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...

Peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait needs a “joint answer” from people on both sides, Beijing’s top Taiwan affairs official said on Saturday. “As profound changes unseen in a century accelerate across the world, the international landscape is becoming increasingly turbulent and complex, the situation in the Taiwan Strait remains complex and severe,” Wang Huning told the Straits Forum, an annual event designed to boost exchanges between Taiwan and mainland China. “The future direction of...

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...

The vulnerability of submarine cables during conflicts has made seabed infrastructure a fresh concern for global communication and maritime safety, prompting 17 Asian and European nations to step up collaboration on defence strategies in recent months. But the two largest marine powers, China and the United States, were not among those countries. From the blow-up of the Nord Stream pipeline to the development of new technology such as China’s deep-sea cable cutter, the seabed has become the...

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...

Chinese deep-sea explorers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have discovered the largest “whale-fall site” ever recorded in the Indian Ocean. The graveyard is the Earth’s deepest and most extensive known accumulation of whale fossils, carcasses and the unique ecosystems they support, with some fossils dating back about 5.3 million years. Detailed in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday, the study was conducted by researchers from the CAS Institute of...

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...

For much of the reform era, the United States occupied a special place in the Chinese imagination. When I was growing up in China in the 1980s, the US – or meiguo, the “beautiful country” – was more than a country. It was an idea. Many Chinese, myself included, associated it with prosperity, freedom, scientific innovation and a functioning democracy. Even those who disagreed with American foreign policy often admired its institutions and power. That admiration survived many shocks: the Belgrade...

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...

Nvidia’s top executive for Latin America denied on Wednesday that the region has served as a corridor for restricted chips into China, weeks after Anthropic, the American maker of the Claude AI models, alleged that Chinese labs had relied partly on smuggled processors to drive recent advances. Speaking at Web Summit Rio at a moment of intensifying rivalry between Washington and Beijing over artificial intelligence, Marcio Aguiar acknowledged that the pressure on export controls is real enough to...

US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he had cancelled planned military strikes against Iran after negotiations with Tehran reached what he described as the highest levels of the Iranian leadership and received approval from all parties involved. “Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings...

Beijing has completed a seabed survey in the complex waters east of Taiwan, its latest move to strengthen management of the waters around Taiwan following maritime border talks between Japan and the Philippines, according to state media. It is the first time mainland Chinese maritime authorities have conducted hydrographic survey operations east of Taiwan to fill in previously incomplete seabed mapping data for the area, according to an article published on Wednesday by Yuyuan Tantian, a social...

China launched a new test communication satellite on Thursday in a pivotal step to validate technology essential for next-generation orbital connectivity speeds and reliability. The Communication Technology Test Satellite No 25 was sent into orbit on a Long March 5 rocket launched from the Wenchang spaceport in the southern island province of Hainan at 3.30pm on Thursday. “The satellite will be mainly used to verify multi-band, high-rate satellite communication technologies,” state broadcaster...

Blockbuster initial public offerings from tech champions such as Anthropic and SpaceX are about to fundamentally reshape global capital markets. This wave will redirect capital flows and alter valuations across the tech sector. As competition intensifies, investors worldwide will be forced to completely rethink where future returns will come from. For China, the rise of these companies will intensify an already fierce contest for global capital, putting further strain on foreign investment...

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...

The leader of Taiwan’s main opposition Kuomintang met Trump ally Steve Daines and other US lawmakers in Washington on Wednesday. In those talks, KMT chairwoman Cheng Li-wun outlined the party’s position on defence and energy, saying her party did not oppose American arms sales to the island, according to Taiwan’s United Daily News. Her meetings on Wednesday also included talks with Republican representatives John Rose and Chuck Fleischmann, and Democratic Representative Thomas Suozzi. According...

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...

A high-ranking workplace safety official in central China’s Shanxi province has been placed under investigation over a massive coal mine explosion that killed 82. Zhang Heping, deputy director of the provincial department of emergency management, is suspected of “serious violations of discipline and law”, according to a statement released by the provincial discipline inspection and supervisory commission late on Wednesday. The provincial anti-corruption watchdog explicitly linked Zhang to the...

