The Tumen River has resurfaced as one of the big issues for keen observers of relations between China and North Korea but after the leaders of the two countries met this week, there was no mention of it in the official statements after the summit. The river is a natural border between China, North Korea and Russia, and a narrow strip of it that runs between North Korea and Russia blocks Chinese access to open waters. Beijing has long tried to convince its two neighbours to open the waterway to...

Beijing has confirmed the arrest of Min Zin, a US citizen and political analyst at a Myanmar-focused think tank, on suspicion of espionage and endangering national security. “It is understood that Min Zin has been placed under criminal detention by the relevant authorities in accordance with the law on suspicion of engaging in espionage and endangering China’s national security,” foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said on Friday. Lin did not give further details of charges against Min Zin, but...

As the European Union prepares tougher measures to counter what it sees as the “China shock 2.0”, a researcher with a Beijing-linked think tank has accused Brussels of clinging to a flawed narrative that China’s economic rise is an inherent threat to Europe. The criticism came as Beijing reportedly cancelled two high-level meetings with the EU in the Chinese capital this month, including a ministerial-level digital dialogue and a visit by a senior EU diplomat, according to the Financial Times on...

China called on major nations to “foster a free and facilitative trading environment” ahead of two summits next week that may herald a trade war with the European Union. Vice-Premier Zhang Guoqing said China was “steadfastly expanding high-standard opening up” in a videoconference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended along with representatives from Brazil, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea,...

In their 2022 book Sinostan, Raffaello Pantucci and Alexandros Petersen saw Central Asia as China’s “inadvertent empire”. If that is true – and the five-country region embracing Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (informally called the C5) certainly sits at the heart of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – then Beijing could not have chosen a less noticed corner of the world atlas. Unnoticed, perhaps, by almost everyone except Halford Mackinder, who in 1904 described...

EU tech sovereignty may prove an “illusion” in an AI world dominated by China and the US, a Chinese expert has argued, urging Beijing to seize the opportunity during Donald Trump’s second term to make its products indispensable to middle powers. The past few weeks have seen a number of efforts by middle powers to try to control their AI technology stacks. Last week, the European Union rolled out its Technological Sovereignty Package in a bid to make the bloc “a global leader” in artificial...

India’s new ambassador to China has paid his first visit to Tibet in the latest sign of thawing relations between the two Asian neighbours. Vikram Doraiswami – who speaks Chinese and took up the post in Beijing last month – arrived in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet autonomous region, on Thursday, according to a statement posted on social media by the Indian embassy. The visit was to “review arrangements made by the local government for Indian pilgrims proceeding to Mount Gang Renpoche and Lake...

A prominent backchannel political figure between Japan and China has died, days before a reported planned trip meant to ease deep bilateral tensions. Yohei Kono, best known for his historic apology on August 4, 1993, to tens of thousands of “comfort women” who were forced by the Japanese military into sexual slavery during World War II, died on Monday. He was 89. Considered a moderate voice within Japan’s conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Kono was the country’s chief cabinet...

The United States must ensure the next chapter of responsible innovation is written in America, not in China, lawmakers and witnesses told a congressional hearing on Thursday as they sounded the alarm over US-China competition for global supremacy in artificial intelligence (AI). “Cyber security and national security must be taken seriously. The United States cannot afford to let China or any other adversary gain a technological edge in artificial intelligence,” said Tim Scott, chairman of the...

Taiwan’s representative to the United States expressed confidence that Washington would approve a new round of arms sales to Taiwan, though US President Donald Trump has yet to make a decision on the matter. Asked on Thursday about a pending US$14 billion US arms sale to Taiwan, Alexander Tah-ray Yui, Taipei’s de facto diplomatic envoy, told CNN: “It’s up to President Trump to decide. Once the review is done, we expect that the sale, that the announcement will be made because we need those arms...

The Trump administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company, escalating pressure on Havana’s communist government and targeting a sector central to the island’s worsening energy crisis. The move came hours after senior Chinese and Cuban officials held a video conference to discuss bilateral cooperation and party-to-party ties. According to statements released by Chinese and Cuban officials, the talks involved Liu Haixing, head of the International Department...

China has sanctioned Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jnr, according to the Chinese foreign ministry. Beijing said on Thursday that Teodoro had repeatedly made erroneous remarks against China, undermined China’s legitimate interests and damaged bilateral relations. “To uphold China’s national sovereignty, security, and development interests, the Chinese side has decided to ban Teodoro, his spouse and his child from entering the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macau,” the ministry...

Former US Treasury secretary Henry Paulson has urged Washington and Beijing to manage their escalating strategic competition to prevent it spiralling into broader conflict, warning that deepening distrust now poses a greater risk than trade imbalances. The US-China relationship was “the most consequential” in the world, requiring careful stewardship as rivalry sharpened across trade, technology and security, he said. “We have to be careful that the decoupling does not become...

