Global News Podcast - China's trade booms amid threat of US tariffs

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

China has reported its largest-ever annual trade surplus, amid Donald Trump's threat to impose tariffs. Also, an investigation into the fast fashion giant Shein; and the millions taking part in Kumbh Mela in India.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by bestselling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity. Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever.

Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life, available to purchase wherever you get your audio books. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel and at 14 Hours GMT on Monday the 13th of January, these are our main stories. China reports its biggest ever trade surplus of nearly a trillion dollars, even as it prepares

for Donald Trump to carry out his threat to impose tariffs. The BBC finds that people making clothes in China for the fast fashion giant Xi'an are working more than 75 hours a week contravening labour laws. Firefighters in Los Angeles brace for the return of strong winds, which they warn could trigger explosive fire growth. Also in this podcast. Amazing. India is a spiritual heart of the world.

I feel amazing. The water is cold but the heart is warm. Millions of people are taking part in India's huge religious festival, the Kummela on the banks of the Ganges. There's hardly anywhere on earth that Chinese goods don't reach. And now China has reported its largest ever annual trade surplus, amounting to nearly one trillion, yes that's right, nearly one trillion dollars last year. This comes as the country is experiencing a property crisis,

stuttering economic growth and the threat of hefty tariffs on Chinese goods by the incoming US President Donald Trump, sparking fears of a trade war between the world's two economic superpowers. Our Asia Pacific editor, Mickey Bristow, explained why China's exports are doing so well despite the country's many problems. Remember that the Chinese economy is actually massive, second only to the United States. Its tentacles reach across the world as you indicated there so it's not really surprising that it does have a large surplus and that it's recorded this surplus. It's done it primarily because it's pushed the government's exports since a pandemic.

It's always been exports, the basis of its economic growth. The government has pushed that recently. Also, demand within the country has been quite sluggish, quite low. And so imports aren't growing nearly as much as exports. And so the surplus is the difference between the two. And so they exaggerated it. And a third reason is that you touched on that Donald Trump coming into office in America has threatened to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. A lot of exporters are just getting in, getting their exports into America particularly before that might arise. So they're kind of front loading them to get them out there before Donald Trump enters the White House. Well, we've heard that he's already threatening tariffs, so the news about these surplus figures will

probably further increase tensions, not just between Beijing and Washington, but also between Beijing and other trading partners like the European Union. Trade isn't just an economic issue, it's a political issue as well. If China's in surplus, then somebody's in deficit and no country likes to be giving money away to other countries. And so you see in the European Union, America, there's a political groundswell to try and rebalance this deficit as it is in their countries with China, to sell more to China, to take in fewer imports. At the moment, the European Union is trying to restrict the

import of Chinese electric vehicles to protect its own market. So there's a political aspect to this which will play out when President Trump becomes the president again in a week's time. With all kinds of implications for the global economy? All kinds of implications for the global economy and primarily as well for the Chinese economy as I suggested earlier economic growth in China has been built primarily on exports also on infrastructure spending in China but primarily on

exports. Now if your main driver of growth is facing problems because people are going to put tariffs on your exports you're not going to be able to sell as many to the outside world that's a problem for China so they're going to put tariffs on your exports, you're not going to be able to sell as many to the outside world. That's a problem for China so they're going to be pretty worried about what's going to happen this year. Mickey Bristow. Well we stay with the issue of Chinese exports and the people who work hard to produce them. The BBC has found that factory workers in China making clothes for the fast fashion giant Xian, are working more than 75 hours a week

in contravention of the country's labour laws. Such long hours are not unusual in the southern city of Guangzhou, but the BBC's findings will add to a growing list of questions about what conditions are like in its factories. Our China correspondent Laura Bicka spent the day speaking to those toiling around the clock in the so-called Xi'an village. The machines seldom stop in this factory producing clothes for the fast fashion giant Xi'an. The workers listen to podcasts or cooking shows as they stitch or steam fabric. More than a dozen workers told the BBC they do this for 75 hours a week in contravention of Chinese labor laws. Most have only one day off a month.

Outside scooters rush through a warren of more than 5,000 factories which make up the so-called Xi'an village in Guangzhou. At a nearby job market workers looking for a daily paycheck cheque examine the stitching of the kind of clothes they'd be expected to make. They get paid per piece. Their skill and speed dictate how much they make. What do you usually make? It depends on how difficult the item is.

