China, Europe | featured news

The European Union might appear a military superpower, at least on paper. It has more uniformed personnel than the United States and overall EU defense spending outstrips Russia or China.

Welcome to an unlikely beacon of hope for the global auto industry -- Detroit. Executives arriving this week for the Detroit auto show find a U.S. car market that has morphed from meltdown three years ago to a safe haven as concerns grow about the stability of other big economies, from Europe to China.

VIENNA (Reuters) - China will remain part of international efforts to help Europe through its crisis, vice foreign minister Fu Ying said on Saturday, dismissing the idea that Beijing was sitting back as the region suffered.

Germany and France clashed on Wednesday over whether the ECB should take bolder steps to stem the euro zone debt crisis, with Chancellor Angela Merkel issuing one of her starkest warnings yet against fiddling with the central bank's strict inflation-fighting mandate.

Asian stocks slumped Friday after a spike in Spanish government borrowing costs added to the uncertainty over Europe's debt crisis and investors braced themselves for China.

It's no wonder that global markets are so jittery. The world's three largest economies can't continue along their current paths, and everybody knows it. Investors watch nervously for signs that China is headed toward a hard landing, that America will sink back into recession, and that the euro zone will simply implode.

Europe is caught in an economic pincer: slow-growth assaults from one side; fickle financial markets from the other. One obvious way out — the China option — seems barred by geopolitics. There is precedent. Historians blame the Great Depression’s severity in part on poor international cooperation. Economist Charles Kindleberger found a vacuum of power: Great Britain, the old economic leader, could no longer lead alone; and the United States — a replacement — wasn’t ready to help. Is there a parallel today between the United States and China? Are we repeating the mistakes of the 1930s? Unsettling questions.

The United States and China piled pressure on Europe on Saturday to get to grips with its debt crisis before it risks causing bank runs and pushing the global economy into ruinous recession.

European stock futures declined Wednesday as Moody’s Investors Service downgraded Societe Generale SA and Credit Agricole SA and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said developed nations should not rely on China to bail them out. U.S. futures and Asian shares dropped.

An outspoken Chinese writer and government critic has left his homeland for Germany after police repeatedly threatened him with imprisonment to prevent him from publishing any more of his controversial works overseas. Liao Yiwu arrived in Berlin two days ago at the end of a secretive journey that included transfers in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and Warsaw, Poland, the writer said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.