Xi Jinping

Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a new international development bank seen as a rival to the U.S.-led World Bank at a lavish ceremony on Jan. 16, as Beijing seeks to change the unwritten rules of global development finance. 

A gargantuan gold-painted statue of Communist China's founding father Mao Zedong has been erected in open countryside by a group of capitalists at a cost of 3 million yuan ($460,000), reports said.

Many foreign leaders on Thursday sent New Year and Christmas greetings to Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, Tanjug is reporting.

They include Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President Barack Obama, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China and Taiwan began operating the first telephone hotline between the two nations on Dec. 30, set up as a confidence building and tension reducing measure, with senior officials exchanging New Year's greetings.

The step was agreed during a historic meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore last month. 

China's President Xi Jinping laid out his vision for the Internet on Dec. 16, calling for a new status quo where Internet sovereignty rests in the hands of nations controlling the flow of information.

Chinese leaders, meeting ahead of an agenda-setting conference, pledged on Dec. 14 to keep the country's economic growth in a "reasonable range" in 2016 by expanding domestic demand and making supply-side improvements. 

China's President Xi Jinping told African presidents on Dec. 4 at a summit that his country would provide $60 billion over three years to fund development on the continent. 

Beijing ordered hundreds of factories to shut and allowed children to skip school as choking smog reached over 25 times safe levels on Dec. 1, casting a cloud over China's participation in Paris climate talks.

A total of 196 countries are expected to sign a new agreement on climate that will determine the fate of the world in the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21, which will be held between Nov. 30 and Dec. 12 in Le Bourget, a commune in the northeast suburbs of Paris.

As world leaders gathered in Paris for the United Nations COP21 Climate Conference set to begin on Nov. 30, tens of thousands of people around the world joined one of the biggest global days of climate change activism ever on Nov. 29, to put pressure on world leaders to unite in fighting global warming at the summit in Paris.