China might be downplaying nuclear weapons by not mentioning the issue after Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea but that does not mean it has accepted its neighbour’s growing arsenal, according to analysts. Neither Beijing nor Pyongyang mentioned nuclear weapons or denuclearisation in their statements on the Chinese president’s two-day state visit to Pyongyang this week. Since Xi’s summit with US President Donald Trump in May, observers have been speculating that Beijing’s stance on Pyongyang’s...

An EU-China dialogue on digital matters has been postponed as tensions between the two sides threaten to boil over. The meeting, initially scheduled for June 23 in Beijing, will no longer take place, with no immediate date set for a follow-up, people familiar with the situation confirmed. The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the talks had been abruptly cancelled by Beijing, along with a second meeting involving a senior EU official, as bilateral ties deteriorate on a near-daily...

China said it had carried out a scientific expedition in Scarborough Shoal, amid renewed confrontation with the Philippines over the disputed South China Sea atoll. The research mission – which began on May 20 – involved deploying a floating platform for environmental monitoring and sampling, the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ South China Sea Institute of Oceanology said in a statement on Wednesday. It came after Manila lodged a formal diplomatic protest on Tuesday against what it called the...

The FBI said on Wednesday that it seized more than a dozen internet domains used by Chinese intelligence services to gain personal information in hopes of fooling, conscripting or blackmailing Americans with security clearances into divulging sensitive information. “The fake consulting company domains seized by the FBI illustrate the lengths the Chinese government’s intelligence services will go to as they try to use AI-generated content to trick, recruit, or coerce current and former US...

The Pentagon’s newly expanded blacklist of Chinese military-linked companies has tested the fragile stability reached at last month’s summit, highlighting that intense competition persists despite recent efforts to ease bilateral tensions. On Monday, the US Defence Department released its updated Section 1260H list as required by American law, expanding the roster to 188 entities, up from 134 last year. Many of China’s technology and industrial giants were targeted. E-commerce giant Alibaba,...

The post-summit detente between Washington and Beijing has moved from diplomatic language to institutional design. Less than three weeks after the summit between President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, the US Trade Representative (USTR) asked companies to identify “non-sensitive” Chinese goods that might qualify for tariff relief under a new US-China Board of Trade. On the same day, the USTR also proposed Section 301 duties on imports from 60 economies, including China, after its...

If the Democrats win control of Congress in America’s midterm elections it could bring “renewed volatility” to relations with China, a veteran Chinese diplomat has warned. “The results [of the 2026 midterms] … are likely to have a profound impact on the stability of China-US relations,” said Bian Qingzu, former secretary general of the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Founded in 1954, the association has long been a conduit to foster non-governmental exchanges...

The European Commission has declared its trade and economic relationship with China “unsustainable”, pointing to a daily trade deficit of €1 billion (US$1.16 billion) and Chinese manufacturing overcapacity that puts millions of jobs across various sectors at risk. However, a clear-eyed analysis reveals this premise to be entirely flawed. The narrative spun by Brussels is a desperate attempt to weaponise trade policy to mask structural, self-inflicted failures. To understand the absurdity of the...

The United States launched fresh strikes against Iran on Tuesday, prompting retaliation from Tehran, which targeted a major US naval base in Bahrain and an airbase in Jordan. It came just hours after US President Donald Trump vowed to retaliate for what he described as the hostile downing of an American AH-64 Apache attack helicopter over the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The escalation tested a fragile US-Iran ceasefire that had taken effect on April 8 as both sides negotiate terms to end the...

The US Court of International Trade is pressing the Trump administration to speed up tariff refunds of billions of dollars to thousands of importers, following a partial roll-out after the US Supreme Court struck down its global tariffs in February. “The time has come to refund all the duties,” said Judge Richard Eaton on Tuesday, adding that the delay is leading to a “growing inequity” between big importers and small businesses. The judge did not issue any new order but noted that the...

A US prosecutor’s newly revealed diaries from World War II have laid bare the gruelling effort to document Japanese wartime atrocities in China and the unlikely bond forged between him and the people he helped. The diaries belonged to David Nelson Sutton, an American assistant prosecutor at the Tokyo Trial, or the International Military Tribunal for the Far East – a landmark international judicial effort. The tribunal drew upon a vast “evidence wall” comprising nearly 50,000 pages of trial...

Chinese money laundering networks were accused of being “financial fuel” for the Mexican cartels at a congressional hearing on Tuesday, where witnesses urged US President Donald Trump to prioritise the issue at his next face-to-face meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. “I want to be very clear, Chinese money laundering networks have become the financial fuel for cartels to poison Americans and threaten our borders, we’re seeing a Silk Road of crime across the Americas,” said Leland...

