Reuters reports, "The United States has urged countries to think twice before signing up to a new China-led Asian development bank that Washington sees as a rival to the World Bank, after Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in saying they would join. The concerted move by U.S. allies to participate in Beijing's flagship economic outreach project is a diplomatic blow to the United States and its efforts to counter the fast-growing economic and diplomatic influence of China. Europe's participation reflects the eagerness to partner with China's economy, the world's second largest, and comes amid prickly trade negotiations between Brussels and Washington...Washington insists it has not actively discouraged countries from joining the new bank, but it has questioned whether the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will have sufficient standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards."
"China raised its solar target for 2015, promising to add almost 2 1/2 times as much capacity as the U.S. added last year, as it races to clear its increasingly polluted air. The world's biggest emitter of carbon aims to install as much as 17.8 gigawatts of solar projects in 2015...The more ambitious goal may attract as much as 21 billion yuan ($3.4 billion) of additional investment to solar projects compared with the earlier plan...China is using more power from the sun as part of its plans to cap emissions in the next decade and a half. President Xi Jinping has pledged an 'iron hand' to protect the environment after a November pact with U.S. President Barack Obama to increase China's share of non-fossil fuel in its total energy use to 20 percent by 2030. The nation of almost 1.4 billion people is targeting a more than tripling of its solar power capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2020," writes Bloomberg.
According to The Wall Street Journal, "A new joint peacekeeping force would help Southeast Asian countries rebuild trust following bitter arguments over how to handle China's territorial challenge in the South China Sea, Malaysia's defense minister said Wednesday. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is due to form a new "Asean Community" this December designed to usher in an age of regional unity. But members of the 10-nation bloc-not all of which have interests in the South China Sea-have been anything but united in recent years over how to deal with Beijing. The Philippines and Vietnam have accused of China of aggressive behavior in the sea's disputed areas, a characterization denied by China. The disagreements between Asean members have spilled out at recent Asean summits, and cast doubt on the entire Asean Community project."