Robotic snakes have been deployed in southwestern China to inspect power lines and ensure a stable power supply during the country’s high-pressure national college entrance exam. The snakelike robots spiral around power lines in Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, to detect hazards such as broken wires, worn components and abnormal temperatures. The device’s developer, the power supply bureau of Kunming’s Guandu district, said the robotic snake had checked more than 130km (81 miles) of...

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...

North Korea is gaining in strategic importance for China to counter the United States, but Pyongyang may refrain from intensifying military ties with Beijing, analysts say. 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 enforcement and military affairs”, according to state news agency Xinhua. Despite pledges from both sides to strengthen strategic communications, denuclearisation of the...

Chinese AI-enabled equipment can help police assess the physical health, mental state, and even risk level of suspects, according to demonstrations at a law enforcement equipment exhibition in Beijing last week. Chinese firms presenting their latest biometric devices at the international police and anti-terrorism technology expo said they could reduce manpower requirements for a police force and improve efficiency amid a shortage of frontline officers. The three-day exhibit which ended on...

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...

During a recent discussion in Shenzhen with British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, I was reminded that the development of artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer only a technological race. It is a test of whether major economies can build the institutions, standards and economic systems needed to integrate intelligent machines into human society. Britain has every reason to enter this new era with confidence. It has contributed to much of the modern world’s foundations. In 1687, Isaac Newton...

⁠The ⁠United States will hit Iran “very hard tonight” and will ‌soon take control of the Middle Eastern country’s oil and gas infrastructure and ⁠markets, President Donald Trump said ‌on Thursday. “At some point in ‌the not too distant ⁠future, ⁠we will be ‌taking Kharg Island, and other oil ‌infrastructure points, ‌and assume total ‌control of their ⁠Oil and Gas Markets, much ⁠like we have with Venezuela,” Trump said ‌on ‌social media. Trump gave no details of how the US would seize Iran’s oil...

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,...

China’s Qianfan network has hit a national milestone by placing over 200 broadband satellites in orbit, but there are concerns its deployment could be too slow and costly. The constellation now has 201 satellites after a successful launch on board a Zhuque-2E rocket from the Gobi Desert at 4.23pm Beijing time on Tuesday. The mission delivered Qianfan DTC-01 – a direct-to-cell test satellite – alongside a satellite from China Mobile, state broadcaster CCTV reported. The flight followed...

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...

China’s military mouthpiece has highlighted the “dangers of AI sycophancy” – where artificial intelligence systems alter the facts to match user biases – and called for action to prevent this from harming People’s Liberation Army operations. An article in PLA Daily on Tuesday said the tendency for AI models to cater to user preferences – even endorsing blatant errors over objective facts – posed a “severe threat” at a time when the military relied more on automated systems. “The dangers of AI...

Mainland Chinese maritime authorities detected what appear to be Japanese surveillance aircraft southeast of Taiwan on Monday as Beijing stepped up patrols around the waters. Two fixed-wing aircraft appeared to belong to the Japan Coast Guard and were spotted during a mainland Chinese maritime task force patrol southeast of Taiwan, according to a video published on Tuesday by Yuyuan Tantian, a social media account affiliated with mainland state broadcaster CCTV. The first featured a distinct...

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...

Taiwan’s main opposition leader hailed US President Donald Trump’s recent comments opposing the island’s independence as a “relatively positive first step” towards reducing tensions. Cheng Li-wun, chairwoman of the Kuomintang (KMT), told the South China Morning Post on Sunday in an exclusive interview that “the one-China policy and opposition to Taiwan independence” had always been the “principle and foundation” and served as “the Kuomintang’s stance”. “On this political basis, the status quo...

The Pentagon added Chinese pharmaceutical contractor WuXi AppTec to a list of entities it alleges are linked to the country’s military, but the blacklisting will not stop multinational drug makers from collaborating with China’s biopharmaceutical firms, according to analysts. “We view minimal impact given multinational [companies] in pharma still prefer made-in-China for cost efficiency,” said Cui Cui, head of healthcare research for Asia at Jefferies. “Meanwhile, Wuxi AppTec earnings visibility...

Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s chief of staff Cai Qi, the fifth most senior official in the ruling Communist Party, was chosen to lead the Central Party School, Beijing’s leading academy for cadres. The Central Party School is not just any training site for Chinese officials, but part of a nationwide system that Xi considers key to the ideological purity of the party and important for the expertise needed by senior officials across the country. Who were previous heads? In the past...