[IntelliNews] Some six months after a breakthrough agreement signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan in a White House ceremony, US Vice President JD Vance arrived in Armenia on February 9-10 on the first leg of a regional visit that continues in Azerbaijan on February 10-11.
The visit by the US vice president, which stands out as the highest level US visit to Armenia, is significant in several ways. For the US, or more specifically, for the Trump Administration, the visit marks a surprisingly swift reaffirmation of the August 2025 Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) project. In fact, with the signing of TRIPP, the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has been a relatively easier, “low hanging fruit” for Trump.
Unlike other conflict areas that have attracted American engagement, there has been an impressive combination of political will, conflict fatigue and a rare display of statesmanship in the course of post-war diplomacy between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And in the wake of a year of unprecedented change, US engagement with both countries now benefits from a new opening and a fresh opportunity.
For Armenia, the dividends from partnering with the Trump Administration have been strategic, ranging from an avenue to resist the gravitational pull of the Russian orbit to the long-denied chance to overcome its landlocked geography and become a critical transit state.
Beyond Armenia, neighbouring Azerbaijan also sees benefits from American interest, in two distinct ways. First, the Trump Administration’s sidelining of human rights and democracy as prerequisites to partnership was a very welcome shift in US foreign policy, especially given the father-son dynastic rule by the Aliyev family in Azerbaijan, which has held power since 1993. But in more practical terms, Azerbaijan now seeks to garner American backing for its new-found role as the pivotal regional hub for trade and transport.
Moreover, with aspirations to become a gateway to Central Asia, as well as the necessity to diversify its energy-dominated economy, Trump’s vision of the South Caucasus holds significant appeal for the Azerbaijan leadership.
And turning to the now neglected third country component of the region, Georgia, it seems clear that the US will only deepen its diplomatic snub of the country. As demonstrated by the vice president’s obvious decision to skip a visit to Georgia, the Georgian government has passed the limits of American indulgence, as it escalates its defiance of its own pro-European population and continues its destruction of democracy within Georgia.
AMERICAN PROMISES TO KEEP, AND MILES TO GO
Against that backdrop, however, not everything is easy for the United States. With dangerously high expectations and little patience, most Armenians and many Azerbaijanis are now looking to the US for perhaps more than it can deliver. And this context of heightened American engagement and pronounced involvement only increases the importance of American promises.
The geopolitical aspect of these higher expectations may also turn out to be more difficult than the economic gains and profits from the TRIPP project. As the visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan plays out, it is already sending a robust message to both Russia and Iran that the US has arrived in the South Caucasus, although the local feeling may question if it here to stay.
[IntelliNews] Reports that Chinese regulators have instructed banks to curb exposure to US Treasuries have prompted the usual speculation about a financial decoupling in recent days, a note by Capital Economics says.
According to the UK-based independent economic research and consultancy firm in referring to US Treasury figures, China’s official holdings of US government debt have been falling for years: a fact confirmed several times in recent weeks by Bne IntelliNews.
At present, China’s holdings of US T-bonds are down by roughly half from their 2013 peak, and while it is correct that the long, steady retreat predates President Donald Trump’s second stint in the White House, this has been much more noticeable of late. And, contrary to the Capital Economics take on the issue, this does at least appear to be part of a loss of faith in the dollar altogether by the world's second largest economy.
As such, while there exists the claim that this is merely a part of normal rebalancing of foreign exchange reserves by Beijing rather than a sudden shift away from the dollar, it is undeniable that in just the past few months China has influenced at least three countries in Africa to either convert or consider converting their own China-linked loans into the yuan to help save on interest payments In addition, one more has now joined China's Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) - an increasingly prominent competitor to the SWIFT system preferred in the West.
In October 2025, Kenya switched up to $3.5bn of China-linked infrastructure loans from US dollar-denominated debt into yuan-denominated debt. This move was backed by the Chinese Export-Import Bank and is one of the clearest recent cases to date of a Global South government re-denominating major infrastructure financing into the yuan and away from the dollar.
Around the same time and also in East Africa, Ethiopia began its own talks to convert at least a portion of its $5.38bn dollar loans into the yuan according to Bloomberg. To date Addis Ababa has undertaken debt restructuring talks and negotiated maturity extensions with Chinese lenders in what would be a major global financial story if fully realised.
Even the continent’s largest economy is starting to look at altering its dealings with China; evidenced by South Africa’s Standard Bank – Africa’s largest - integrating with China’s CIPS yuan payments system. In doing so it allows companies in South Africa to pay Chinese suppliers using the yuan rather than routing transactions through US dollar-based systems linked to SWIFT.
In Europe meanwhile, China and multiple European central banks have renewed local currency swap deals of late. Most noticeably, in September 2025, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) renewed and extended for three more years a bilateral yuan-denominated currency swap agreement with the ECB, who stated in a release that the “swap arrangement has (a) maximum size of CNY350bn and €45bn”. These local currency swap lines were also initially put in place to help support trade settlement and liquidity dealings without the need to rely on the dollar, thus allowing Europe's banks and corporations to access the yuan and the euro directly for trade and investment while bypassing traditional dollar-based channels.
