Helen Davidson in Taipei

State media editorial says talks mark ‘step toward resolving differences’ but Xi again criticises US ‘bullying’

A 90-day pause in the US-China tariff war has been cautiously welcomed in China but tensions remain high, with Xi Jinping again accusing the US of “bullying”.

After two days of talks between officials in Geneva over the weekend, China and the US agreed to substantially lower for the next 90 days the high tariffs each had imposed on the other in a tit-for-tat trade war.

US intelligence agency videos target lowly officials who are trapped working for a wealthy corrupt elite and whose fate is ‘precarious’

The CIA is on a recruitment drive for foreign spies. In their sights are Chinese officials and workers, who the US intelligence agency hopes to turn against Beijing via some newly released glossy videos.

The two videos touch on probable anxieties among some inside the Communist party machine – getting stuck in a lowly job assisting an increasingly wealthy corrupt official, or becoming victim to the endless purges that have targeted millions of party members at all levels since Xi Jinping came to power.

Beijing suspected of putting pressure on Vatican to cut ties with Taipei

Next week, 135 cardinals will gather inside the Vatican for the conclave, a secretive meeting to decide who will succeed the late Pope Francis. Around the world, people are speculating: who will the next pontiff be? But in Taiwan, a more common discussion has been: who are we sending to the inauguration?

The former vice-president Chen Chien-jen recently returned from Vatican City, where he represented Taiwan at Francis’s funeral. But the committed Catholic hopes he won’t be asked to repeat the journey to welcome in the successor. Instead, he is pushing for it to be Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te.