The Russian State Duma has ratified the $100 billion BRICS bank that’ll serve as a pool of money for infrastructure projects in Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa, and challenge the dominance of the Western-led World Bank and the IMF. The New Development Bank is expected to start fully functioning by the end of 2015, according to the Russian Finance Ministry. [...]

China is going to build a $242 billion (1.5 trillion yuan) high-speed rail link between Beijing and Moscow. The line will cut the journey time from five to 'two days', say Chinese authorities. The railway will be 7,000 kilometers long and go through Kazakhstan, reports Bloomberg citing Beijing’s city government on the social networking site Weibo, China’s alternative to Twitter. [...]

China's foreign minister has pledged support to Russia as it faces an economic downturn due to sanctions and a drop in oil prices. Boosting trade in yuan is a solution proposed by Beijing's commerce minister. “Russia has the capability and the wisdom to overcome the existing hardship in the economic situation," Foreign Minister Wang Yi told journalists, China Daily reported Monday. [...]

Are the US, NATO and Russia on a mad spiral leading to war in Europe? Is it inevitable? Far from it. The US-propelled vassal Petro Poroshenko, currently starring in the oligarch dance in Ukraine this week advanced the proposition that Ukrainians in the near future, after his “reforms”, will be asked to vote on whether to join NATO. [...]

European companies now have the opportunity to settle trading accounts in Chinese yuan. The Bank of China in Frankfurt has become the first to operate European yuan clearing. Trading costs will be cut as there will be no dollar exchange first. More than 10 German regional and international banks including Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, DZ Bank AG, and Landesbank Hessen-Thueringen Girozentrale, hav [...]

Settlements in yuan between China and Russia have increased ninefold in annual terms between January and September 2014, says the Chinese Ministry of Economic Development. "The settlement in national currencies between China and Russia in bilateral trade amounted to about 2 percent in 2013. [...]

Doing away with the US dollar and switching to ruble and yuan payments will significantly increase Russia and China's say in energy and financial markets, Vladimir Putin has said, adding that the first deals are already underway. In short the President said the US dollar has no future, and that the ruble and the yuan have better long-term prospects. [...]

The worlds' biggest hotel operator Hilton Worldwide has sold the iconic Waldorf Astoria in New York to a Chinese insurance company for nearly $2 billion, a record for a US hotel. The deal marks the continued Chinese real estate shopping spree in America. Hilton Worldwide Holdings sold the historic landmark to Beijing-based Anbang Insurance Group for a record breaking $1.95 billion, which is the [...]

Three class-action lawsuits filed Friday claim that agribusiness power Syngenta is to blame for depressed corn exports to China since the seed company released a genetically-engineered variant of the crop before it was approved by Beijing. At issue is Syngenta’s 2009 release and distribution of its MIR162 genetically-modified corn known as Agrisure Viptera, which is engineered to fend off cer [...]

China will never support any sanctions against Russia and will never join them, Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Russian parliament's upper house said, citing Chinese President Xi Jinping, with whom she met on Tuesday. Both Russia and China believe the sanctions are illegal, ineffective and counterproductive, according to Matviyenko. They are nothing but an attempt “to exert pressure on s [...]

The American fast-food giant witnessed a sharp decline in global profits in August, hit by the closure of its restaurants across Russia and a "rotten meat" scandal in China. McDonald’s earnings slid with stores open at least 13 months taking a worse-than-expected hit in August, falling 3.7 percent, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based hamburger chain said in astatementon Wednesday. This is the bigge [...]

Argentina will receive the first tranche of yuan worth up to $1 billion in a massive currency swap with China before the end of this year. The deal will boost the troubled economy's foreign reserves. It comes as part of a loan worth $11 billion signed in July by Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during hisLatin America tour- shortly before t [...]

Moscow's 15-month marathon of energy deals with China will boost the credit of Russian oil and gas companies and reduce Russia's reliance on European energy markets, Moody's Ratings Agency said in a note. Russia’s oil majors- Rosneft, Gazprom, and Novatek have all struck major deals with Chinese partners, which provide long-term financial stability for the companies, which are at risk of West [...]

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli have launched the construction of the first part of Gazprom’s Power of Siberia pipeline - which will deliver 4 trillion cubic meters of gas to China over 30 years. “The new gas branch will significantly strengthen the economic cooperation with countries in the Asia-Pacific region and above all - our key partner China,� [...]

Beijing is calling on Washington to scale back, or cancel, aerial surveillance of the Chinese mainland, since such a practice represents a security risk and a deterrent to better bilateral relations - otherwise it is ready to take measures. Relations between China and the United States have been increasingly tense since the US shifted its foreign policy focus – together with a beefed up naval [...]

Traveling from Shanghai to San Francisco in under two hours may sound like a fantasy, but China believes it's figured out how to design an underwater vehicle that can make the idea a reality. More worryingly, though, is the possibility that the technology will be used to develop even more dangerous weaponry. [...]

Following revelations of America's National Security Agency's global internet surveillance system, combined with a desire to enhance domestic production, China is beating a path towards unveiling its own operating systems in October. The Chinese-made substitutes would first be introduced on desktop devices, later expanding to include smartphones and other hand-held devices, Ni Guangnan heads an [...]

In a surprise U-turn, China's Ministry of Agriculture has decided not to continue with a program which developed genetically-modified rice and corn. Some environmentalists say public concerns about GM crops played a key role in the decision. On August 17, when these permits were up for renewal, the Ministry of Agriculture decided not to extend them. In 2009, the ministry's Biosafety Committee i [...]

Russia and China plan to increase technology cooperation, with Moscow set to increase exports of software in exchange for data storage, Russia's Communications Minister said. Nikolay Nikiforov, head of Russia's Ministry of Communications, announced via Twitter that Russia and China have agreed to increase the supply of Chinese servers and storage systems and production in Russia, and to boost t [...]