Closer to home for China, Beijing and Seoul again renewed their bilateral yuan swap facilities in November 2025. As South Korea’s Ministry of Finance and Economy said at the time, “the renewed agreement maintains the same scale - CNY400bn (KRW70 trillion)” - in an agreement once more seen as enabling businesses in both countries to using local currencies, the yuan and the won in carrying out trade and financial transactions
Elsewhere in the world, the story is the same. Kazakhstan’s exchange recently showed a sharp increase in trade settlements using the yuan instead of the US dollar from late last year onwards - a clear indication that local exporters and importers preferred to use the Chinese yuan when dealing with Chinese firms.
These factors should not be ignored when talk of T-bonds comes to the fore.
As is reported widely, there has been a more noticeable shift since late 2024 in Chinese sales of US Treasuries, and the dollar share of Chinese banks’ foreign bond portfolios has declined considerably. But to claim that Treasury International Capital (TIC), the reporting system administered by the US Treasury to track foreign holdings of US Treasuries can be interpreted as meaning that much of the selling by Beijing was the result of sustained pressure on the yuan last year which in knock-on effect forced the PBC to lean against depreciation by offloading short-term Treasuries, is questionable at best.
Added to this, the claim that a disorderly sell-off would damage China’s own reserves and risk financial contagion, while not incorrect, ignores the bigger picture seen across Africa, as well as Central and Eastern Asia. That picture is one of Beijing, albeit slowly, moving away from dollar denominated transactions across the world. The selling off of US Treasuries is just one part of this.
To this end, Chinese banks trimming their dollar bond holdings, whilst not constituting an outright 'dollar dump' - yet - must still be seen as evidence of a slow-moving decoupling from the US currency. Beijing never acts in haste and is not doing so now.
The latest guidance to Chinese banks therefore looks less like an immediate acceleration of divestment and more a part of a long-term and deliberate policy in which the downward slide of US debt holdings will continue - and a future clash with the White House may be the result.
#1
So you're the CFO of China and you've got the equivalent of (say) $1 trillion lying around. Rule No. 1 is you can't buy US dollars, US bonds, or US stocks. What's your next move, other than fleeing the country?
Posted by: Matt ||
02/19/2026 11:06 Comments ||
Top||
Beijing is exploiting the uncertainty created by Trump to try to stitch China's vast manufacturing base into the world's biggest economic blocs, including the European Union, Gulf States and a trans-Pacific trade pact, a Reuters examination found. The push involves accelerating efforts to clinch some 20 trade deals in total, many years in the making, despite widespread concerns about China's overproduction, uneven market access and soft domestic demand.
A Reuters review of 100 Chinese-language articles by state-backed trade scholars written since 2017 reveals a systematic push by China's policy advisers to reverse-engineer U.S. trade policy and neutralize Washington's containment strategy.
If you were planning to reap the benefits of a mid-term tidal-wave of radical-demokrat friends, causing a Dow Dump and dollar crash in September would seem a good time to offset the effects of the planned Trump 250th celebrations and Convention propaganda-palooza push.
Does anyone doubt that the ChiComs might be willing to spend that much to neuter Trump's last 2 years?
Indicators and warning on domestic allies portfolio moves in CalPers and Goldman Sachs to reduce downside losses would be a tell...as would long, deep put contracts initiated in late August!
[IntelliNews] Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Limited (CATL) has unveiled a new electric vehicle battery that it says can fully charge in 12 minutes and retain 80% of its capacity after 1.5mn miles, marking a potential breakthrough in durability and charging speed in the global EV market.
The Chinese battery manufacturer said the new system incorporates advanced thermal management, smart cooling and self-repair technologies designed to limit degradation over extended use. If validated at scale, the development could address two of the main barriers to wider electric vehicle adoption: charging time and battery longevity.
“12-minute charge with 1.5M mile degradation to only 80% capacity is game-changing if true - that's basically solving the two biggest EV adoption barriers simultaneously. CATL's likely using lithium iron phosphate with advanced thermal management and self-healing electrolytes. The real test is cost and scalability –”
CATL is already the world’s largest EV battery maker, supplying carmakers including Tesla, BMW and Volkswagen. Tesla currently offers eight years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, as a Battery Limited Warranty for its Model Y, highlighting the potential scale of improvement implied by CATL’s claims.
The company has previously commercialised lithium iron phosphate batteries, known for lower costs and improved safety compared with nickel-based chemistries, though typically at the expense of energy density. Industry analysts say advances in cell chemistry and thermal control have narrowed that gap in recent years.
Sodium-ion batteries are also in development as a lower-cost alternative to lithium-based technologies, aiming to reduce reliance on critical minerals and further drive down prices.
Sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries offer a safer, lower-cost alternative to the lithium-ion systems that currently dominate the business, according to recent studies published in Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials.
Li-ion batteries currently account for roughly 70% of the world’s rechargeable batteries, with the energy sector alone consuming over 90% of global supply, according to data from the International Energy Agency.
The long-sought breakthrough outlines a novel solid-state battery architecture that achieves 99.26% efficiency after 600 charge cycles, while eliminating lithium, cobalt, and flammable liquid electrolytes — long-standing weaknesses in current lithium-ion (Li-ion) designs.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