Something simple like a t-shirt is one to two yuan per piece, and I can make around a dozen in an hour. We earn so little. How is that enough? The cost of living is now so high. Workers travel thousands of miles to Guangzhou to earn money to send back to their families. Xi'an is now one of their major employers. I work with Xi'an at their first year. I watch this grow. I think Xi'an will get stronger

and better. There's an almost constant supply of fabric from nearby vendors. Xi'an's success has been possible because this city in China has everything it needs. We've come to the textile district of Guangzhou. It's only about 10 minutes from the actual factories, and it is bustling this lunchtime. There are dozens of workers lifting heavy rolls of fabric onto trucks, onto cars and onto, would you believe it, scooters. Now I have no idea how they are balancing it but on one scooter

there's at least seven rolls of fabric. Later, as dinner time approaches, street vendors set up stalls selling food, but even offering haircuts for workers on their dinner break. Long hours are simply a way of life, and a 75-hour week is not unusual in this industrial heartland. Well, it's not unusual, you say, but it's clear that it's illegal and it violates basic human rights. David Hatchfield is from the Swiss advocacy group Public Eye, which has also uncovered excessive working hours in factories producing clothes for Sheehan. It's an extreme form of exploitation that happens and this needs to be visible.

In a statement Sheehan told the BBC that it is committed to ensuring the fair and dignified treatment of all workers within its supply chain. And Xian says it's investing tens of millions of dollars in strengthening governance and compliance. Xian also said it was striving to set the highest standards for pay. As workers head in for the last few hours of their shift, some tell us it's their duty to work hard. This is what we Chinese need to sacrifice for our country's development. It's just gone 10pm and finally some of the factories are beginning to empty.

But I'm standing outside one factory that is still going. It seems in this part of China, the textile capital of the world is not a place that ever fully goes to sleep. Laura Bicker reporting. After nearly a week of battling wildfires across Los Angeles that have claimed at least 24 lives, a local fire chief Chad Augustine says the next few days will be critical as strong winds are forecast again. We just stepped right back into red-fly conditions with the increased winds that's going to go

through Wednesday night with the peak winds on Tuesday and Tuesday night. We got our work cut out for us still. CBS reporter Charlie Demar is in Los Angeles. I've talked to a lot of people who have been trying to return to their homes and they can't even recognize their own homes. They have lived here for decades, they know the street where they live at, they've even cross-referenced it with their phone. Now as for the weather, firefighters did make great progress over the weekend. The winds were a bit calmer, so they did get ahead of the fire, and also a lot of resources were called in. A lot more resources than in the beginning when this fire started.

There are firefighters from around the country, and this is also an international battle now. There are helicopters and aircraft from Canada and firefighters also from Mexico have joined the front lines. But the big concern are those Santa Ana winds that are moving in and it could bring wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour. Where we are now residents aren't allowed back in here yet. There's a number of reasons for that one. The safety reason there's power lines down and it just wouldn't be safe for people to go in. And also leaders here are urging people not to sift through their belongings because they're concerned about some of the toxic materials that could be contained in the ash. The National Guard has been called in to help with security.

There has been arrests, about almost 30 arrests for looting. Charlie DeMar from CBS News. Even as there's no let up in Israel's relentless bombardment of Gaza, particularly in the north, we're hearing optimistic noises once again that a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas could soon be agreed.

Hopes have been raised many times before at the talks in Qatar, only to be dashed. Donald Trump says he wants to see the Israeli hostages held in Gaza released before he takes office in just a week's time. Otherwise, he said they will be all held to pay in a conflict which has already seen more than 46,000 Palestinians and more than a thousand Israelis killed. So will there be a deal this time?

Emen Nader in Jerusalem is following developments. There is a sense that in the next days before the inauguration of President Trump, we will have something, but it's not necessarily clear what that will be. Many leaks are being shared and published in various media outlets, but it's quite hard to divine exactly where we are media outlets, but it's quite hard to divine exactly where we are inside the negotiating rooms there in Qatar. But the signals are positive. The intelligence chiefs of Israel remained there over the weekend to engage with the talks, which were seen as a positive sign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on the phone last night with President Biden to discuss the deal. Again, very very encouraging and that's the only the

first time in three months that the two have had a publicly announced phone call. Even in the Israeli press we heard that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to persuade the more radical members, anti-deal members of his cabinet not to resign in protest. So it looks like the momentum is heading in the right direction with this deadline of the of the change of administration which could if a deal of some sort isn't reached before then You know it could provoke the ire of President Trump So we still don't know about certain key issues of the deal exactly Meanwhile the fighting is still going on in Gaza. That's right. So over the weekend

