent and that's before the economic policies of the new US administration have been fully priced in. Andrew Peach spoke to Carsten Brzezinski, chief eurozone economist at ING Bank. Well I think the European Commission just showed that we will see even lower growth in the eurozone while on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean we will see even lower growth in the Eurozone, while on the other side of

the Atlantic Ocean we'll see American economy that will probably benefit from lower taxes and deregulation. So the gap between the US and the Eurozone will widen in 2025. How much has that picture changed since the US election? Yeah, it has become worse from a European perspective. Something that the European Commission was not able to put into its own forecast because they have the so-called cutoff date. But with the Trump administration, I think Europe has to be prepared for trade war deregulation, tax cuts in the US already lower energy prices and the deregulation and the tax cuts

will mean that the US will become even more attractive for investors. And I think we will see European companies considering at least to go to the US or at least to increase their exposure and their activities in the US, which then would come at the cost of European growth. What do European governments need to do with a growth forecast now at 1.3% and possibly that being optimistic? One thing regarding this forecast by the European Commission, it still is not fully taking into account the structural weakness of the European economy. So this is still a very optimistic forecast.

It doesn't take Donald Trump into account and it doesn't take the structural weakness into account. So what European governments should do now is clearly not just wait for the next US administration to start and just to react to anything coming out of Washington DC, but rather to strengthen the domestic economy. Okay, and it could be that other economies are far more affected by what happens in the US than the US economy because it's so secure. Because I think the rest of the world will be hit in a negative way by the US economic

policies. The trade tensions will hit the other economies. The deregulation and making the US economy more attractive vis-a-vis the rest of the world will clearly also hit the rest of the world. So what this means is what the economic policies by the Trump administration could mean is that we will see even more divergence in the global economy with on the one hand the US economy and on the other hand the rest. Economist Carsten Brzezki. Pressure is growing on the head of the Valencia region in Spain about the failure to warn people in time about last month's devastating floods that claimed more than 220 lives. Carlos Maffon has refused to resign despite revelations that on the day a year's worth of rain fell in some places he was having

a three-hour lunch. Lourdes Gemero, who buried her mother on Saturday, recalled the events of October 29th last month. At first they told us it wouldn't be too bad because they didn't think it would reach the level that it did. But the water started rising, it kept rising and rising. My sister called 112 and they told us, you need to get to higher ground, no one can come to help, you need to go up. And I started shouting to the neighbours to help us. We've lost everything, everything, everything. Meanwhile, Spanish weather officials have hit back at Mr Mathon after he blamed them. They say they did alert his regional government in good time, but the warning was not passed on to

the public until it was too late. Our Madrid correspondent Guy Hedgeco told us more. This has turned into something of a bitter wrangle between the regional government of Valencia, the Conservative government and national agencies like the weather agency. What the meteorological agency has said, its latest comments, is that it provided enough information on the day of October the 29th for the local government to act and according to protocol it's the local government, the regional government which must use that information to take any action. Now the weather agency issued a red alert early in the morning of October 29th saying that this weather front with extreme weather was on the way and it took around 12 hours for the regional government of Carlos Mathon to actually issue its own alert

via a message to the phones of people in Valencia warning them for example to stay off roads and to stay inside where necessary. So the weather agency has simply been underlining that fact and saying that all the evidence was there and it's been trying to counter these accusations made by Mr Mathon that he was not given enough information on the day and that therefore he wasn't able to act as promptly as he might have wanted to. There have been concerns expressed about what he was doing on the day, whether he was in fact focused on dealing with this very important task of trying to make sure people were as prepared as possible for these floods. Well, that's right. He and his team were very coy in the days after the flood struck about

what exactly he'd been doing that day and why he had not, for example, attended a crisis meeting in the afternoon when the floods were already causing enormous damage. Eventually it emerged that he had been having a three and a half hour lunch with a local journalist in a restaurant in central Valencia and he finished that lunch at around six o'clock in the evening. He missed the crisis meeting and then went back to his office and started following events more closely.