On a state visit to China last month, US President Donald Trump shocked his political base with a series of rhetorical concessions. In an interview, he warmly endorsed Chinese students studying in America, supported China-linked acquisition of US farmland, and dismissed concerns over state espionage as a routine, two-way reality. It was not the first time Trump’s softer stance on China clashed with his own administration’s hardline approach. Even before the summit, he repeatedly suggested...

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea may have helped cement China’s “indispensable” role in ensuring regional stability and highlighted its importance to his host’s economy, analysts said. The Chinese president wrapped up his visit on Tuesday afternoon after reaching what he said was a “critical consensus” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Xi told a lunch at the Kumsusan State Guest House that he was ready to work with Kim to to “jointly guide China-North Korea relations...

US President Donald Trump’s administration is holding regular high-level discussions with Britain to secure the long-term future of the strategically important Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean, a US official has told the South China Morning Post. The confirmation comes amid reports that the White House is actively considering buying the Chagos Islands – host to a strategically important joint US-British military facility – amid concerns over China’s expanding naval ambitions in the...

A frenzied fortnight of EU policymaking on China kicked off on Tuesday, amid signs that big member states may be willing to take a tougher stance on trade despite huge pressure from Beijing. Beijing’s commerce vice-minister, Ling Ji, was set to meet with new EU trade director Ditte Juul Jorgensen in Brussels and have talks with Chinese businesses in the Belgian capital before heading to forums in Berlin and Dusseldorf. At the same time, EU diplomats began preparations for next week’s blockbuster...

The Philippines has accused China of building an artificial structure at the hotly contested Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Citing aerial monitoring, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea, an inter-agency body overseeing Manila’s maritime strategy in the South China Sea, said on Tuesday that a floating platform six metres (19.7 feet) wide and six metres long was located within the shoal. The structure appeared to be an antenna and individuals were seen on board, the task...

The Pentagon added tech giants Alibaba and Baidu and carmaker BYD to a blacklist of Chinese companies with military ties amid widening competition between the world’s two largest economies. Drug maker WuXi AppTec, robot company Unitree and carmaker Nio were among other businesses added to the 1260H list, according to a US Department of Defence notice. Some Chinese companies no longer operating in the United States were removed in the annual update. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The...

Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasised the shared sacrifices and deep historical ties between China and North Korea during a visit to a historic mountainside in Pyongyang on Tuesday. Xi and first lady Peng Liyuan paid tribute at the Sino-Korean Friendship Tower in Moran Hill, accompanied by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju. Honour guards placed a floral basket at the monument with a ribbon inscribed with the words “The martyrs of the Chinese People’s Volunteer (CPV) Army...

China and North Korea have pledged to strengthen strategic cooperation and defend each other’s sovereignty, according to a North Korean state media report covering Chinese President Xi Jinping’s two-day visit to Pyongyang. The two leaders vowed to “open a new chapter” in bilateral ties and expand exchanges and cooperation in political, economic, cultural and other fields, the official Korean Central News Agency reported on Tuesday. It quoted North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as saying that...

Chinese President Xi Jinping has returned to Pyongyang’s Kumsusan State Guest House, the highly secluded counterpart to Beijing’s Diaoyutai State Guest House. Xi began a two-day state visit to North Korea on Monday. He was welcomed at the airport by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, before attending a welcoming ceremony at Pyongyang’s Kim Il-sung Square and then heading on to the guest house. The guest house, completed in 2019, was first publicly used during Xi’s visit to North Korea that...

The Trump administration is stepping up efforts to revoke the citizenship of naturalised Americans, with the US Justice Department on Monday filing lawsuits against 17 people accused of obtaining citizenship through fraud or concealing serious crimes. Among those targeted is a Chinese-born resident of the state of Georgia who prosecutors say hid a prior deportation order and immigration history under a different identity before becoming a US citizen in 2006. The announcement was accompanied by...

The Pentagon signalled on Monday that it was adding Alibaba, BYD, Baidu and dozens of other Chinese companies to its list of entities it says are linked to China’s military, widening a blacklist that increasingly targets sectors at the heart of US-China technological competition. In a Federal Register notice scheduled for publication on Wednesday, the US Department of Defence designated a broad range of Chinese firms as “Chinese military companies” under Section 1260H of the National Defence...

Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing’s commitment to North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un was “unwavering” as he began a two-day trip to the country on Monday. It is Xi’s first foreign visit of the year, and during talks with Kim in the afternoon, he expressed strong support for the North Korean leader. “No matter how the international situation changes, the firm stance of the Chinese [Communist] Party and government in highly valuing the traditional friendship between China and the DPRK...