We've seen more deadly strikes just one this morning on a school sheltering displaced people there in Gaza City, which local authorities said have killed four. There was also four IDF Israeli military soldiers reported dead over the weekend. So the fighting isn't letting up. And in the north of Gaza, where for two or three months now there's been a near total siege, according to the UN, on food and aid getting into certain parts of northern Gaza, where for two or three months now there's been a near total siege, according to the UN, on food and aid getting into certain parts of northern Gaza. Humanitarian agencies are still banging the drum saying, you know, more aid needs to get into those areas of northern Gaza because it's a very desperate situation in terms of access to food and access to medical

care and treatment there. One of the world's largest religious festivals is being held in India, the Kummela, which takes place every 12 years on the river Ganges. The six-week event, attended by millions of Hindu devotees, is so big that it can be seen from space. Our South Asia correspondent Semira Hussain is there and described the scene. I'm standing probably just a few feet away from where the Ganges River meets the Yamuna River and the mythical Saraswati River. Hindus believe by going into the waters here at this particular moment will actually purify one's soul and rid them of evil. And it's all part of this 45 day long festival called the Mahakumbh Mela. And it really only happens once every

12 years. And it attracts huge numbers of people. Organizers are expecting there's going to be 400 million people that'll come to this festival over the next month and a half. And what's really interesting is that because this is a religious festival and that's what brings devotees here, but it also has taken on a very much

like a festival type atmosphere. So, you know, actually just walking in front of me are two men carrying these mountainous sizes of cotton candy to be sold. And there's someone else that's doing acrobatics or kind of like a mini circus. And in different pockets of this enormous fairgrounds, you have different religious services that are happening. People are dressed as gods and there's music. And authorities are expecting, just to give you a sense of the size of this, the

the first ritual dip to draw more than two and a half million visitors who will go into the freezing waters of the river there. This morning I was actually here when the first pilgrims went into the water and I can tell you that I was wearing quite a few layers. It was very very cold this morning but you saw people that were stripping down into a pair of shorts and were leaping into the water and then bathing in the water, putting their entire bodies in and their heads in and out. I was quite amazed.

I felt very good. I just took a bath and I don't feel cold anymore. She's just said that she has gone into the water and she feels really good. That walking here she was feeling quite cold, but when she went into the river, she didn't feel cold anymore. It must be a huge logistical challenge because you've got to provide accommodation, food, all kinds of services for all these people descending on this part of India and there are also security and safety concerns I imagine. So just to give you a sense of how large this fairground is

it's about 40 square kilometers that's about know, 4,000 football pitches. I mean, that's just how big this is. And every section of the fairground is housing different things. So in one section you'll have where sort of the common man will go and they have tents set up where they are going to be staying, some for a few days, some for a few weeks, and some for the entire festival. Then in other sections you have the religious leaders, or the babas as they're called. And they have set up these, in some cases, some really ornate tents, and people will go and sit there,

and passersby are invited in to have some tea, and to listen to the baba speak, or to get some life advice. It is a logistical nightmare to try and organize all of this. You know, everywhere you look you see, you know, there are bathroom facilities, there are specific media facilities and there's also food vendors absolutely everywhere because, I mean, after all this is India and the country takes food very, very seriously. Samira Hussain, the Kumbh Mela in the Northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Still to come on the Global News podcast, with Donald Trump saying he wants to buy Greenland, our special correspondent, Fergal Keen, has been there to see what Greenlanders themselves want. We are very much telling the story that it has to be about independence or not independence. People want independence but not at any cost. Discover how to lead a better life in our age of confusion. Enjoy this BBC audiobook collection, written and presented by bestselling author Oliver Berkman, containing four useful guides to tackling some central ills of modernity.

Busyness, anger, the insistence on positivity, and the decline of nuance. Our lives today can feel like miniature versions of this relentless churn of activity. We find we're rushing around more crazily than ever. Somewhere, when we weren't looking, it's like busyness became a way of life. Start listening to Oliver Berkman, Epidemics of Modern Life, available to purchase wherever you get your audio books. You're listening to the Global News Podcast. We go to Texas now, the US state which has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country, as a consequence of the

US Supreme Court decision three years ago to overturn Roe v Wade. Abortion is banned in almost all circumstances from as early as six weeks. The law also offers $10,000 to any American reporting an abortion provider or anyone else involved in the process. Some doctors are leaving Texas because they don't feel they can provide proper care for women under this law. Dr. Zoe Kornberg is one of those. She was doing her residency training with an obstetrics and gynaecology program in Texas, but her personal experiences left her feeling she couldn't look after women safely. She told Melanie Abbott why she felt she had to leave.

It felt like you couldn't even speak about abortion, that even talking about it with a patient could be perceived as helping them get one, even if that wasn't your intention or you were just sort of explaining to a patient what an abortion was. Not all pregnancies have a good outcome. Many women will experience a miscarriage or pregnancy complications other than a miscarriage before viability of the fetus, but well past the six-week mark and there were many occasions where we really felt like our hands were tied. And what did that mean for the care of the women you were looking after?

