BRUSSELS -- China's plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2060 can be accomplished at an earlier date if Beijing steps up the adoption of renewable power and cuts use of coal, the International Energy Agency said in a report released Wednesday.

"China has the means and capabilities to accomplish an even faster clean energy transition," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a news release.

China is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, accounting for a third of

Katsuji Nakazawa is a Tokyo-based senior staff writer and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize.

TOKYO -- After Taiwan's main opposition KMT party elected Eric Chu as its new leader, Xi Jinping, in his capacity as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, sent a congratulatory message calling for the two parties to work together to achieve national reunification and

William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades."

As Fumio Kishida prepares to assume the Japanese premiership, analysts and pundits are already asking the wrong questions.

Sure, what Kishida does with the job matters greatly. The question of how he will get things done is plenty relevant, too. These dynamics will help provide answers to why the Liberal Democratic Party turned to Kishida at this most precarious of moments with COVID-

TOKYO -- In the end, the Liberal Democratic Party chose stability.

Fumio Kishida, who was elected leader of the ruling party, is widely considered a man of no surprises who will continue with the policies of his predecessors.

Many LDP lawmakers, anxious about the upcoming election for the lower house of parliament, had breathed a sigh of relief after Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said he would not run again for party president. The exit by an unpopular leader gave the party a boost in opinion polls across the board.

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SEOUL (Reuters) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he is willing to restore severed inter-Korean hotlines next month, but accused the United States of proposing talks without changing its "hostile policy" to the country, state media KCNA reported on Thursday.

Kim made the remarks at the reclusive country's rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, which gathered for a second day to discuss the country's political, economic and social agenda.

North Korea this week test-fired

TOKYO -- With global scrutiny growing over criminal use of cryptocurrency, personal transactions bypassing formal exchanges have emerged as a major weak spot in Japan.

Overseas, authorities have begun cracking down on illicit transactions with tools like payment-tracing software. China has even announced a ban on all cryptocurrency payments and services for disrupting the "economic and financial order," months after introducing tighter restrictions on crypto transactions and mining in preparation for launching its own digital currency.

Japan has struggled to impose effective regulations governing peer-to-peer

TOKYO -- Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, won a four-way race to lead Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday, setting him up to succeed Yoshihide Suga as prime minister and take the party into a general election this autumn.

The contest went to a runoff after none of the four candidates got a majority in the first round of voting involving the LDP's 382 lawmakers and its 1.1 million rank-and-file members. Kishida, 64, will be

TOKYO -- In picking Fumio Kishida, Japan's political establishment turned to a safe pair of hands to lead the ruling Liberal Democratic Party into a general election this autumn.

In a party leadership election on Wednesday, Kishida comfortably defeated his main rival Taro Kono, Japan's outspoken vaccine minister who bills himself as reformist. He also topped Sanae Takaichi, a hard-line conservative backed by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Seiko Noda, a center-left lawmaker who is progressive on social policies.

Born into

Malcolm Turnbull was the 29th prime minister of Australia, from 2015 to 2018, and is the inaugural chair of the Green Hydrogen Organization (GH2). Andrew Forrest is the founding chair of Fortescue Metals Group and a founding member of the GH2 Board.

Only about 50% of the world's energy and products can be supplied by electricity connected to renewable energy or a battery. The rest requires another source that can supply energy anywhere and make things like steel and