China’s President Xi Jinping received a colourful welcome in Pyongyang as he began his two-day state visit to North Korea, his first in seven years. After landing at the airport, where Xi and first lady Peng Liyuan were welcomed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju with a handshake, the Chinese leader was escorted through the streets of Pyongyang by a nine-column motorcade to Kim Il-sung Square, the capital’s primary venue for parades and political events. There, at a formal...

Chinese President Xi Jinping started his first visit to North Korea since 2019 pledging “unwavering” friendship and deeper ties with a country that boasts a growing nuclear arsenal and increasing ties with Russia. “No matter how times change or how the international situation evolves, the friendship between China and North Korea remains invincible,” Xi said in an article published on Monday by Rodong Sinmun, a state-run North Korean newspaper. The two countries should “strengthen exchanges at...

A diplomatic feud between Beijing and Tokyo appears to have spilled over to the arts, with what looks like an unofficial boycott on Japanese film, music and books. China has slapped official restrictions on tourism and trade with Japan since the row erupted in November, but so far there has been no official ban on the cultural sector. However, the Shanghai International Film Festival, which begins this Friday, does not have any Japanese films on its line-up for the first time in 20 years. It...

Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Pyongyang on Monday for a two-day visit, his first to North Korea since 2019. North Korea leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju gave Xi and first lady Peng Liyuan a warm welcome at the airport, according to state broadcaster CCTV. Xi was later given a grand welcome ceremony at Kim Il-sung Square. As the largest public square in the heart of Pyongyang, it serves as North Korea’s primary venue for massive military parades, state rallies and major...

The Middle East is bracing for renewed conflict as a fragile ceasefire appears to have collapsed following the resumption of direct strikes between Iran and Israel on Monday. US President Donald Trump appealed for restraint in back-to-back social media posts on Monday, saying both sides “must immediately stop ‘shooting’”. He later announced that Iran and Israel were “looking to do an immediate CEASEFIRE!”, and that “final” peace negotiations were “proceeding, subject to ignorance or stupidity...

James Heckman is the Henry Schultz distinguished service professor of economics and public policy and director of the Centre for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago. Heckman has devoted his professional life to understanding the origins of major social and economic questions related to inequality, social mobility, discrimination and the formation of skills and regulation in labour markets. He has also done extensive research in China’s labour market and early...

When China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Canada late last month to consolidate a new economic partnership, Prime Minister Mark Carney was in New York pitching for more than US$1 trillion in investment. “The timing was almost certainly deliberate,” said Alejandro Reyes, a professor of politics and a senior fellow at the Centre on Contemporary China and the World at the University of Hong Kong. “It signals to Washington that engagement with Beijing does not come at the expense of the...

The international media consensus following the Beijing summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump was predictable: grand on optics, short on substance. Dismissing it on those grounds misses the deeper story of how the summit marked a turning point in how Washington and Beijing manage their rivalry, particularly over Taiwan. To understand where this relationship is going, a brief historical detour is in order. In April 2001, then US president George W. Bush...

North Korea said on Sunday that its nuclear weapons programme was “irreversible”, challenging the US push for denuclearisation a day before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit. After President Donald Trump’s meeting with Xi last month, the United States said the two leaders shared the goal of denuclearising the Korean peninsula, although the Chinese statement did not mention the issue. But Kim Yo-jong, the sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, described the comments as “false...

President Xi Jinping is heading to North Korea on Monday with the aim of proving that China remains the best prospect for reviving his host country’s economy. The visit, Xi’s first in seven years, will focus on reinforcing ties with Pyongyang at a time when the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula appears increasingly out of reach, according to analysts. The carefully timed sequence of diplomatic meetings also reflects Beijing’s growing confidence on the world stage and its ability to engage...

Beijing has sent a flotilla that includes mainland China’s largest patrol vessel to waters east of Taiwan in response to Japanese-Philippine maritime boundary negotiations. The Ministry of Transport ships are expected to conduct joint patrols with a coastguard formation dispatched to the same waters last Monday. The Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily published a commentary on Sunday that accused Japan and the Philippines, which already have long-running territorial disputes with Beijing,...

A Chinese team of medical experts has arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a three-month frontline mission to contain an expanding Ebola outbreak across a mining region with extensive Beijing-backed mineral investments. The five-member team of specialists in epidemiology, clinical medicine, research and traditional Chinese medicine arrived in the capital Kinshasa on Tuesday. According to China’s National Health Commission, the experts will work with local authorities to strengthen...

I grew up in a classroom where the name Norman Bethune was invoked with reverence. Like every schoolchild in China, I could recite from memory Chairman Mao’s 1939 essay “In Memory of Norman Bethune”, which characterised Bethune as a man who had come from afar, who gave his life to the Chinese revolution, who embodied selflessness and internationalism. For years, I kept a poster in my office – the famous oil painting of Mao meeting Bethune in Yan’an – as a quiet tribute. As the years passed and...