Taiwan said Friday it has decided to close its representative office in Papua New Guinea and withdraw its staff, blaming Chinese coercion of the South Pacific nation for the decision.

The announcement comes after a months-long dispute following PNG’s decision in July to shutter Taiwan’s office in the capital Port Moresby, which Taipei rejected. China, which claims Taiwan is part of its territory and opposes the self-governed island’s participation in international organisations and exchanges with other countries, previously welcomed PNG’s move.

Like many countries, PNG has formal diplomatic relations with China but had allowed Taiwan to have a representative office in Port Moresby. Taiwan said “a series of recent actions” by the PNG government had “severely undermined the foundation of mutual trust built through long-term cooperation between the two sides”. Taiwan previously announced that it had stopped spot purchases of liquefied natural gas from PNG, but on Friday the ministry said it also would no longer sign new spot purchase contracts with the country.

“In the future, we will allocate relevant resources to friendly nations and other regions with cooperative potential that warrant continued engagement, in order to further deepen substantive cooperation and expand Taiwan’s international space,” Taiwan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Technology giant and artificial chip manufacturer Nvidia says it is launching an independent investigation after a media report that its founder and CEO Jensen Huang had been the target of a foreign intelligence effort and extramarital affair.

Top Republican members of Congress in the US House of Representatives have called on Mr Huang to brief Congress this month about a New York Times report in October alleging he had a close relationship with a Chinese businesswoman who passed information to Beijing. The media outlet reported last month that US authorities were also investigating Alice Huang, a former executive of Singapore-based company Megaspeed, which buys AI chips from Nvidia. It is suspected that Huang is having an affair with the former executive.

Nvidia said that while its board had no reason to believe that either US national security or Nvidia secrets were compromised, its inquiry would examine all available information, and that Mr Huang fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), representing recording industry bodies worldwide, said its members were worried about Australia potentially agreeing to AI companies’ demands other nations had rejected.

Labor is mulling copyright changes in a suite of policy overhauls around AI, including datacentres, online safety, workforce, energy and the economy. While prime minister Albanese promised “the strongest possible protection”, warning it would be “theft” if creatives were not paid for their work, creative industries were alarmed after AI companies requested a weakening of copyright law to train on Australian material.

Some AI companies have rejected making licensing agreements under existing copyright law, saying it was too difficult, with Anthropic suggesting an “opt-out” model that would allow it to scrape content unless rights holders signalled an objection. In recent answers to a parliamentary committee on AI, responding to questions from the independent senator David Pocock about why it couldn’t replicate the kind of deals Spotify had made, OpenAI said the music streaming giant “has a different business, where it primarily transmits un-transformed copyrighted content, so would be expected to license content that it streams”.

The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, said via a spokesperson last week that the government was “committed to supporting” creatives and pledged that “any future copyright changes deliver meaningful control and fair compensation”.