But the fact that he was in that lunch so long, many people feel that that made it impossible for him to be on top of the situation. What was a huge tragedy for Valencia and people feel that that hole in his diary when he appeared to go missing is something he should answer for and that's been one of the big accusations levelled at him. Guy Hedgeco in Spain. Seven years after the Myanmar military carried out a sweeping campaign of massacres, rape and arson that led to hundreds of thousands of people from the long persecuted Rohingya

minority fleeing to Bangladesh, human rights groups say large numbers of the refugees appear to be leaving the overcrowded camps in Bangladesh because of violence there by armed groups. Rights groups say the Rohingyas still in Myanmar, in Rakhine state, are also fleeing as fighting continues between the Burmese military and insurgent groups. Police in Thailand say they've arrested dozens of Rohingyas in the past week who they believe are trying to get to Malaysia. Jonathan Head reports. It's nearly 10 years since the Thai government shut down people smuggling routes through Thailand after the discovery of hidden jungle camps where thousands of mainly Rohingya migrants

were held in appalling conditions. Now those routes appear to have opened again. Two groups of migrants, almost certainly Rohingyas, have been arrested in the past week. Hundreds more are believed to be on board boats heading south along the Myanmar coast. At least one boat, with 200 people on board, is reported to have capsized. Many Rohingya civilians have been caught in the fierce battles for control of Rakhine State between the Myanmar military, an insurgent group called the Arakan Army and Rohingya militants. The United Nations has warned that the fighting is creating near-famine conditions. In Rakhine and in the overcrowded refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh,

armed groups are also forcibly recruiting young men to fight. All this is driving growing numbers of Rohingyas to flee in rickety fishing boats run by smugglers. Indonesia is no longer as hospitable as it was, so now the smugglers are trying to get the migrants to Malaysia by going over land again across southern Thailand. Jonathan Head, now to the far side of the moon and an exciting discovery that volcanoes were erupting there nearly three billion years ago. Scientists have been examining fresh evidence from rock and dust samples collected by China's Chang'e 6 spacecraft. James Head, a research professor of geological sciences at Brown University in the US, is one of the scientists who is reviewing the

data from the samples. He told Celia Hatton what's been discovered. The goal of all planetary science is to really understand how did the Earth form and evolve. Unfortunately the record on the Earth is largely gone due to erosion and plate tectonics so it's like trying to read a history book of the Earth that contains ten chapters but the first eight are missing. So we look to the Moon and the planets to fill in those ancient gaps and so what we find here is that the near side and the far side of the moon are very different. And this is the first samples from this far side. And they reveal that volcanism, volcanic activity, lava flow eruptions occurred

as recently as 2.8 billion years ago on the far side. And it fills in many missing chapters of the history of the moon, which involves a lot of understanding of the Earth. Okay, so didn't we already know that there had been this kind of volcano on the near side of the Moon? If so, is it a surprise that they were also on the far side? Indeed, we did know that and unfortunately we can't see the far side except from orbital observations. So they show that there's very few evidences of volcanic activity on the far side and also a lot of other difference between a near side to far side. And so this historic sample returned by Chang'e 6 gave us actual

samples to measure and that gives us the ability to date those. They're younger than most of the ones on the near side and it also it's like bringing up a sample of depth. It's like a drill hole. It tells us all about the interior of the far side as well. And it's very different apparently than the interior or the near side. So these are fundamental findings and there'll be many more coming from the Chang'e 6 sample. Can you give us an idea of what these volcanoes might have been like? Sure. The ones that we see, in fact, if you think about the earth, everybody thinks about, oh, you know, Hawaii or things like that. But the situation on the moon is a little bit different.

The volcanoes, really their lava flows, are huge. They come out from the interior of the moon and they cover large areas in single eruptions. So it would be like a tsunami, like a flood that, in fact, occurs on the Earth of water, but instead it's lava. It's pretty amazing. Professor James Head. Still to come. I am welcomed into the garden by a path line

with fragrant herbs and slim cypresses. Butterflies have just fluttered past me. The secret garden in Venice, now open to the public for the first time in 500 years. This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app that helps you manage your money internationally. With WISE you have up to 40 currencies at your fingertips. You can receive money, pay bills and send money across borders without hidden fees. You always get the real-time mid-market exchange rates. See exactly what you pay, every time. Join millions of WISE customers worldwide. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com.

T's and C's apply. or visit wise.com. Tcc Supply. Witness the stories that have shaped our world. On the launch pad, in the dawn light, a towering symbol of an ambitious nation. Three, two, one. The whole of India was watching. Told by the people who were there. I still don't regret that I was part of Rose Revolution. I was a witness of very exciting days.

