Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent Pyongyang visit may ultimately be remembered as a turning point in the international debate over North Korea’s nuclear weapons. While most headlines focused on the visit’s timing and the many pledges made by the two leaders aimed at expanding cooperation, the most significant development may have been what was left unsaid. Throughout the visit, neither side publicly referenced the denuclearisation issue. On the contrary, Xi called for expanded cooperation in...

China is capable of a direct missile strike on Australia and the threat is growing as Beijing amasses long-range and hypersonic weapons and builds islands in the South China Sea, an Australian think tank said on Sunday. A Lowy Institute report found the main threat to Australia was from Chinese missiles fired from ships, submarines and a new intermediate-range ballistic missile that could reach the island continent from China. China’s capacity to strike Australia would grow over the next decade...

Taiwan has for the first time reported mainland Chinese law enforcement vessels near an island it controls in the South China Sea, a development experts say could form the basis of Beijing’s effective control in the waters. The move comes after Beijing accused Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party of inaction in the face of Japan-Philippines maritime delineation talks, which could concern exclusive economic zones claimed by Beijing and Taipei. Two mainland Chinese law enforcement ships –...

Not long ago, China was the villain of choice in much of India’s public discourse. The 2020 Galwan Valley clashes, in which both sides lost soldiers in hand-to-hand combat over their disputed Himalayan border, changed Indian public sentiment almost overnight. From WeChat to TikTok, Chinese apps disappeared from Indian app stores. Investment rules tightened. Television debates grew more jingoistic after arch-rival Pakistan used Chinese-supplied jets and missiles in a three-day conflict with India...

A Taiwanese sea search-and-rescue group has called on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to work together on maritime rescue drills. Yin Liu-sheng, secretary general of the Taiwan-based volunteer group Chinese Search and Rescue Association, said in Xiamen, Fujian province, on Sunday that “maritime search and rescue should remain completely above politics” and that Beijing and Taipei should cooperate “to ensure the safety of life and property of vessels navigating the Taiwan Strait”. “Maritime...

A materials scientist whose career took him from rural China to California is heading for a post in Macau after 30 years in the United States. According to the University of Macau’s website, Pei Qibing has been appointed chair professor and director of the Institute of Applied Physics and Materials Engineering. Pei, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, began his studies in a very different world, attending a small rural school on an island in the Yangtze River in...

Two Chinese football fans were carjacked shortly after arriving in Mexico to watch the World Cup. The Chinese embassy said one suspect had been arrested while the two victims had returned to China on Friday after less than 48 hours in the country. State news agency Xinhua reported on Saturday that the two men, identified only by their surnames Wang and Li, had landed at Mexico City International Airport on Wednesday evening. Two masked motorbike riders held up their car at gunpoint near the...

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi pushed for stronger cross-border transport and trade ties during a visit to Mongolia over the weekend as Beijing sought to anchor the country’s newly formed government within its economic orbit. “China’s policy towards Mongolia maintains stability and continuity, and has always placed the development of bilateral relations in an important position in its neighbourhood diplomacy,” Wang said during a meeting with President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh on Saturday. “China...

The Chinese legal system is grappling with a surge of artificial intelligence cases, but experts have warned that the lack of a unified legislative framework is hampering efforts to tackle the problem. In a recent landmark case, a court in the eastern city of Hangzhou ruled against a tech company that had fired one of its workers after he refused to accept a demotion and pay cut, with the company telling him he could be replaced by AI. The worker had been employed by a fintech firm to evaluate...

What began as an internal personnel dispute at the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation has evolved into an increasingly bitter and publicly fought battle that is engulfing the former Taiwanese leader whose political legacy it is meant to preserve. Allegations of financial misconduct at Ma’s foundation have spiralled into criminal complaints, publicly traded accusations among long-time allies and an unprecedented intervention by his family. The dispute has also raised broader questions about Ma’s health,...

In less than two months, the indie film Dear You has become an unlikely mass hit. Shot in the Teochew language from the Chaoshan region of southern China’s Guangdong province, the movie follows a man uncovering his family’s past by tracing remittance letters sent home from Thailand. As he pieces together his grandfather’s life story, the movie also explores Chinese migration to the region and the diaspora’s struggle to preserve its heritage. In one scene, an elderly schoolmaster risks arrest in...

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to North Korea this week helped to improve Kim Jong-un’s international standing and gave him a “big strategic win”, analysts said. Pyongyang has become increasingly close to Russia in recent years and has sent thousands of troops to support its war against Ukraine, but Xi’s visit reinforced the long-standing economic and cultural ties between China and North Korea. It was the Chinese leader’s first foreign trip of the year and came less than a month after he...

Beijing has warned of a resolute response to the Pentagon’s newly expanded blacklist of Chinese companies, accusing Washington of using national security as a pretext to curb the development of Chinese firms. The warning came after the US Defence Department released its updated Section 1260H list on Monday as required by American law, expanding the roster to 188 entities, up from 134 last year. The list names what the department says are “Chinese military companies” operating, directly or...

China should not try to copy SpaceX despite the US company’s successful IPO, a leading economist has said. The company raised US$75 billion when it went public on Friday and made its chief executive Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. But Shen Yingchun, a professor at Beihang University, told Beijing Daily: “China does not need to and cannot copy SpaceX.” She said “the strength of the US model is efficiency”, using the market to drive down costs and forcing companies to innovate. Shen...