When women would come in bleeding and cramping from a miscarriage, For many patients, there came a switch where they were bleeding too much and the process was taking too long. And ordinarily we would act very quickly, perform a DNC, a dilation and curettage, to evacuate the uterus and stop the bleeding. And instead it meant that there were these delays. The law does not well define what an emergency is, and so we would spend hours jumping through administrative hoops trying to get permission for this very simple, short procedure that would prevent an emergency from happening.

We didn't feel that we could trust our staff because were they going to report us because they were interpreting the situation differently? Or were we going to have to wait and wait and wait until staff who was comfortable participating in the care came on on call and were the people who we were seeking permission from the other doctors, the administrators, were they going to agree with us? And then meanwhile, the patient is bleeding out. And that just feels horrible as a physician. You know, I went into medicine because I wanted to prevent pain and suffering for my patients. And here was a person experiencing pain and suffering that I knew exactly how to stop.

I couldn't do it. There were days that were really demoralizing. And in any other state or context, that would be malpractice. But this law is forcing me to wait and wait and wait until the patient needs a blood transfusion, which carries risks and can cause complications, to wait until maybe the patient is infected,

maybe that becomes septic shock and she ends up in the ICU. It opens up the possibilities for permanent disability, longer hospitalisations, losing her uterus or her ability to conceive in the future. It's a recipe for disaster. Dr. Zoe Kornberg talking to Melanie Abbott. And for more on this story, listen to the latest episode of Woman's Hour, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. To Kenya now, where Amnesty International say a renowned Tanzanian rights activist has been kidnapped on the streets of the capital, Nairobi, over the weekend. But after an outcry on social media, Mariaetsahi was released hours later. In a video posted on X, she said she was safe

and that she would talk in the coming hours about her ordeal. Our Africa security correspondent Ian Mafula spoke to Rob Young from Nairobi. Up until the video that was posted by Maria yesterday, she was definitely visibly shaken. But hours before that, at about 4 p.m., she is said to have sent out a distress call to her friends and colleagues at Amnesty International saying that she has been abducted. She was within one of the high-end areas at the capital of Nairobi when three armed men in a black Toyota Noah ambushed her and forced her into the vehicle. She was just about to board a taxi she had held.

There's a dramatic video that has been circulating online where we are seeing a bus, a public service bus kind of trying to stop these men and people who are yelling and they're saying, let her go. We cannot continue having these kinds of abductions. And you could visibly see members of the public trying to do whatever they can to try and stop this particular vehicle from moving. But unfortunately, they took her after which Amnesty International posted that Maria had been abducted. So is it clear then who may have taken her?

Up until this point, it is not clear because we're yet to also hear from the Kenyan police officers on exactly what transpired. However, just to mention Change Tanzania, which is a movement by Maria, said in a statement on Exeter they believe that she was taken by Tanzanian security agents operating beyond Tanzania borders to silence government critics. And we did have a Ugandan opposition leader, didn't we? Kisa Bezige last year kidnapped by Ugandan security officials in Kenya. And there have been a spate of kidnappings in the country over the last year.

Yeah, that is right. And of course, it remains a huge concern. In fact, when you listen to people or when you read comments online, people are describing Nairobi, particularly as the capital of abductions, just because of what has happened over the last couple of months. In fact, in December, just towards the end of the year, there were protests in Nairobi over the recent cases of abductions where a number of young people, about five of them had been abducted just towards Christmas

over what people believed were sentiments and images they had posted online that were criticizing the government. So there is a lot of concern about why this is happening. We also did have a statement from President William Luto who said that they will end abductions. However, he went on to say that young people need to kind of behave and be watchful in the manner in which they are raising some of their concerns.

Ian Wafula in Kenya. Few places in the world feel more remote than the snow-covered peaks of Greenland. The world's largest island that sits beneath the North Pole is home to fewer than 60,000 people. But now it finds itself at the centre of a geopolitical storm, as Donald Trump says he wants to buy the autonomous territory currently part of Denmark for what he calls economic security. Our special correspondent, Fergal Keane, has been to visit Greenland. The fjord has depths around 300, 500, all the way in.

Deep, deep down. Yeah. The sun has just come up here and moved forward and the water around me is flat and calm. On either side, mountains climb up, snow covered here in the deep winter of the Arctic. This is an old front line from Cold War days, but it's taken on a new significance as the next American President is threatening to take Greenland by force if necessary. Welcome to the farm. Welcome to the farm. This wonderful place. Angotimarik Hansen and his family hunt and raise sheep for a living.