Witness history from the BBC World Service. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to the Global News podcast. The civil war that erupted in Sudan 19 months ago has had devastating consequences, creating one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. As a paramilitary group, the RSF battles the army for control of the country. Now a rights group says that in one state alone, Al Jazeera, more than 1,500 civilians have been killed by the RSF over the last month. This comes after an RSF commander who's from the state defected to the army in October. I got more from our Africa regional editor, Will Ross.

According to people fleeing the area, the RSF deliberately targeted this particular village and it's the second in two days and civilians were killed. There are all kinds of reports of people having their homes burnt to the ground and then those that could getting away and it's really a wave of attacks that have gone on in this state and in the last few hours we've heard sort of from activists as well who are there who are talking about extraordinary numbers of civilians being killed over the last month. There's this rights activist group called the Jazeera Congress and it's talking about more than 1,500 civilians being killed over the last month there.

And they're saying this seems to be because a commander from the rapid support forces defected to the army and he was from that area. So it seems the RSF are kind of deliberately carrying out attacks there. And as well as accusations that the world is not paying enough attention to this conflict in Sudan, there are also accusations there are outside powers that are supporting the rival sides. The Biden administration has been accused of not doing very much to try to end this war. Sudan's finance minister says he hopes the incoming Trump administration can do more. Is that likely? What is he hoping for?

Yeah, we will have to wait and see if there's a different tactic, but certainly the hope from the Sudanese government is that the next administration in the United States puts more pressure, especially on the United Arab Emirates, which have denied the accusations, but there have been quite a lot of evidence that it has backed the rapid support forces for a long time throughout this war. And there's this feeling that if the UAE was kind of to stop helping the RSF, it would possibly weaken the RSF to such a level that talks might have a better chance of succeeding. But at the moment, it just seems that both sides are determined to fight on and try and control the whole country and the fact that there is outside influence from external actors makes it even more difficult to stop the fighting.

Will Ross, a mass stabbing at a college campus in eastern China has left eight people dead and many others injured. Grant Verrett reports. Video from Wuxi shows bloodied bodies along a road at the local technical college. Police said they'd arrested a 21-year-old man who'd studied there. They said he admitted carrying out the stabbings because the institute had refused to issue his diploma.

He was also said to be unhappy with poor pay and long hours as an intern. On Monday night, 35 people were killed in southern China He was also said to be unhappy with poor pay and long hours as an intern. On Monday night, 35 people were killed in southern China when a man drove into a crowd outside a sports stadium. It was the deadliest such attack in China in many years. An online debate about the possible cause of the violence has been censored, considered politically sensitive by the authorities.

Grant Farage, the Iranian Foreign Ministry has categorically denied US reports that the billionaire Elon Musk, who is a key adviser to Donald Trump, met Iran's UN envoy in New York a few days ago. This contradicts a New York Times article quoting unnamed Iranian officials who said that Tehran had sought the meeting to ease tensions with the US before the President-elect takes office. In his first term Mr. Trump withdrew the US from a major nuclear accord with Iran and ordered the assassination of a high-level Iranian commander. So did this meeting happen or not? Our Middle East analyst is Mike Thompson. It's all rather bizarre and of course it came out as you said of a report

initially in the New York Times. It looked like a very well researched report and has since been picked up by media across the globe. Now the US were actually asked about this, is it true? A spokesman there said we do not comment on reports of private meetings that did or did not occur. There is doubt about this, but it does seem given the growing tensions between the two countries that this very likely did happen despite this comment by Iran. Yes, because there's a bit of semantics there, isn't it? Because this meeting, if it happened, was just before Elon Musk joined the incoming Trump administration. Why would Iran be denying it if it had

occurred? Well I think there's a lot of difficulty within Iran. There's different opinions about where to go next on this, strongly held opinions. You've got the very much more conservative hardline Revolutionary Guards people and then you've got the the country's recently elected president who's more moderate, Ali Larijani, who's the senior advisor to the supreme leader, he's also comparatively moderate. But you've also got the fact that we've seen Hezbollah, which Iran backs, we've seen Hamas, which Iran backs.