In the 21st century race to the moon, there is a question that engineers must ask: what happens when the main engine fails? China and the United States are answering this in contrasting ways. Their answers could reveal the value they place on human life. From the Apollo Lunar Module in the 1960s to Nasa’s new Orion spacecraft for the Artemis programme, the American architecture relies on a single, powerful main engine to do the heavy lifting. On the descent stage, one main engine controls the...

The United States can launch stealth bombers across continents, track missiles from space and deploy forces anywhere on the planet. But as the nation approaches its 250th birthday next month, studies suggest a more basic question demands attention in Washington: can the military reliably fuel, sustain and connect those forces in a crisis? From the skies to orbit, two new reports point to vulnerabilities in critical pillars of US power projection at a time of intensifying strategic competition...

Mainland China’s fourth-ranking official has hailed the “enthusiastic” participation of people from Taiwan at a cross-strait forum despite the “obstacles” placed in their way. The independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party this year tightened restrictions on the Straits Forum in Fujian province, imposing the first outright ban on local officials attending the event. Senior officials had already been prohibited from attending. Addressing the event on Saturday, Wang Huning, Beijing’s top...

China activated the world’s first three-band optical fibre communication system early this month, technology that its developers say could expand the carrying capacity of future AI networks. According to the project team, a single fibre can carry more than five times the traffic of conventional systems, while transmission capacity per core increases by nearly half. The project, completed in Qingdao in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong, was jointly developed by state-owned...

In an era of naval warfare defined by air superiority, precision missiles and autonomous drones, China’s navy appears to be bringing back the “big guns”. A new naval gun system is said to be in development which takes 155mm, or 6.1-inch, artillery shells. That would make it the largest of its kind in the world today. The naval gun has recently been spotted undergoing sea-based performance testing from an experimental warship, which suggests it is moving closer to being deployed by the People’s...

The Philippines’ confrontational approach to maritime territorial disputes, such as its championing of the 2016 South China Sea arbitration ruling, has not only failed to resolve regional tensions, it also risks undermining Asean centrality. In May, addressing Japan’s National Diet, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr announced that Manila would mark the ruling’s 10th anniversary in July, an occasion he said “embodies our determination to resolve disputes through peaceful means”. That is...

Inside a sprawling broadcast hub in Dallas, thousands of devices supplied by Lenovo are helping Fifa manage and distribute content from stadiums across the United States, Canada and Mexico, forming part of the technological backbone of the largest World Cup ever staged. The central role played by the Chinese-founded technology company highlights a reality often obscured by geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing: while US policymakers have increasingly scrutinised Chinese technology...

Huawei Technologies is studying whether to run its newest Ascend artificial intelligence chips inside its cloud and AI services in Latin America, a senior executive has confirmed, in a move that would push Chinese-designed hardware deeper into a region long courted by US suppliers. Mark Chen, president of Huawei Cloud Latin America, gave the confirmation in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post after his presentation at the Rio Web Summit, the technology and innovation...

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...

As the United States quietly pulls its most precious military assets away from the coasts of Asia, they are falling back to places like Guam in Micronesia, a US island territory far beyond the reach of most conventional missiles. It sounds like a retreat but for the Chinese military it is actually a much trickier problem. In modern warfare, distance can become a shield and dispersion a weapon. This is the puzzle a team of Chinese defence scientists has been solving. Their answer, published...

Even Western pundits grudgingly admitted the summit between President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was a success. Both sides, according to Bloomberg, “appear to have walked away with what they wanted”. Given China’s rising pre-eminence while avoiding any damaging war, it’s no surprise that Xi had the upper hand in his recent meetings with US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But with Kim, the stakes for Beijing were just as high, in light of Tokyo’s...

Zhejiang University in China has overtaken Harvard University to become the top academic institution in the world, according to the 2026 Nature Index. This is the first time Harvard has lost its top position in the rankings since the index’s inception in 2014. Tsinghua University, also from China, was third. Chinese institutions dominated this year’s list, accounting for nine of the top 10 – up from eight in last year’s rankings. Of the top 20, China has 17, with Stanford University No 12 and...

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...

Beijing is seeking to expand people-to-people exchanges with Taiwan as it hosts hundreds from the island for an annual event, despite the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) banning Taiwanese officials from taking part. The Straits Forum, now in its 18th edition since 2009, is Beijing’s key platform for cross-strait people-to-people engagement, promoting exchanges in fields from culture to economics as part of its broader push for cross-strait integration. The main forum takes place on...

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,...

Chinese scientists have uncovered differences between American and Chinese vaginal microbiomes, revealing that a bacterium closely linked to bacterial vaginosis and preterm birth is more prevalent and virulent in American women. The study underscores the need for localised treatments and “fills a critical gap for Asian populations and provides a foundational platform for global vaginal microbiome research and microbe-host interaction studies”, according to the researchers. The scientists said...

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...

A series of emergency management and local government officials in central China’s Hunan province have come under investigation following a catastrophic fireworks factory explosion that killed 37 people last month. The provincial discipline inspection commission announced on Thursday that three senior figures within the emergency management system were under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law”. The officials are Lei Min, deputy director of the safety production emergency...

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...

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. Was Xi’s stance on North Korea military ties also a message for US, Russia? During his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Monday, Chinese President Xi Jinping said both sides should “enhance exchanges in diplomacy, law...