A US appeal court on Friday gave Chinese drone maker DJI another chance to challenge its inclusion on a Pentagon blacklist of companies allegedly linked to the Chinese military. DJI, a Shenzhen-based drone maker, has been engaged in a years-long legal battle with the US Department of Defence to be removed from the list. The latest ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit did not remove DJI from the list, but sent the case back to the lower court to reconsider one...

After almost four decades of international cooperation in space affairs, Brazil and China have unveiled details of a new project to launch a powerful meteorological and environmental satellite. It will be capable of monitoring the whole of South America, according to the space sciences department at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Adenilson Roberto da Silva, general coordinator of engineering and technology with the INPE, said the satellite would provide “improved weather...

The United States has sent a team of coastguards to train their Taiwanese counterparts as Beijing steps up its presence east of the island. Taiwan’s Coast Guard Administration said on Friday that its personnel were taking part in a two-week training programme led by US instructors. The training, which started on Monday, includes exercises aimed at strengthening small-boat operations and team coordination. “The US instruction team hopes to deepen the partnership between the two sides through...

Chinese scientists have achieved the quantum entanglement of cold atoms across a record-breaking 420km (260 miles), a breakthrough they say lays the groundwork for intercity quantum networks. According to a paper published by the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters on August 11, the distance was more than four times previous demonstrations and exceeded the threshold at which direct transmission encounters fundamental physical limits. “Our experiment provides a test bed for studying...

China has confirmed that its new Y-20B heavy transport aircraft can be converted into an aerial refuelling tanker, potentially boosting PLA Air Force capacities deeper into the western Pacific. A documentary aired by state broadcaster CCTV on August 5 said the Y-20B, an improved variant of China’s Y-20 strategic transport powered by domestically developed WS-20 turbofan engines, could switch between transport and aerial refuelling missions using pallet-ready fuel tanks and removable refuelling...

Chinese museums have been criticised for spelling errors in their information boards, including one in Zhejiang province where one of the captions for an exhibition about the Long March turned the Red Army into a “red car”. Such mistakes are especially embarrassing given the high importance the authorities attach to Communist Party history and come amid an ongoing push to promote “red tourism” or revolutionary-themed attractions. The mistake by Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou was one of a...

China should try to make sure that its new international artificial intelligence (AI) body is not seen as “naturally opposed” to the United States and its allies in case it puts off prospective members, analysts have warned. They said the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organisation (Waico) was not designed as an alternative to the US Pax Silica partnership, which was established last December with the aim of reducing “coercive dependencies”. Waico was established at the World...

The United States’ organ transplant system has been plunged into a crisis of public trust after federal health authorities decertified a major organ procurement organisation (OPO) over allegations that organs were harvested from donors who may still have been alive. The scandal has sent shock waves through Chinese communities and validated growing fears among Chinese students and parents. On August 5, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the immediate decertification of...

China’s embassy in Wellington has rejected New Zealand’s latest security assessment as the product of “foreign interference” and a “Cold War mentality”, as tension grows in a relationship already strained by geopolitical and security concerns. The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service’s annual threat report identified China as the only country conducting espionage “at scale”. In the Thursday report, the agency’s director general Andrew Hampton described the current threat environment as “the...

Credited as a co-engineer of one of the greatest economic reforms in human history, former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji died on August 12, 2026, at the age of 97. We have put together seven stories from the South China Morning Post’s coverage of Zhu’s death. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. Zhu Rongji, China’s chief engineer of economic reform, dies aged 97 2. Zhu Rongji: leading China’s transformation through ‘minefield or abyss’ “Regardless of what...

We have selected seven stories from this week’s news across Hong Kong, mainland China, the wider Asia region and beyond that resonated with our readers and shed light on topical issues. If you would like to see more of our reporting, please consider subscribing. 1. China completes milestone test of US$10.8 billion canal link to Southeast Asia Chinese authorities have conducted the first full transit test along a 134.2km (83.4-mile) canal megaproject linking a vast inland region with Southeast...

For generations, working with ancient Chinese texts has been a painstaking task. Specialists would spend years deciphering unfamiliar characters, copying manuscripts by hand, adding punctuation to texts written without it, comparing different editions and tracing references scattered across thousands of years of records. But artificial intelligence (AI) is now changing that process, not only by helping to preserve fragile manuscripts but also by transforming how ancient texts are recovered,...

A provincial propaganda department in China has warned the public against subscribing to growing conspiracy theories on history, such as those stating that Aristotle and Ancient Greece never existed. In a post on Wednesday, “Zhejiang Propaganda” – a social media account affiliated with the Zhejiang provincial publicity department – warned about the rise of the “pseudo-historical school” online. The school promotes conspiracy theories that deny Western history and claim key achievements of...

Three Latin American governments that moved against Chinese commercial interests over the past year were named in a White House report on Thursday, which accused Chinese exporters of routing goods through third countries to evade US tariffs. Mexico, Panama and Colombia now join Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic among more than 40 countries the report says carry elevated risk of illegal transshipment, the practice of moving goods through an intermediate country...

For generations, China’s brightest science and technology minds followed a well-worn path: board a Westbound flight and claim a seat at a globally renowned university. That once-reliable trajectory has fractured. Escalating US-China tech competition and tightening immigration policies across the “big four” study destinations – Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States – have redrawn the map for global student mobility. As Western nations impose ever-stricter access controls and...

When Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif signed the Mecca defence agreement, they executed a structural overhaul of the Middle East’s security architecture. The pact codifies a defence commitment, where an armed attack on one is treated as an assault on all. Building upon September’s Saudi-Pakistan defence agreement, this tripartite arrangement bridges the financial capital of the Gulf, the...