Now they have been heavily battered by Israel in the fighting. So these are proxy armies that were used pretty much as a defense by Iran. They've been diminished hugely. And of course, Donald Trump's a very unpredictable character. He'd been very hardline, as you mentioned earlier. And so there'd be concerns about what he might do. And I think there is a stronger feeling in Iran that perhaps they ought to look at ways of making sure they can avoid a war. Another intriguing aspect of this, a lot of people are asking,

why would Elon Musk be involved in such sensitive negotiations? Well, he's seen as a very transactional figure. That's what people say Donald Trump is. He's close to Trump. So it looks like he would well be trusted to try and wheel any deal or certainly pave the way for such a thing. And also, of course, as you mentioned earlier, he was at the time of that alleged meeting a private individual,

therefore he was not restrained from meeting with other government representatives from other countries. So it was quite permissible to meet. So in that way, it's not really all that surprising. Mike Thompson, a hidden garden in Venice has opened to the public for the first time in 500 years. The garden is part of the convent of the Church of Santissimo Redentore, created in the late 16th century.

Since then, it's remained a private sanctuary for the Capuchin friars, with access limited to only a few until now. The garden's survival was threatened by a huge flood in 2019, which prompted a careful restoration. The project focused on sustainability and self-sufficiency, bringing the garden back to its former beauty while safeguarding it for the future and against the threat of climate change. Beatriz Guzadi is a BBC journalist and Venetian resident. She was there for its first opening to the public. resident, she was there for its first opening to the public. I'm in Venice. I've just taken off with my boat, the best way to travel

around the city's canals. Today, I'm sailing to the island of Giudecca, where for the first time since its foundation 500 years ago, the sacred convent garden of the Church of Santissimo Redentore will be open to the public. This peaceful garden, created in the late 1500s after Venice suffered a terrible plague, was a quiet place for the Capuchin friars to reflect and live their daily lives. For centuries it has been hidden away from the world.

And here we are. It has been hidden away from the world. And here we are. I am welcomed into the garden by a patholine with fragrant herbs and slim cypresses. Butterflies have just fluttered past me. There are vegetable plots on my right. But it hasn't always looked like this. Venice, submerged by its highest tide in over 50 years. The old city on the lagoon is now mostly submerged in water. The gardens were badly affected by the extraordinary tide that floated Venice in 2019, or Acqua

Grande, as it is called here. Adelaire Rebaudengo is the president of Venice Gardens Foundation. She tells me how the Acqua Grande drove the efforts to restore the gardens. Right after the Acqua Grande, I went to the Capuchin friars to ask them about their garden. Water rose above 1.87 metres. Indeed, both the buildings and the garden were in serious difficulty and we worked hard to care for its trees.

The restoration of this garden is part of a bigger effort to protect Venice's heritage as climate change threatens the city's foundations. As you walk through the garden, you can breathe in its history, the meditation chapel, the orchards, and the herb gardens which were once used by the friars as a valuable source of food and medicinal herbs and were of vital importance to community life. This secret place gives us a glimpse into the spiritual and everyday lives of the people who lived here long ago. Friar Alessandro Carollo is the head of the cappuccino friars in the Triveneto area. In reality, this story starts well before the Acqua Grande in 2019, which partially ruined our gardens.

Our project is not only to restore an environmental and artistic treasure, but we also wanted to create a place for people to connect. These gates have been closed for hundreds of years. Today they open not only to reveal a secret garden, but also to bring hope for the future of Venice. That report by Beatrice Guzzatti. And that's all from us for now, but there will be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Chris Lovelock, the producer was Alison Davis, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jaleel. Until next time, goodbye.

This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app that helps you manage your money internationally. With WISE, you have up to 40 currencies at your fingertips. You can receive money, pay When we left there was this wonderful feeling but it was only the beginning of a nightmare. This is a story that started with a job advert. A yacht owner looking for a crew to sail his recently renovated boat from Brazil to Europe. For me it was going to be a great adventure and an opportunity to gain a lot of experience. But when police raided the vessel and discovered drugs... Cocaine, hidden under one of the beds. It can't be.

...a key suspect was miles away. Everything revolved around him. Who's the boss? A British guy. Fox. Fox. This is World of Secrets from the BBC World Service, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets from the BBC World Service, season five, Finding Mr. Fox.

Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.