From his front door, the short winter sunlight dazzles on the flat waters of Nookfjord. But even here, at a two-hour boat ride from the capital, they're talking about President Trump and his threats to buy or invade. What a stupid human in the world like Trump. That's what you feel? What a stupid human in the world like a Trump That's what you feel. Yeah, I mean we think about the US and Trump. This is different We need to work together with us and not Trump It isn't just the shock any community would feel at the prospect of being bought or invaded by a superpower. They fought hard here to preserve Inuit culture after Danish colonists first arrived in the

18th century. I met local church elder, Kjellirach Ringstedt, aged 73, as he was drying strips of cod fished from the water near his front door. In our opinion, it's wild and weird to hear him speak of our country as something that can just be bought. We don't view it as a purchasable land. We have been here for a long time. We are used to our ways of living. Here in the capital nuke, there's a feeling among pro-independence supporters that the Trump intervention has at least brought international attention to their cause, though they stress they don't want to be American.

The editor of Cermetsac, a local newspaper, Masana Egide, says the energy unleashed by Mr Trump's comments should lead to a sober debate on Greenland's future. We are very much telling the story that it has to be about independence or not independence. But there's all of this story that is in between that people want independence but not at any cost. There's a living standard that has to be maintained. There's trade that has to be maintained. There's living ways that has to be maintained. There's trade that has to be maintained. There's living ways that has to be maintained.

The Eskimo are very primitive and the Danish government is doing its best to keep civilization from spoiling them. To go to the heart of this, to understand why Greenlanders don't want any new ruler, it's important to know about past racism and abuses, like the campaign in the 60s and 70s to fit thousands of Greenlandic women and girls with contraceptive coils to reduce the population. Melina Abelson, a former finance minister in Greenland, says addressing the injustices of the past is essential to any political moves forward. I think a lot of people are saying this happened in the past. It's time to move on. Look how great you have done.

But you cannot move on if you have not been healed before and if you have actually been acknowledged to what happened to you. knowledge to what happened to you. The issues of self-determination and facing the past are intimately intertwined. Now the intervention of Donald Trump has placed both before the eyes of the world. But the message we heard from remote settlements and here in the capital city nuke is that Greenland's destiny must be decided among people whose voices have for too long been overlooked. That report by Fergal Keane. We end in space. Or not quite. The company owned by the billionaire Amazon founder Jeff

Bezos has been forced to postpone the launch of a new reusable rocket that had been due to blast off from Florida. Blue Origin has already had to delay the launch several times. The rocket is designed to land on a platform in the Atlantic Ocean so that it can be used multiple times. If successful, it could become a serious rival to Elon Musk's SpaceX. So, how much of a setback are these delays for Jeff Bezos's space ambitions? Here's our science correspondent, Pallab Gersh. It's a little bit of a blow but it's normal. This is the first time that he's

trying out this rocket, New Glenn. It's a gigantic rocket 98 meters tall but in its very first launch this is expected to happen if everything isn't going to plan then call it off try again another day so when Elon Musk tried with his rockets there were lots of explosions lots of crashes lots of delays so this is part of the development process obviously I mean I'd imagine that Jeff Bezos would want it to have gone up, wanted it to have kind of performed successfully, but I think it was more likely than not that either be a delay or some little bit wouldn't go right. So this is normal, it's part of the development process, but the billionaires will be competing

with each other in space very soon. The question is when New Glenn will be ready for launch. It probably won't be in the next few days because they're draining it of fuel. They'll have to put fuel back into it which is a time-consuming process. They'll also have to resolve whatever issue it was and the launch window closes on January the 16th. So I think there's too much to do to do it in that time if I were to guess. Who knows I might be wrong but it's probably going to be in a few days time that they're probably

going to have another go. Once upon a time you'd have a launch every now and again but there are launches every day so it's a question of air traffic they've booked these slots and if they miss their slot they've got to rebook and convince the Federal Aviation Authority that everything's good to go. So we'll have to wait and see. But once it does launch, we're in store for a really exciting battle between the billionaires because Elon Musk has achieved great things with Starship and his Falcon rockets. He's flown 400 times into orbit. Jeff Bezos hasn't flown a single time yet, so he's got a lot of catching

up to do, but he plans to make up for lost time. Palab goz. 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 produced by Harry Bly. It was mixed by Callum McLean. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janette Jalil. Until next time. Goodbye. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises

profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes I felt amazing. But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker. A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing.

The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave. World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realise. And it's like this, the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't understand. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about

this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice. And for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future. To bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power.

World of Secrets, Season Six, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.